A/N: So, I've been working on this for...three months, more or less. It's essentially complete at the time of this writing, barring minor edits and some final polishing on the last chapter. I'll be posting chapters once per few days, or whenever the final edit gets done.

Anyway, this story takes place in a setting that borrows prominently from Batman: Under the Red Hood, as well as pulling some elements from the main DCU. Also, it features multiple perspectives, a trans-dimensional adventurer, optimism in a universe that doesn't have any, Bat-bonding, cultural translations and transitions needing work, and a Hamill tribute of a Joker.

And one averted death.

(1/5)

Serendipity

Miakûl, for all her professed love of duty and professionalism, was not any stranger to the idea of taking a well-deserved break from the excesses of the Council of Five. Often, she spent her time either in the wilderness of her home territory, finally taking down the wards on her cavernous abode and sleeping for a week, but occasionally she found that unfulfilling. Then she could bother her brother and his friends, but even then, there was something missing. So not long after she got her shadowy cloak from Tirana, she began to explore the wide universe on her own, and while walking the secret paths between worlds, she discovered a place that was nearly always called Earth.

It was a completely new world with completely new rules, and she spent her time trying to figure them out for herself. Miakûl had always liked puzzles, and the new world was a perfect place to start.

Since she most often ended up in region the native humans called the state of New York (though she did not know how it was to feel "New York," whatever that meant), she decided it would be best to test herself using it as a baseline.

Every time she visited, however, the people and places involved were slightly different. Sometimes she traveled around New York and there was a New York City.

At first, there were people there who worked with "extraterrestrials" and wiped the memories of other humans to keep secrets. They were amusing, and wearing her mask prevented them from wiping her memory, so she could see how they worked. They thwarted invasions and massacres many times over, and she stayed out of their way.

Another time, there were humans who chased after ghosts and poltergeists with strange devices on their backs. They were unusual, and she tried to visit their world once more to observe their tactics, but she was unable to find them again and ended up discovering that their ghost-capturing machines were rather like those that ordinary humans used to clean their homes.

Once, there had been a great lizard that had brought the island city to its knees before being killed, and she wondered if humans would be able to kill the Council of Five at some point with such weapons, if they ever developed them. Either way, she also observed the reptile's surviving offspring become a loyal, if highly destructive, companion to a band of humans, and wondered at the creativity of the natives.

Another time, the great cities of Earth had been wiped out by metallic discs in the sky. She deliberately did not visit that world again.

On yet another, she watched as most of the humans in the city were turned into gargoyles and decided that old Fae magic was not worth the time anyone seemed to invest in it.

Another version of the city was populated by many empowered beings—a man who flew in a red-and-gold metal suit, an aspect of lightning itself, and a strange man in stars and stripes who could throw a shield with deadly accuracy. There was also a tower that had not been there before, with a great A made of lights, and a strange young man in red and blue who swung through the city like a spider-monkey.

She was never quite sure what to make of all the different iterations.

Oddly, though, sometimes she would arrive in New York State to find that the city that bore its name did not exist. Instead, there were twin cities that were like light and shadow—Metropolis, home of the alien hero with the S on his chest, and Gotham, home of the Bat.

While she liked Metropolis and its shiny, wholesome look, she also strongly disliked the idea of being hilariously out of her weight class compared to even the weakest being to challenge Superman, and thus spent most of those iterations in Gotham. Her pride had closed the city to her, though she doubted that the Kryptonian would begrudge her that.

Gotham was, frankly, ugly as sin. There were thugs and goons around every street corner, crime ran rampant, and there were entire chunks of the city that were barely more than shanty-towns or free housing for the cold and homeless. Every time she arrived within the city limits, she wondered why the sky had suddenly turned red when the countryside's sky had been as blue as could be. There was smoke in the air, true, but never enough to cause that. The buildings were black and forbidding even in the heart of the city, and the winter was harsh. It was as unlike her homeland as she could make it, and yet it felt familiar in a way that New York City had not.

