Chapter Text
“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Can I help you find anything?”
The librarian smiled at him from the other side of a book cart laden with nonfiction titles: a few quilting how-tos, some government comment pieces, and a staggering amount of cookbooks.
In his early years, both before and after he’d come back, the Gotham Public Library had been about survival; a free place with A/C in the muggy summer, and heating in the frigid winter, and electricity, and water, and all those other things you need when you’re a street rat in Gotham.
Jason never thought about the library having cookbooks.
Jason shook his head on instinct. He knew how the dewey system worked, even if he spent most of his time in the fiction shelves. However, it would be faster with help.
“Yeah, I’m looking for Gotham history and folktales.”
In the four months since the Court of Owls and the League waged war on Gotham, both organizations had gone relatively quiet, no doubt plotting their next move. That didn’t mean the Bats had to sit idly and wait.
Jason thought the lull would be a good chance to see what other Gotham-brand nursery rhymes might be waiting in the shadows. If the Owls rhyme had held some semblance of truth--watching from within Gotham’s walls, or whatever the fuck--then maybe other bedtime stories did the same.
And, yeah, maybe his night work was running him ragged, but no one needed to know that. Everyone had their own problems to juggle. If nothing else, the library helped Jason think.
Next to Jason, the librarian visibly brightened. “Oh, well you’re almost in the right spot.”
She unhooked a black cane from her book cart and then she was off, leaving Jason to catch up. Her free hand trailed along the book spines, black nails clacking as she mumbled to herself. They swung around the next aisle, where she stopped abruptly. She hooked the end of her cane into a book on the middle shelf and pulled it halfway out, then did the same to a second book three shelves down.
“There. Everything in between is Gotham local history.”
“Thanks. That’s--”
But she was already searching again, moving down the aisle. “I’ll see what we have in folktales. Are you looking in general, or...”
“Gotham lore, specifically.”
She paused, then pulled out her phone. “The Court and More, volume 1. That’s probably your best bet. Let me find the call number. I can see if we have any online resources, and there’s the archives downstairs--”
Jason thought if he didn’t stop the deluge of information now, she might keep going, like Tim when he was three energy drinks and forty-seven pages into a Wikipedia rabbit hole. “I can find it with the call number. Thanks. This is a good start.”
Finally, the librarian looked up from her phone, shooting Jason an honest smile that crinkled the corners of her green eyes. He crouched to look at the designated shelves. There was a lot here, from the founding of Gotham to modern day. Enough to keep him busy for at least a few weeks.
The librarian pulled out a card from her ID badge, and a pen from her hair; the blond strands fell down in waves as she wrote, then offered the card to Jason.
The backside read 942.83 COU.
The front read Willodene Ward, MLS, Archives/Outreach/Accessibility, Gotham Public Library.
“Let me know if you need help. I’ll be shelving for a bit,” she said.
“How do the archives work?” Jason asked, because he hadn’t realized Gotham Public Library had an archival collection.
The librarian--Willodene, he guessed--leaned against a shelf. “A portion of the archives are open to the public with an escort. The rest of it requires research clearance from an educational entity. Are you doing this for school?”
“No,” Jason shook his head. “Work, actually.”
“I’ve made exceptions for corporate research before. If you don’t find what you’re looking for here, shoot me an email. I’ll see what I can do.”
‘Corporate research’ made him think of getting a fancy letter from Wayne Enterprises signed by Tim or Dick and he’d honestly rather eat glass.
“I think I’m good with this.” Jason gestured to the bookshelf. “Thanks, though.”
“Of course. Happy reading.”
Jason sighed. There was certainly a lot of reading to do.
"I'm just saying, it's a weird trend."
Jason finished the last rep on his pull ups, dropping and reaching for a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. Tim and Babs had been at it for a while now, shifting through the latest GCPD data, and it sounded like Tim found something.
The Belfry glowed in the late-afternoon sun, washing the main deck in golden light. Jason followed the stretched out shadows of Tim and Babs to where they were sitting, Tim on a stool and Babs reclined in her wheelchair, passing a tablet back and forth near the computer.
Tim continued his explanation as Jason joined them. “I mean, there are kidnappings all the time, but these seem different. No evidence, no witnesses, just a hole in the community.”
“No commonalities?” Barbara flicked the cases up onto the big screen for Jason to see. Fifty-seven kidnappings in the last seven months.
“Besides an ominous ‘nothing’?” Tim asked. “Nope.”
