The neon sign of Devil May Cry flickered erratically as Tony pushed through the front door, its red glow casting uneven shadows across the cluttered shop. He dropped his guitar case by the door with a heavy thud, not bothering to be gentle with Rebellion tonight. Every muscle in his body ached from the extended Devil Trigger at Arkham, and his head pounded with the lingering echo of demonic energy.
"Home sweet home," he muttered, flipping on the lights and surveying his domain. Pizza boxes still littered the coffee table from three days ago, a half-empty bottle of whiskey sat open on his desk, and somewhere in the corner, his jukebox hummed quietly to itself like a mechanical pet.
Tony grabbed the whiskey and took a long pull straight from the bottle. The burn felt good, grounding him back in his human skin after hours of supernatural chaos. He collapsed into his desk chair, boots propped up, and stared at the wall where his weapons were mounted. Each one had a story, most of them involving things trying to kill him.
Blood pact. The words kept circling in his mind like vultures. His father had made some kind of deal with Trigon, sealed in blood, and now Tony was apparently the collateral.
"Thanks for that inheritance, old man," he said to the empty room. "Really thoughtful of you."
Memory tugged at him, unbidden and unwelcome. He was seven years old again, sitting at the kitchen table while his mother packed their things with frantic efficiency. Her hands shook as she folded clothes, stuffing them into suitcases with no regard for organization.
"Mama, where's Papa?" young Tony had asked, swinging his legs from the chair.
Eva paused, her beautiful face tight with fear and something else. Guilt, maybe. "Papa... Papa had to go away for a while, baby. He's protecting us."
"From what?"
She knelt beside his chair, taking his small hands in hers. Even then, he'd been unusually strong for a child, but her grip was firm, desperate. "From his past, Tony. From choices he made before you were born. Before he knew what love really meant."
"Is he coming back?"
Eva's smile had been forced, brittle around the edges. "I don't know, sweetheart. But I promise you, no matter what happens, you're going to be strong. Stronger than him. Stronger than me. You're going to choose your own path."
That conversation had happened just two weeks before the demons came for them. Two weeks before his mother's blood painted their living room walls and his world ended in screaming and shadow.
Tony took another drink, pushing the memory down where it belonged. Buried. Forgotten. Useless.
A soft chime from the front door announced a visitor. Tony didn't look up, assuming it was Nico with more analysis results or maybe one of the Young Justice kids checking on him.
"We're closed," he called out. "Come back during business hours. Or don't. I'm not picky."
"Your security system is inadequate."
Tony's head snapped up. Batman stood in his shop, cape pooling around him like spilled ink, cowl casting his face in impenetrable shadow. The Dark Knight moved silently deeper into the space, examining Tony's weapon collection with professional interest.
"How the hell did you get in here?" Tony demanded, hand instinctively moving toward Ivory. "I've got seventeen different alarm systems, most of them supernatural."
"Eighteen," Batman corrected, not looking at him. "You missed the dimensional monitoring ward hidden behind your jukebox. Impressive work, but the power source is unstable."
Tony blinked. "You... how do you even know about dimensional wards?"
"I make it my business to understand threats to Gotham," Batman replied, turning to face him. "Including the ones that invite themselves in."
"Excuse me?" Tony stood, anger flaring. "I didn't invite myself anywhere. You people came to me, remember? Your little bird brigade needed help with demons."
"And now Arkham Asylum is a crater, three more people are dead, and we're no closer to stopping Trigon than we were a week ago."
"Arkham's not a crater, it's just... structurally compromised," Tony protested. "And those people were already dead when we got there. Belasko doesn't leave survivors."
Batman stepped closer, and Tony caught a whiff of something metallic. Blood. Not his own.
"You've been bleeding," Tony observed, noticing a tear in Batman's gauntlet. "What happened after I left?"
"Cleanup. Making sure no demonic corruption spread to the surrounding area." Batman's voice carried exhaustion beneath its usual gravelly authority. "Three more bodies showed signs of partial transformation. GCPD had to establish a quarantine zone."
"Welcome to my world," Tony said grimly. "Demonic energy is like radiation. It spreads, mutates, corrupts everything it touches. That's why I work alone."
"But you're not alone anymore." Batman moved to the desk, examining the scattered papers and empty bottles with disapproving silence. "Whether you like it or not, you're part of this now. Part of Gotham's defense network."
Tony laughed, the sound bitter. "Defense network? Is that what you call it? I hunt demons because they killed my mother. Everything else is just... side effects."
"Your mother, Eva Redgrave. Born Eva Delacroix in New Orleans, 1965. Moved to Gotham in 1988 under suspicious circumstances. No record of Tony Redgrave's birth in any hospital database."
The whiskey bottle slipped from Tony's fingers, hitting the floor with a sharp crack. Amber liquid spread across the worn wood, but he barely noticed. His entire focus narrowed to the man in the cape who had just casually violated every privacy he'd ever managed to maintain.
"What did you just say?" Tony's voice dropped to a whisper, dangerous and low.
"I said I've been investigating your background," Batman continued, apparently oblivious to the shift in atmosphere. "Eva Delacroix had connections to occult practitioners in Louisiana. She fled north after several practitioners in her circle died under mysterious circumstances. Death certificates list cause of death as 'animal attacks,' but the wound patterns suggest something else."
"Stop." Tony's hands clenched into fists. "Stop talking. Right now."
"You appeared in Gotham fourteen months ago. No background, no history, no identification beyond forged documents. The shop lease was paid in cash, utilities established under false credentials. You're a ghost, Redgrave."
"I said stop."