Then Miakûl decided that clearly Gotham was cursed, and felt much better about it.

Once she decided that Gotham was a hub of sorts, nearly all of her travels led her to the forbidding Earth city. There were times when it did not exist, and on those occasions she wondered if it could not exist at the same time as New York City. But when it was there waiting for her, she looked for differences during her free time and took as many notes as she dared, feeling oddly giddy.

Sometimes there was a Batman, a hero of sorts who opposed the city's systemic corruption and collection of costumed maniacs. If there was, there was also a Joker. She had never gotten close enough to either to be sure that the same people were always involved, but it often seemed like the case. There were often boys in red that followed the Bat, though not always (and she wondered if, on those occasions, Batman was simply younger and had not found them yet), and occasionally others appeared. Women, men, and various other vigilantes also made appearances, and Miakûl took pains to keep track of them for no other reason than the fact that she could.

The first Robin to appear usually became the Nightwing. The first Batgirl vanished, either to take up a new role or just to retire. There were others, too—she counted a total of five Robins and three Batgirls, though one of the Batgirls had also been a Robin. The second, fourth, and fifth Robins and all but the first Batgirl often made no appearances while Miakûl was around, and she wrote down theories as to why.

It did not help that some of the iterations seemed to be missing certain people entirely.

One world had only two Robins and one Batgirl total, though the second Robin had been the third in every other world. All of them except for the Batman disappeared at about the same time as the Joker, and Miakûl made a note even though there were still mysteries that needed solving.

One world had no Robins or Batgirls, and only a strange new Batman in a black costume with a red insignia. Miakûl had no idea why that was, though that iteration of Gotham seemed to have entirely different technology and she made a note anyway.

Some worlds also had different versions of the Gotham criminals, though she had no idea why.

In some, Mr. Freeze was a complete pushover who died in short order. In others, he was a desperate man looking for a cure for his ill wife. In others still, he was a petty crook whose life had been torn apart by that world's Batman.

In some, the Penguin was shorter. Was he raised by penguins, or the son of rich parents? Did he have a pet shark or a legion of literal penguins?

The Killer Croc may have had a tail in one world, and a reptilian snout in another, but Miakûl had no idea what changed that between worlds. She only knew that he always lived in the sewers and threatened to eat people.

Sometimes, Harley Quinn did not exist.

Two-Face was blond in one world and a bi-racial brunet in a different one. There were differences, too, in whether or not the Joker had a part in his scarring and subsequent madness, and he did not always have the same suit.

The Riddler was different every single time Miakûl saw him, either through his puzzles or a press release. She did like his cane, though. It was cool.

Poison Ivy did not always have total control over plants, though Miakûl preferred the worlds where she did. It made the fights more interesting.

Bane was a brainless, muscle-headed fool in some worlds, and a criminal genius who crippled the Batman in others.

Sometimes they were all in a mad-house.

Sometimes they were confined to a walled-off part of the city.

Sometimes Miakûl ran out of pages to take notes on.

Eventually, she decided that the best she could do was cross-reference the notes she did have. She figured out a pattern for most of the various appearances and disappearances, as well as many of the characters who went along with them.

The Batman didn't always have a Robin, but the first Robin was the first Robin every single time he appeared at all. The others could exist or not, depending on factors she had yet to figure out, and where the first Robin appeared, the first Batgirl often followed. In one world, it went the other way around, but she had yet to see a second iteration that followed that trend. And yet sometimes various other humans would take up the masks or cowl, and she still wasn't sure what to make of them.

It was while she was contemplating her musings, which were written in the most obscure code she could rip out of the Council of Five's old records, that she walked between worlds in preparation for more data-gathering, and walked straight into a situation she ought to have avoided.

It seemed to be happening a lot more as time went on.

