no rest for the wicked [jason todd]

thirty

WHEN THEY STEPPED OUT OF THE GRIEVING ALMOST-WIDOW'S HOUSE,

Tye inhaled the fresh air like she'd never taken a breath before. She let her lungs fill up, trying to focus on exhaling slowly. She needed to be calm right now, as this case wasn't meant to be personal, and she couldn't make it personal. However, arresting her boyfriend seemed to be a little personal, and even Dick was suspecting of something bad when he looked toward her. "It's... Oh God, it's Jay, isn't it?"

His voice was so quiet that she nearly missed it.

Raising her shoulders in a useless shrug, Tye glanced up. "You don't remember?" She asked now, eyebrows furrowing, and waved a hand toward the house in a futile attempt to get him to remember anything. "David Ferreira, Davey, that was... That was the guy that we had in the club, the one we wanted to drag some information out of. He's on Hood's payroll. I mean, it wasn't too long after I was kidnapped, so what if..."

"What if Davey spilled some info to Joker and that's how they got to you," Dick supplied when her words failed to come out. "It makes sense, Tye, I'm not calling you a liar. I just..."

She knew what he was going to say. They had better hopes for Jason. She believed he was a good person deep down, with the absolute best intentions, but she couldn't help but think of Jonny in this situation. He'd manipulated her into thinking he had good reasons behind everything he'd done, and then he'd become a world-class douche to her. She believed in Jason, she trusted him with her whole heart, and that meant she was just going to ask him.

She turned toward Dick, eyebrows pulling together. "Can we get Gordon to help drop the case somehow? I... Dick, I can't..."

"I know," he told her, rubbing her shoulder and rounding the car to open the door for her. She wasn't useless, she wanted to inform him stubbornly, but she got into the car anyway. "I'll talk to some people, see if this can't just... Go away. If anything, this is better if we deal with it on our, uh, own time."

By own time, Tye was pretty sure he meant in fancy dress-up costumes and masks. She wasn't wholly opposed considering it seemed like the best course of action, but it was funny to hear him dance around the words in public. She was going to have to do it one day if it all came to it; not as much as public figure Dick Grayson, but still a fairly certain amount of time.

She was silent when she got into the car, eyes gluing to the window as he drove off down the street. She focused on him instead, wondering if it would calm her down. She could see the whites of his knuckles from his grip on the steering wheel, the cold sapphire blues of his eyes and the furrow between his brows. She was lucky to have gotten into the circumstances to meet him, he'd been more of a friend to her than most people in her life. She felt lucky to have met Barbara too, as well as her father Jim and the newest Robin, Tim.

Tim was such a sweet kid. She could see the sadness under all of his energy and snark, but she knew how it felt to hold a shield around yourself.

She was shocked by the ringing of her phone and dug into her pocket to answer it.

"Hello, is this Tye Melrose?" The woman asked on the other end of the line. She sounded tired, almost like the fast food workers you've seen that worked long shifts and had long school hours piled on top of it. She was too old for that teenager shtick, and her voice held another emotion not common in those type of people. She was scared about something.

Tye was hesitant to reply. "Uh, yeah," she said, glancing over at Dick, "who is this?"

"I need your help," the woman said now, her voice hinting on desperation. "I need your help, please. You have to help me. I don't know who else to call."

Silence ensued for a long, long moment before Dick reached for the phone to hit speaker. Now, Tye continued with, "what do you need help with? Can you tell me your name? I need to know how I can help you, ma'am."

She didn't give them her name or even a situation. She spilled out a tumble of words that formed into an address and then hung up the phone. The line went dead and Tye's expression was a little shocked when she closed the device. "Okay," she said to him, "we're going to a sketchy address to help a woman who we don't know actually exists. Bets on if she's a murderer? I'll give you a ten if she tries to kill either of us, cool? Whether or not she succeeds, you get to keep the ten."

"Unless she kills me," he told her with a joking scoff, "type the address in on the GPS and we'll head over, Melrose."

She did, tapping the buttons to input the address. The GPS spit out some instructions and they followed it along to a creepy, narrow dirt street. Dick was thinking Tye was probably going to owe him that ten, because if anyone lived on sketchy dirt roads, it was serial murderers, wasn't it?

They pulled to a stop at the front of a rickety old brown barn, smaller than a house but a lot bigger than a shed, and Dick didn't even want to get out. His skin felt like it was crawling as he put a hand on the car door and pushed it open. He pulled his gun out and aimed it toward the ground as he stepped over to the building. He waited for Tye who'd pulled out her own firearm from her holster. When they were on either sides of the door, they pushed them open in sync and held the guns high.

"GCPD! Hands up and step out!" Dick's voice rang out inside the wooden structure.

A woman stepped out from behind a pillar. She was fairly small, but she didn't look frail at all. She was strong, maybe even muscular, and she had a pouty sort of look to her face like the one Tye had. "Don't shoot," she said carefully, her hands raised above her head. "I can explain why I called you."

"Oh, really?" Tye said, her eyebrows pulling together. "Let me guess, someone's trying to kill you?"

The woman's expression turned into a grimace. "Someone's trying to kill you," she told her.