"But here's what's interesting," Batman pressed on, apparently determined to finish his recitation. "Every record of Eva Delacroix stops abruptly in 1995. No death certificate, no missing person report, nothing. It's as if she simply vanished from existence. Along with her son."
Something snapped inside Tony's chest. The careful control he maintained, the barriers between his human and demonic sides, cracked like ice under pressure. Power leaked through, red energy crackling around his clenched fists.
"You want to know about my background?" Tony stepped forward, and Batman tensed, hand moving toward his utility belt. "Let me return the favor, Bruce."
Batman froze. For the first time since entering the shop, uncertainty flickered across his posture.
"Bruce Thomas Wayne," Tony continued, his voice gaining inhuman harmonics as power built within him. "Born 1972. Parents Thomas and Martha Wayne, murdered June 26, 1981, in Crime Alley. Killer: Joe Chill, small-time criminal hired by Carmine Falcone on orders from the Court of Owls."
"How do you..." Batman started, but Tony cut him off.
"Oh, we're just getting started. You disappeared from Gotham for seven years, 1993 to 2000. Official story? World travel, finding yourself. Reality? Training with the League of Assassins under Ra's al Ghul. You broke their code when you refused to execute a criminal. Ra's still considers you a son, by the way. Creepy, but hey, family's complicated."
Batman's hand had found something in his belt, some kind of device or weapon, but he hadn't drawn it yet.
"Your butler Alfred Pennyworth," Tony pressed on relentlessly, "real name Alfred Thaddeus Crane Pennyworth. Former British Intelligence, SAS, discharged after a mission in Hong Kong went sideways. Six confirmed kills, probably more he won't admit to. Makes a hell of a tea service, though."
"Stop," Batman growled, the single word carrying all the menace that had terrorized Gotham's criminals for years.
"Dick Grayson. Tim Drake. Jason Todd." Tony smiled, and it wasn't entirely human anymore. "Want me to keep going? Because I've got all night, and my memory's really good when it comes to secrets people think they've buried."
"How?" Batman's voice was strained, control slipping for the first time Tony had ever witnessed.
"Same way you found mine," Tony replied, letting the demonic energy recede slightly. "I'm very good at digging up information people don't want found. Difference is, I don't go around throwing other people's trauma in their faces."
Silence stretched between them, heavy with tension and unspoken threats. Batman's cowled face revealed nothing, but his body language screamed frustrated anger.
"My mother died when I was seven years old," Tony said finally, his voice human again but carrying sharp edges. "She was murdered by demons sent specifically to kill her and anyone with her blood. I've spent twenty years hunting the things that destroyed my family. That's my background. That's my motivation. That's all you need to know."
"The blood pact..."
"Is my problem." Tony's eyes flashed red briefly. "Not yours. Not the League's. Mine."
Batman straightened, whatever device he'd been reaching for forgotten. "Trigon is everyone's problem. If he breaks through..."
"Then I'll stop him," Tony interrupted. "Like my father stopped him before. Like I've been stopping demons my entire adult life. This isn't my first apocalypse, Bruce."
"You can't do it alone."
"Watch me."
Batman studied him for a long moment, and Tony had the uncomfortable sensation of being dissected with surgical precision. The Dark Knight's analytical mind was clearly working, cataloguing weaknesses, assessing threats, planning contingencies.
"You're afraid," Batman said finally.
Tony barked a laugh. "Of Trigon? Of demons? I've been fighting them since..."
"Of us," Batman corrected. "Of letting people get close. Of having something to lose again."
The observation hit closer to home than Tony cared to admit. He turned away, ostensibly to clean up the spilled whiskey, but really to break eye contact with those unblinking white lenses.
"Analysis time's over, Doc," he said, grabbing a towel from behind his desk. "You've got what you came for. Background check complete. Now get the hell out of my shop."
"This isn't over," Batman warned, moving toward the door. "Trigon won't stop with you. When he comes for Gotham, when he comes for Earth, you'll need allies."
"Maybe," Tony conceded, not looking up from his cleaning. "But they'll be allies I choose. Not ones who break into my home and violate my privacy because they're paranoid control freaks."
Batman paused at the door. "The ward behind your jukebox. The power source. It's drawing energy from the dimensional breach at the warehouse. When that breach fully collapses, your security system will fail."
Tony glanced up, surprised by the genuine warning in Batman's tone.
"Fix it," Batman continued. "Or the next visitors you get might not be as polite as I was."
With that, he was gone, cape swirling dramatically as he disappeared into Gotham's perpetual night. Tony stood in the sudden silence, broken whiskey bottle forgotten in his hands.
"Polite," he muttered. "Right. That's what we're calling breaking and entering now."
But beneath his anger, a cold realization settled in his gut. Batman was right about the ward. Tony could feel it now that his attention was focused on it, the subtle wrongness in the energy flow. The warehouse breach had been feeding his security system, and when Nico's device fully sealed it...
His shop would be defenseless. Against demons, against cultists, against anyone else who might come looking for Sparda's son.
Tony finished cleaning up the whiskey, his mind already working on solutions. He'd reinforced his defenses before; he could do it again. He'd survived twenty years without Batman's help, without anyone's help.
But as he worked, Eva's voice echoed in his memory: You're going to be strong. Stronger than him. Stronger than me. You're going to choose your own path.
Maybe choosing his own path didn't have to mean walking it alone. Maybe his mother had been trying to tell him something else entirely.
Tony pushed the thought away. Philosophy was for people who had time to waste. He had wards to repair, weapons to maintain, and a blood debt to figure out how to break.
Just another night in paradise, right?