As a precaution, she had generally tried to find abandoned warehouses to use as entrance and exit points to the city. The Shadowcloak was hardly inconspicuous, being the kind of dark that swallowed everything, and her appearance in her normal clothes would have caused some comment. So, she walked into their worlds with an illusion at her fingertips and a lie on her tongue and hoped for the best.

Sometimes she ended up having to kill despite her preparations, and she never visited those worlds again.

Others, she found time to save lives. Those worlds were also abandoned, because she had no right to interfere any more than she had already.

Miakûl thought that she had found a world that embodied both, and was very unhappy with the idea.

She did not know the full context of the situation. She would likely never know. That was acceptable—the Council rarely elaborated on mission parameters when she took missions, either, and she was used to it. As long as she had the Mask of Wounds, the Shadowcloak, and her ring of regeneration, then she could probably survive long enough to come up with something.

She was on the ceiling of the warehouse at first, hanging from the rafters as usual. That was normal. Miakûl would have normally just descended to the floor and started the arduous process of creating a new supply cache for a new world, but the warehouse was occupied. Regardless of the people involved, that meant a new hideout would have to be found and damned if she wanted to be shoved out of a territory she had established in multiple realities.

That was a snag of titanic proportions.

Wrapping the Shadowcloak around herself, which made her appear as some kind of demon composed entirely of mobile darkness, Miakûl slipped silently to the concrete floor and went to get a closer look. Before creeping anywhere near the light, she pulled the hood up and placed the Mask of Wounds over her face. Underneath the Shadowcloak, her clothes shifted to their Earth counterparts—tactical clothes in matte black and gray, to prevent being easily spotted in the darkness.

There were wires everywhere. She did not know what any of them led to and could not even pretend to, instead silently skirting around them and hoping for the best. She rather liked this warehouse, after all. It seemed to exist in every world. It would be a shame to lose it because there were native humans and they seemed to enjoy blowing things up more than her brother did.

Miakûl heard many ugly sounds in her time exploring the paths between worlds, but she had never gotten used to hearing someone be beaten to death.

(This did not necessarily mean that she had not done so, but she disliked it.)

"What hurts more? A or B? Forehand or backhand?"

Miakûl had heard that voice before. Actually, she had heard that voice many more times, and in many more worlds, than she cared to remember. The voice itself was lower in register than her brother's or her father's, but the laugh was easily as loud and high as her own. It was malicious and playful and probably would have given her brothers' friends ugly flashbacks of all stripes.

It was amazing, really, how the Joker managed to be so recognizable among all the people she had ever met and taken an instant dislike to.

Miakûl smelled blood. And it was also familiar.

There was the sound of a pained wheeze of breath. Miakûl tilted her head to catch any further sound, trying to track the interlopers by sound and ignoring the blood that seemed to permeate the air. The ends of Shadowcloak began to creep through the crates and metallic shipping containers, searching as surely as she was, but less impeded by the physical world.

Left. Right.

The Joker's voice rose from a whisper to something a little above that. She was not certain a human would have heard it.

"A little louder, lamb chop. I think you may have a collapsed lung. That always impedes the oratory."

There was the sound of someone spitting.

There was a henchman in her way. She hit him with a sleeping spell and moved on before he had so much as a moment to shout. Miakûl turned again, creeping closer and closer to the best-lit part of the building. There had never been so many old steel skeletons before. Shadowcloak sank its tendrils into the ground.

There was a meaty sort of thud.

Miakûl found them. In the end, she had chosen to vault the last set of obstacles entirely, landing in the center of the light with no more sound than the fluttering of Shadowcloak's folds. She depended on the cloak's enchantments for camouflage, normally, but it had other properties that kept it from fading away like mist in the light. She used them now, shaping the cloth to angle out like spikes.

Her head was still bowed when the Joker said, "So nice of you to join us, Batsy!"

Miakûl ignored him. It was a surefire way to annoy the clown into attacking, but she did not care.