“Could be the Court acting up again,” Jason suggested. “Or another trafficker. Send me the files. I’ll look into it.”
Barbara gave him that look where her eyebrows knit together and she was weighing her options. “You sure?”
Jason knew what she was getting at.
They’d all been busy cleaning up after The Court and League unleashed holy hell on Gotham. Dick was trying to balance Bruce’s estate and business with crime fighting, spending half his time in Gotham and the other half in Bludhaven. Babs locked in with Detective Montoya to flush out the worst rats in GCPD and was working out a tenuous truce with the commissioner. Tim was torn between college, Wayne Enterprises, crime fighting, and upgrading the Belfry’s labs and tech, plus whatever he did with the Titans. That meant Jason...
Well, Jason was doing what he did best: trying to reign in the gangs after they’d taken advantage of Bruce’s death and, consequently, Batman’s absence. This kidnapping stuff seemed tangential enough.
“I’ve got this,” Jason assured her, and gave her shoulder a squeeze for good measure. Barbara smiled, patted his hand, then turned back to the computer.
Tim rolled away on his stool to fiddle with the 3D printer. Behind them, the elevator doors opened, and Dick and Alfred joined them. Jason glanced at the clock; 8:30. They were early.
“There’s something else I wanted to run by you,” Barbara said as she stood and stretched, handing Jason the tablet. “Detective Montoya and I noticed a recent trend. Anonymous tips have gone up fifty percent in the last six months. We think they’re all coming from the same reporter. GCPD response rate has been awful, but...”
Barbara shifted the files on the computer screen to highlight certain ones. Big names rolled by, leaders in the Regulators, Mob, and Freaks, plus a few of Black Mask’s lackies. “These are the eighteen GCPD pursued. All heavy hitters in Gotham’s underground. The info that put them away was thorough, the kind of stuff a civilian wouldn’t know.”
“Cold cases,” Jason said, highlighting some data. “They all had connections to cold cases. Looks like that’s what finally got them booked. I can look into it.”
“Want some help?” Dick’s voice appeared behind Jason, followed by two hands on his shoulders in a firm, friendly slap.
Richard Grayson was one of the few people on earth who could pull that kind of move and get away with it--barely.
Jason took a deep breath and shrugged out of Dick’s touch. “I’ve got it.”
They were doing better, him and Dick. The whole shit-show with the League and Court was a crucible their relationship desperately needed, and they’d come out the other side with a tenuous bond.
But Jason believed that some things never changed, regardless of what his therapist said, and one thing Dick had never known how to do was let shit go.
“You sure? A second set of eyes--”
“I’ve got this, Dick.” Jason pushed the tablet into Dick’s chest, creating some much needed space between himself and the mother-hen.
Dick put his hands up in mock-surrender, retreating to the other side of Barbara.
“What else needs handling?” Dick asked.
They assigned patrol routes for the night. Tim and Dick partnered up for an anticipated bank robbery in downtown. Barbara planned on running surveillance on some GCPD dealings. Alfred was their man in the chair.
That just left Jason, the Bowery, and his already substantial to-do list.
“Has anyone thought to update our blueprints for Gotham’s historic buildings?” Alfred asked, and the four of them let out a collective groan.
They’d been meaning to. They needed to. Chasing the Court had proven that any blueprints for Gotham’s more historic buildings were tampered with to hide secret passageways, Owl’s Nests, and Giant Death Machines.
Jason was still a little salty he was the one thrown into the Giant Death Machine.
“We’d need the original physical plans in order for it to be reliable, but most would be ancient by now,” Tim said. “I’ve checked the museums, the city records department. No one has them.”
Dick stretched back in his chair, spine popping loudly. “The Court probably made sure the originals don’t exist.”
Jason sighed, thinking. He shoved his hands in his pockets and his fingers brushed along a forgotten business card. He pulled it out to examine the all-capital handwriting on one side, and the black lettering on the other.
“What about the library?” Jason asked.
Babs shook her head. “The archival collection wasn’t much when I was there. I don’t know if the current archivist expanded it.”
“Worth a look,” Jason said. “I’ll handle it.”
He felt three sets of eyes turn to look at him; only three, because Alfred didn’t need a look to express the same exasperated sentiment the others were sending his way.
This time, Tim spoke. “Or we could--”
“I’ve got it,” Jason insisted through a clenched jaw. He was losing his patience for this second-guessing bullshit.
Dick said, “You’re already taking on--”
“Small time kidnapping, a cold case amateur, and some research. I can handle it.” He counted the to-do list on his hand as if that was enough to end the discussion. The Belfry fell silent.