The poor, beaten form in chains was a Robin. In fact, by the smell of the blood and the approximate description she had committed to memory, it was the second one, who so often seemed to either disappear or not exist at all. He looked rather like Miakûl had expected, given the Joker's monologue, but the expectation being fulfilled did not make her happy. She was rather far from happy.

He was very still, though he could see her, and she might have seen his eyes widen ever-so-slightly behind the traditional Robin domino mask. She said nothing.

She was clamping down on her temper as best she could, but her family had not been known for producing berserk warriors for nothing.

Then she looked up and the Joker blinked.

Batman wore a cowl. He did not seem to mind leaving his face partially exposed. There were even little bat ears on the hood. Miakûl wore a mask made from porcelain so heavily enchanted that there were kingdoms that would never be able to afford its power. It took the wounds of its owner onto itself, leaving its surface scarred and gouged like a battlefield, with only flat black lenses and a thin strip of red to denote the eyes and mouth.

Were Miakûl to venture an opinion and in a better mood (and perhaps more familiar with the culture of the native humans), she would say that the mask looked rather like what the Joker himself would create during Arts and Crafts period at Arkham Asylum, if what he made did not simply explode.

Or it might have looked like something out of a poorly done theater production.

"You're not Batsy." The Joker's expression swung from amused to a dark scowl. "No, you're a two-bit copycat, and a doll at that." Then the amusement, again. "Why don't I have my boys take you apart?"

Miakûl's voice was a low, guttural sound when she found it underneath the layers of rage. She stood up and tilted her head, like a dog intrigued by a new sound. And when she did speak, she did not bother imitating the native humans' speech patterns. She did not bother with words.

There was a muffled scream.

She had always been rather adept at curses, and curses that took the form of powerful illusions were highly entertaining. The spells that had allowed her to create lethal nightmares for any fool she caught sleeping on duty, however, had been artwork. It had been even better once she had also learned the trick to putting them to sleep in the first place, as opposed to merely waiting for an opportune moment.

"And she even knows the Bat-voice trick!" The Joker laughed. "Where did you find this freak?"

This seemed to be addressed to Robin, who did not move.

Miakûl stepped forward, but seemed more to just be there, where she hadn't been before. The Joker stepped back, as though confused. His opponents were normally similar to himself—well, as far as the residents of Arkham went, being completely out of their minds. The Batman was fairly similar in many ways, aside from his refusal to kill.

She had apparently missed a few of the Joker's mindless followers, however, and they tried to surround her. A few may have had unusual enhancements—chemicals, primarily—but she was already in a poor mood and her temper had been sorely tested.

She cut them down without hesitation.

There was blood, like so rarely happened when the Batman fought. He fought using methods that left criminals alive but in agony, usually sending them to the healers for months at a time. He never killed them, though there were many who deserved it.

She did not care.

No human could see her movements clearly enough to fight back.

She did not know precisely how much time had passed since she lashed out, but there were thoroughly subdued men lying on the floor by the time she finished. She had not been particularly careful with her blows in any case, and many of them were missing fingers or attempting to endure the pain of having new gashes along their limbs and throats.

Miakûl supposed that if they failed to survive her attacks when she was so blatantly holding back, that was their problem.

There was only the Joker remaining.

He almost ran. She dragged her foot back along the concrete, as though drawing a line in soft dirt, and the floor jerked as though it was a rug and a giant had just pulled it. The Joker stumbled, landing on his hands and knees, and Miakûl approached, silent as death.

The Joker began to laugh. "Oh really? Let's see how you deal with the grand finale, you mute lunatic!"

A chorus of beeps—and tiny, blinking red lights—seemed to spring into existence from nowhere. And the Joker produced something entirely new from his jacket, which Miakûl recognized as a bomb with an electronic timer. The screen for the timer was already cracked, perhaps because of her roughhousing, and that meant the screen had frozen ominously with thirty seconds remaining.

The Joker fled, but she was past caring.

She could not move the boy in his current condition. She risked killing him where the Joker attempted to, and she was not skilled enough in the healing arts to be sure if he would not be crippled for life if she miscalculated.

The ground bucked and a chunk of rock shot upwards, demolishing the fluorescent lighting fixtures overhead. With the lights out, the Shadowcloak regained full power once again, and Miakûl tore it from her shoulders. She dropped the cloth over the boy, making sure to cover his eyes, and swept her arms outward, making the ground buckle and surge up and over their heads.

They dropped out of sight, below the warehouse, and Miakûl closed the new ceiling just as the bombs went off and blasted the warehouse into nothing more than red-hot sheet metal and girders.

Jason didn't know what to think.

He hadn't been expecting much, after being caught. Maybe Bruce would have pulled off some miraculous rescue, but after the Joker armed those bombs, it seemed like the end. Actually, he'd known he was damn near doomed the instant the Joker picked up the crowbar and he'd realized that he couldn't get free, but once the bombs came into play…

It had all seemed pointless. That was supposed to be the second Robin's last stand, wasn't it? Only it really wasn't so much of a last stand as a last cringe, and all without getting his hands on the whiteface jackass who'd signed his death warrant.

And now, even though he had a shot at getting out alive, he was almost too badly hurt to move. That was probably an overstatement, actually, since while he could feel his ribs grinding against one another and his eyes were almost swollen shut and there was an unpleasant bubbling sound coming from what might have been his left lung, he was also pretty sure he could at least walk. Badly, and probably not without collapsing after a dozen feet if the throbbing in his ankle was anything to go by, but that could make the difference sometimes.

"You may open your eyes now," said the voice of his rescuer, and Jason did. He actually hadn't really realized that his eyes were closed at all, and opening them gave him a pretty big hint as to why. It was completely and utterly black.

Well, shit.

The ceiling—was there a ceiling or was this woman just fucking with him?—seemed to shake and little bits of dirt cascaded down.

There was a muffled cracking sound and suddenly the tiny—and it really was, and how the hell did they get underground so quickly?—space was lit by a pale green glow-stick. He didn't have a damned clue where she could have gotten one, but if she was anything like Bruce he supposed it just figured. For the first time, Jason actually got a decent look at his rescuer's face.

She was…probably about twenty or close to it, with Arabic features and hair that would probably be black if the lighting didn't suck. The harlequin mask was pushed up on her head like some kind of hat, and she was wearing mostly dark clothes that really looked more like tactical gear than anything. Not exactly what he'd expected from someone who'd made the Joker freeze for about a second.

"Are your injuries critical?" the woman asked, looking up at the ceiling. She ran her fingers along the concrete, apparently looking for some kind of weakness.

Jason blinked at her. They were going to die of suffocation in less than a minute in this hole and she was worried about him bleeding out? Then he nodded, because she stared at him until she got an answer.

She sighed and asked, "Does the Batman have a tracker on you?"

Jason had no idea, but it made sense. He nodded anyway.

"Someone is directly above us. It may be him." She began to trace her fingers in long, looping trails on the concrete. "He should have those throwing weapons, yes?"

She didn't wait for an answer, and Jason was sure he was hallucinating his death or something because the world seemed to do a back-flip. The ground was bubbling and creaking and doing all kinds of weird shit and the next thing he knew, the weird little air pocket had become a six-by-five-by-six sort of cell thing. There was even actual daylight coming in through a couple of cracks.

A batarang dropped to the floor.

While Jason was still wondering how the fuck that had happened—they'd just been what felt like ten feet underground, what the hell—the woman pushed upward on the layer of stone and concrete and steel, and then they were standing in what seemed like an open pit, because all of the sheet metal roofing had been shoved aside.

And, since this was so obviously a delusion that there had to be a happy ending, Bruce was standing right there as the pit sort of shifted upward like an elevator, and that made absolutely no sense.