It was Jason’s turn to retreat. The sun set an hour ago. He could head out early, get his bearings for the night. Get out of the Belfry before he lost his temper.
Because, the truth of it was, Jason knew they weren’t doubting him. They wanted to help, and that was...well, it just was.
‘Help’ was still a foreign concept despite the therapy and the months spent working together. ‘Help’ still made Jason’s hackles raise, still made him feel like a wounded animal, baring its teeth from the corner. ‘Help’ was still hard to accept.
Which meant that some things were just easier on his own.
Some things never changed.
“The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.”
― Isabel Allende
Will liked working the closing shift at Gotham Public Library.
The library closed to the public at nine, and she was usually the last one out by ten. Some nights, like tonight, Will didn't head home at ten. Instead, she finished shutting down the main floor, said goodbye to her coworkers, then made her way to the basement archives.
Don’t get her wrong, Will loved the setup in her apartment: seven monitors, custom built PC, and more layers of security than Gotham National Bank. She’d taken everything she could when she’d split from the government, and it made for one beast of a computer.
However, there was something about the archives that she needed every now and then. Maybe the moody lighting, or the smell of deteriorating paper and centuries-old dust helped her focus.
Whatever it was, that’s where Will set up shop tonight. The archives were floor-to-ceiling rolling shelving, all various depths and widths depending on what was being stored in any given spot. There were no windows. Six study tables sat in the only clearing; five of them slept under a layer of dust.
Will set out her laptop--her personal one she’d built just for this--and opened to the GCPD database. Will kicked her left leg up on the opposite seat, hooked her cane over the chair next to her, and got to work.
There was a new slew of GCPD data to analyze, and Will set her software to mining it, scanning for any of the usual keywords while she opened her case files.
She’d hit a roadblock recently. Metaphorically. There’d been an uptick in cold cases, mostly kidnappings going stagnant and getting pushed to the back burner. Not unusual for Gotham, but something about it made her curious; something about the similarities made her think there was more to it.
Her datamining program dinged, finished. She added thirteen more kidnapping cases to her ‘cold case’ files. Shit.
And yeah, this was starting to look a little too familiar. Hitting a little too close to home. Not for the first time, Will wondered if this was more than she could handle.
Will stood, stretched, and wandered over to procure a second lamp from another study table. She could feel a headache coming on. She stooped to plug in the lamp and that’s when she felt it.
A barely-there brush of air, the distinct sense of something taking up space behind her.
Will spun, sweeping her cane low. The handle hooked around an ankle and she pulled, moving on instinct. Her unwelcome research partner went down with barely a sound and she loomed over them, foot crushing their chest, cane pressing into their throat.
And then Will blinked.
Blinked again.
White, unflinching lenses stared back at her from behind a red mask, arms raised in mock defense.
"Was trying not to spook ya," Red Hood said, not quite apologetic, but it was hard to read him without any facial features to go off of.
Will's mind raced, running through every possible 'why' and 'how'. She’d been so careful. Had one of the gangs finally caught on? Or did the Bats really have nothing better to do than bother a casual crime buff?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. There was currently a known vigilante twice her size staring up at her, built like a damn fridge and probably armed to the teeth with who-knows-what. She was fucked.
“I’m looking for some old blueprints. They might be here,” Red Hood said.
Or maybe Red Hood was just a history buff; Will hadn’t considered that option.
He’d made no move to shake her cane off, which he no doubt could, but Will appreciated the gesture all the same. She lifted her cane and quickly circled the table, desperately needing some distance.
“Couldn’t come during operating hours? Or do you just like scaring the shit out of librarians?” she asked.
Red Hood stood, rubbing at his throat where her cane had been. “What I need isn’t available to the public. You’re pretty fast with that cane.”
Will didn’t acknowledge the comment. Instead, she weighed her options. Red Hood was there for a librarian, not her. She could work with that; she needed to work with that. “What do you want?”
“Architecture plans for some buildings in Gotham.”
Will rolled her eyes. “You can find those online. I’ll show you--” She reached for her laptop.
Red Hood pulled the laptop away, glancing down at the screen. “I need the originals, and I’m hoping they’re here.”
Will sighed, again reaching for the laptop. He let her take it this time, and she folded the screen down. She could do this. Get him what he wanted. Get him out. Go back to her little corner of the world.
No big deal.
“Fine. Got a list?”
"You're not taking them with you."