When Bruce actually hugged him, he was pretty sure something in his brain broke, to go along with his ribs.

But his brain seemed to be okay with that, because that was about when he passed out.

Miakûl had a fairly decent sense of timing, having inherited at least some of her father's sense of humor. She understood most dramatic conventions, and exactly how many would actually work in real life. She also understood the Joker through several disjointed years worth of observations, across multiple worlds and many unhappy scenarios. She had taken copious notes.

She had no doubt that the Joker had specifically arranged for Batman to be just far enough away that he would fail to rescue his charge by the smallest of margins. It suited the clown and what she thought he was planning, and it was only by coincidence that Miakûl had been close enough to do anything at all.

The mystery of the disappearing Robin was, unfortunately, solved.

With that in mind, she kept her hand on the earth above their heads and waited for signs of human movement.

And, perfectly in keeping with what she expected of both the Joker and the Bat, there was the impression of human movement not long after the feeling of heat and pressure. The building had been flattened like a house of cards, but clearly it was cold enough outside that the heat had almost immediately dispersed and made it possible to actually traverse the wreckage.

When the Batman walked closer, nearly over their underground air pocket, Miakûl sent a spur of rock upward to keep him from moving onward. She supposed that he would think Clayface was involved somehow, but she started to use her earth magic to change the game.

Are you the Bat?

There was a pause and a scratching sensation.

Yes

She frowned minutely.

Prove it. Place a throwing weapon [here].

There was the sensation of something making a clanging sound.

She drew the folds of earth up and over the offering, testing it for weaknesses she was certain existed in all worlds with a Batman.

It was real.

I have found your Robin.

Then she shifted the earth overhead, pushing it to the sides and underneath their little hiding place. The ground rumbled and churned as she shifted the weight of the surrounding dirt around.

Take him.

Then, once they were close to the surface, she sent another spur of rock upward and knocked the debris aside without fanfare. Then she opened the earth above them, creating a structure not unlike a sinkhole, and continued to bring more earth underneath them to boost them upward. Looking up, she could see the Bat looking down, and shrugged inwardly. She did not want to have to explain the entire situation, mostly because of a lack of words that would suffice, but it seemed inevitable.

Miakûl walked away as soon as the ground had once again leveled out, taking her cloak as she did so. She slipped the Mask of Wounds back over her face, then focused on examining the wreckage. If the Bat chose to hug the Robin he had nearly lost, then that was not really her business.

"Who are you?" Batman asked, standing and holding the unconscious Robin in his arms. Miakûl, who had tucked the Shadowcloak back around her shoulders and begun testing its powers again, shrugged.

In retrospect, she had never been in such close proximity to any of the costumed humans in any of the iterations of Earth. That could cause problems.

"Who are you?" Batman repeated in a growl.

"Someone whose fate should not concern you." Miakûl responded, looking down at the still-burning shell of a warehouse that had once been a landmark, for her. "Look after your own."

Speaking of…

She pulled a ring off her left hand and held it out. "This will speed his recovery."

Batman, with his arms full, still managed to take the ring from her. She hated to see it go, but it was not as though she needed its powers at the moment. It just happened to represent the investment of more than a little time, effort, money, and murder, and she rather liked its tendency to regenerate missing parts for her. But none of those properties would be necessary in the next few days.

"It is a ring of regeneration." Miakûl explained, "And though I will want it returned, there is no particular need for haste. See that he recovers, and then we shall speak again."

Batman frowned, but his primary concern was his charge and she was a mere afterthought. That would send him away, because when it came down to it, she was less of a problem than his rogues and frankly didn't care enough to start causing her people's brand of trouble (which would have involved burning Gotham down to stave off the sickness). She had a very specific target.

Which she was not going to tell him about.

There would be a reckoning.

Miakûl stepped into the shadows and, once again, walked the lines between worlds.