The librarian crossed her arms. Gone was the helpful, cheery librarian from daytime hours. The woman in front of him now was squaring up against the Red Hood over some architectural blueprints without a second thought.
Red Hood didn't know if she was that brave, or that stupid.
They had found most of the blueprints, and Red Hood carried the archival boxes as the librarian picked her way along the shelves. She hadn’t trailed her nails along the book spines this time, or mumbled to herself as she searched. She was focused, silent, almost hostile.
"I need the originals," Red Hood insisted, reaching for the boxes. Willodene smacked his hand with her cane.
"Take a picture. You can’t remove them from the archives."
"The originals--"
Willodene pointed with the end of her cane at the white archival boxes. "Are on the verge of disintegrating. What, you have a technological marvel of a suit, but no bat camera?"
Laughter rang in through Red Hood’s comm; he’d forgotten about the others.
Some nights, they all linked up on open channels until a case pulled them in, and then they’d go silent. Batgirl was the first to leave tonight when she reached her stakeout. Robin and Nightwing were still waiting for the robbery to kick off and apparently had nothing better to do than listen to Red Hood’s research attempt.
“You’re getting bullied by a librarian!” Robin wheezed.
“Shut the hell up,” Red Hood groaned. Willodene snapped her gaze up, and he winced. “Not you, not you.”
“The voices in your head?” she asked, unamused.
Nightwing was next. “No, please, continue. This is a real page-turner.”
“God damnit.” Red Hood disconnected his comm, if for no other reason than to get their incessant laughter out of his head. “Fine. I’ll take pictures.”
Willodene waved Red Hood away when he moved to help. “We do this my way, or not at all.”
She removed her bracelets and rings, rolled up her sleeves, tied back her hair, then slowly lifted the large piece of white paper covering the blueprints.
They hadn’t been able to find every historical building blueprint in Gotham, but what was there was ancient, printed on yellowing paper and almost unrecognizable. Red Hood noticed a few talon-esque notes in the margins, and felt a glimmer of hope that these might be untampered with.
They moved through all eight with steady efficiency. In between, the librarian placed the blueprints back in the archival box, carefully smoothing the yellowed papers out flat before laying another sheet of white paper down. They finished the last blueprint--the Powers Club--thirty minutes later. Red Hood sent the pictures from his communicator to the Belfry computer.
Willodene, cane hooked around her arm, picked up the stack of archival boxes, and Red Hood tried to take it from her.
“I’ve got it,” she hissed, then disappeared into the stacks.
Red Hood listened to the librarian shuffle through the stacks, waiting until she was a few rows away. He lifted up the screen of her laptop, glancing at what she’d been working on before he spooked her.
Sure enough, some version of the GCPD database stared back at him.
Not like the GCPD had the best security in the world, but it was still locked up tighter than max-security at Blackgate. It took some serious computer know-how to break into those servers.
Not only that, but he recognized some of the cases.
Willodene’s footsteps drew close. Red Hood closed the laptop.
“Thanks for the help,” he said when she emerged from the stacks. She blinked, like she was surprised he was still there.
“Don’t mention it,” she mumbled, packing her things up. Maybe he’d ruined her studious mood for the evening. “You should leave.”
“Not a big fan of vigilantes?” he asked. He didn’t care what her answer was, but he hoped he could at least get her talking, tell him a bit more about what the hell she was doing with a GCPD database.
Unfortunately, she didn’t take the bait. “I’m just a little librarian. Keep me as far away from the big leagues as possible.”
“And you think I’m ‘big leagues’?” he asked, doubtful.
The look she shot him was withering, wholly unamused, and more than a little exhausted. “And you don’t even know it. How sad.”
The false pity in her voice lit something within Red Hood, something green and angry, as if he didn’t know exactly who he was, what he was. He took a deep breath. Counted the floor tiles beneath his feet. Smelled the musty stench of books. Let the breath out slowly.
“Please leave,” Willodene repeated, voice quiet and cold. She stood at the elevator door, the ‘up’ button glowing red. “I’m the one who gets called when the alarms go off.”
“God forbid I interrupt your beauty sleep,” Red Hood said. She rolled her eyes, but stepped into the elevator when it opened. He backed toward the vent he’d used to get in.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Willodene said, then chewed on the inside of her lip. She tried again. “Whatever you’re doing, keep me out of it.”
The elevator door slid closed, her words echoing through the archives and following Red Hood up through the vent, out into the rainy Gotham night.
“I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger.
'No, and if he were I would burn my library.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing