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Jason lies flat on the rooftop of the apartment complex, sniper scope trained on the meet going down in the adjacent building. It’s a good angle for him to read these goons’ lips, and he’s making mental notes on everything they say — all of it will be helpful if he wants to take over the Gotham drug trade.
He’s only a few days returned to Gotham, still in his information-gathering phase. He has some information already, of course — neither Talia nor his own pride would let him walk in blind — but there are some details it’s easier to dig up in person.
Of course, any and all information gathering depends on the Bats not crashing the meet. Which is exactly what is happening, not that these idiots have noticed the flash of red slipping into their meeting space.
Replacement.
Jason takes several slow, deep breaths. He can't afford to blow this all now. He can't attack the Replacement. Not yet.
...If he can't get anything else from the meet about Black Mask, then at least he can observe the Replacement. See how good his skills are. See if he's worth Jason's colors.
He's not bad, Jason grudgingly admits to himself a few minutes later, watching Robin break cover and go to town on the goons. He's good with that bo staff of his.
Jason is pretty sure Talia mentioned something about Lady Shiva. Maybe that's why there's something niggling at the back of his mind. He doesn't know what else it could be — until Robin fails to block an attack and gets tossed straight through a window.
No one catches him. No one helps him up.
He doesn't have backup. Baby bird is out on patrol by himself.
Idiocy? Arrogance? Jason keeps watching, but there's no tell-tale sweep of a black cape and pointy-eared cowl, no blur of black and blue and escrima swinging in to cover Robin's back as the fight spills out into the alleyway behind the building.
This isn't Jason's problem. It's not Jason's fault Robin went in without backup. It isn't on Jason that Robin is out on his own. Replacement can get himself hurt all he likes.
This way, Jason doesn't have to trouble himself with planning out an attack for the Replacement to get his comeuppance.
Serves him right.
Jason doesn’t leave. He keeps watching the fight.
One of the thugs trying to sneak up behind Robin stoops low, comes back up swinging at Robin's unprotected back with a fucking crowbar—
Metal clatters against the ground; the body follows it a second later.
Jason lifts his finger from the trigger.
Robin whirls, taking in the body dropped with a headshot. With a scowl, Jason kneecaps the idiots trying to take out Robin from behind again.
It would have been easy to kill them, too, but Jason hadn't meant to kill the first guy. He reacted without thinking, and now he's exposed himself. Downing the others but leaving them alive means that Robin will be distracted. He'll need to ziptie them, call the police and ambulances, and that gives Jason time to make his getaway. It also means the fight is fully over and done with; Robin can take of this on his own, and baby bird hasn’t gotten his wings clipped too early.
Not that Jason cares about that latter bit. Of course he doesn't.
Jason disassembles his rifle as quickly as he can. He slings the case over his shoulder and books it away from the Replacement. Away from the offering of protection even he doesn’t understand.
The Bats crash another meet Jason's trying to spy on a few days later, because of course they do. Jason resists the urge to take potshots at Nightwing and Robin, instead forcing himself to think through what bugs he has at his disposal and which other ones he'll need to get his hands on. Obviously, in-person intel is going to be pretty hit and miss. Anything Jason can find, the Bats will be able to find as well. They have too many of the same methods.
It doesn’t matter. He can work with this. Bugs are more convenient, and in the long run, it's probably better if he has recordings anyway. You never know when you might need blackmail.
As for the Bats themselves—
Jason makes a mental note to tune into the Bats' comm channel. Carefully, so they don't catch on that someone's eavesdropping. Maybe it will help him avoid situations like this.
As he had during the previous bust, Jason sticks around to watch Robin and Nightwing in action. They work well together. They've obviously had practice.
It's more than Dick ever did for Jason.
Whatever. Jason doesn't need Dick. He doesn't any of them. They're inefficient and unhelpful and --
There's a thug trying to sneak out the back. He's got a phone held up to his ear, but he's turned away from Jason. Jason's sniper scope can't help him if he can't see the man's lips. Given the way the meet was going, Jason wants to know who this man is talking to, and what they're talking about.
...Hm.
Jason shoots him. The man drops. Jason doesn't have time to pack his rifle properly, so he slings it and its case over his back before rappelling down to street level.
The thug is whimpering, clutching at his leg. As soon as he sees Jason stalking toward him, he lets out a bleat of terror, trying to crawl away. He's not fast enough.
Jason rests one heavy boot on the man's leg, just below the bullet wound. He doesn't press down, not yet, but he isn't overly careful about his shifting weight when he stoops down to grab the dropped phone. The screen is cracked by its fall, but it seems otherwise functional. Jason ends the call the screen is displaying, ignoring the tinny voice on the other end for now; there's no use letting anyone else eavesdrop on this conversation.
He doesn't have much time before Nightwing and/or Robin make it out of the bust. He needs to make this quick.
"So," Jason says, tucking the phone into his jacket pocket. He leans the slightest hint of his weight farther onto the man's leg and lets his helmet's modulator do the rest to scare his victim into pants-shitting terror. "Let's talk about the Schiaparelli family drug trade."
Jason gets the information he needs and he gets out. He slits the thug's throat before he leaves. A gunshot would send the Bats running straight for him, and Jason isn't ready for a face-to-face with his not-siblings. He can't let information about him get back to the Bats yet, either, so a quick and quiet death is what Jason gives.
Jason flips the phone in his hand and heads for his nearest safe house. He has more work to do.
Jason spends several days — and nights — going around the city planting bugs. Along the way, he ends up creating a modified and only somewhat unintentional patrol. It’s half the reason he’s doing this, after all: to protect people. Especially Crime Alley.
He taps into the Bats’ comm line, carefully making sure his own side of it is muted. It’s a lot easier to avoid their patrol routes if he’s listening in on them.
He tries not to do anything too big. Nothing that would alert the Bats that there’s a new player in town.
Well. No more than they’ve already been alerted.
Still. Two chance meetings, and they were ones where the Bats never saw him. It should be fine.
So he patrols Crime Alley while spying on the big and small fish of Gotham, and he gets away with it for most of a week.
He should have known his luck wouldn’t last.
He’s wrapping up for the night, swinging back to his safe house, when he drops down into an alley to stop a mugging happening at knifepoint. Jason casually plucks the knife out of the mugger’s hand; flips it idly into the air, testing its weight.
“You should get out of here,” Jason tells the victim. He nods, eyes wide, and scurries away. Jason turns his attention to the mugger.
The kid.
Jason flips and catches the knife again. Sighs.
“What was the plan here, kid?” he asks.
The kid shakes their head.
“‘No’ isn’t exactly an explanation,” Jason says, but he recognizes the look in the kid’s eyes, recognizes the gauntness of their face. He’s been this kid.
He knows why this kid turned into a mugger. Jason was always lucky that he was so good at being a pickpocket and tire thief. And then, of course —
He bites his tongue. The pain derails his thoughts.
Jason focuses back on the kid.
Part of him wants to keep the knife, to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. Another part of him is brutally aware that it’s all too easy to find a weapon on these streets, that it’s better this kid has a knife than a gun, that he might be taking away the best defense this kid currently has.
He offers the knife back to the kid — along with several wadded fifties he carries with him for situations exactly like this.
“Don’t let me find you threatening someone like that again,” Jason says, before he actually lets go of the knife’s handle.
The kid nods jerkily. They bolt as soon as Jason lets go.
Smart.
Jason should have taken a leaf from their book, because from behind him he hears the light thump of a landing. Easy to miss if you aren’t listening for it — and sometimes even if you are.
Jason has a gun leveled on Nightwing before he’s even fully turned around. Nightwing raises his hands to chest height.
“I just want to talk,” he says.
Jason doesn’t want to listen to anything Nightwing has to say. He can’t exactly shoot Nightwing — all that would do is provoke Batman into ripping the city apart looking for Red Hood. Jason isn’t remotely ready for that.
“I don’t,” Jason tells Nightwing coldly. He grabs a smoke bomb from his pocket and tosses it. He runs before it hits the ground — it won’t buy him much time.
He holsters his gun, grabs the bottom of a fire escape, and hauls himself up.
Robin is waiting for him on the roof.
Jason snarls. He whips around, leaping the gap over the alley he was just in, and he runs. Nightwing and Robin are chasing him, but however well they know Gotham, Jason knows it too, and Crime Alley was his territory first.
It’s still a close call. His only saving grace is that Batman isn’t there, too. He leads them criss-cross over the Alley’s streets. He finally manages to lose them when he threads his way through a narrow maze of chimneys and ducks down into the grocery store on the corner that has rooftop access.
Belatedly he turns his comm back on. Foolishly, he’d turned it off earlier. He’d been headed back to his safe house, and he hadn’t thought he’d needed to keep it on. He won’t fall for that again.
“—lost him, too,” Robin is saying, a tinge of frustration in his voice.
“He’s good,” Nightwing says. “…He’s had training.”
Jason swears mentally. He’d hoped Nightwing wouldn’t have caught onto that yet, not with so little data set in front of him. It’s something that’s hard to miss, though, especially if you’ve been trained by the Bat.
“Training? From whom?” Robin asks.
“That’s the question,” Nightwing says, and, “Let’s go, Robin.”
Jason waits twenty minutes to be sure they’re really gone, checking the sounds over the comm to make sure they match what Jason should hear if the Bats actually moving away.
Why is this all going awry so quickly. He had plans, dammit.
Jason groans and resists the urge to rub at his sudden headache. He just answered his own question, didn’t he?
‘The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang oft agley.’ Cheers to that, Mr. Burns.
Jason always knew he was going to be fighting on multiple fronts. This isn’t how he’d expected it to happen, though.
He’s spending more of his time avoiding Bats than he ever intended to. He’s slowly taking over Crime Alley and edging toward the Bowery, expanding his patrol routes, but his grasp over larger parts of the city is difficult to consolidate, especially since the Bats won’t stop interrupting him.
Jason is good at his job, okay? He’s struggling because Murphy is taking out a personal goddamn vendetta against him.
He may not have done very well at establishing his grip over the greater Gotham area so far, but he’s evidently made enough of a nuisance of himself to gather some attention. Several idiots have banded together to attack him while on patrol.
Every goddamn day Jason is grateful for his armor. The rounds hurt like a bitch, and he’s pretty sure at least one rib is cracked by now, but at least he’s not bleeding. At least he’s not down.
He can handle the situation. He is handling it — and then Batman drops down from the sky.
Fuck’s sake, Jason thinks, spiteful. Nightwing and Robin were bad enough.
Jason is ready to turn tail and run. He knows he can’t do that, not when he’s trying to build his reputation. It’ll be bad enough when it gets out the Bat dropped in on his fight like he was rescuing Jason; it would be worse if people thought he ran from Batman rather than being willing to fight him.
No. He’ll beat all of these thugs and he’ll get away from B and he’ll spin it. Red Hood isn’t working with Batman; he’s just using him for the moment.
Jason can make that work.
Course of action decided, Jason falls back into the rhythm of the fight, focusing on his opponents. Unconsciously, he puts his back to Batman, trusting him to protect it.
It’s too easy to forget himself. Too easy to spin around once he’s finished his fight, and step halfway into B’s space to deal with one of his enemies while B’s busy—
Jason knocks the man out, and only then does he freeze, his actions catching up with him.
He’s not Robin anymore. It’s not his job to watch Batman’s back, nor is it Batman’s job to watch his.
Jason forgot. For a moment, he forgot.
Saving face doesn’t matter. He’ll scare them all into line through fear alone if he has to. He can’t deal with Batman right now.
He can’t face the ghost of himself.
This time, Jason doesn’t stop himself from running away.
Jason isn’t hiding from Batman. He’d deemed it a better use of his time and resources to do a bit of investigating and to lie low while doing it. It’s not hiding.
It’s also not enough to save him.
Jason growls under his breath. He stalks past Nightwing and Robin, pulling up the information he needs and copying it to a flash drive.
He doesn’t know what idiots decided tying two Bats up in the middle of their information center was a good idea. Then again, Jason hasn’t been impressed by much of what this gang has been doing — except for how quickly their drugs work, and how they apparently managed to catch Big and Baby Bird at all.
…Those two things are probably connected.
Jason should go. Right now. Bats are good at slipping out of ties, and they’ll be fine without him.
Except the building is going to blow just over ten minutes. Except they’ve been drugged. Except Jason is right here.
He hopes he doesn’t regret this.
Jason cuts through the ties binding Robin’s hands together. He only does it for Robin — Jason can take him easily if he decides to attack, or the Replacement can use his bird-a-rangs to cut through Nightwing’s bonds. Jason needs to keep them distracted while he makes his escape.
“Thanks,” Robin says, cautious. Jason can tell his eyes never leave him, even as he starts sawing at the ties binding his legs together.
Jason doesn’t want the Replacement’s thanks.
“The building’s going up in about eight minutes,” he says flatly.
Jason leaves.
At least he has the information he needs. Most of the members of that drug-running crew have even already been dealt with by this excursion. Most of their stockpile of drugs, too.
That does make Jason feel better.
Nightwing finds Jason on patrol the next night. Jason is in the middle of something, or he would already be gone.
As soon as the fight is over, he runs for it.
“You’ll have to talk to us at some point, Hood!” Nightwing calls to his retreating back, not making any move to follow.
No, I don’t, Jason thinks mutinously.
It keeps happening. For such a big city, Gotham can be very small sometimes.
Annoyingly, Nightwing keeps trying to talk to him. Jason always cuts and runs as quickly as he can when these encounters happen, but Dick Grayson won’t. Shut. Up. Even if they’re in the middle of a fight. Especially then.
Jason isn’t killing as many people. Not because he’s rethought his approach, but because he doesn’t get a chance with all the Bats around, messing with his business.
His thoughts during that fight with Batman were too optimistic. Maybe he would have been able to control the spin a bit better if it didn’t look like he kept teaming up with the Bats — and there are plenty of witnesses now, pointing fingers at him and naming him another vigilante.
It’s fucking infuriating.
Jason doesn’t even know what the Bats want. If this is some kind of trap — and it has to be — then they’re good at only talking about it off comms. They use Nightwing and Robin the most, likely to lull Jason into a false sense of security, but they never do all that much to try to track him down. Batman…
Batman stays out of it.
At this rate, Jason is never going to be able to kill the Joker.
“Hood,” Batman says. It’s not quite the growl Jason was expecting.
Jason stands firm where he is. By the way Batman addresses him, Jason is at least assured B doesn’t know who he is under the mask yet.
That’s good. Maybe everything else is in total disarray, but at least Jason has managed to keep that secret.
He did think Batman would be a little angrier with him. “Not killing as many people” isn’t the same as “not killing anyone.”
Jason’s been trying to figure out for a while now why Batman hasn’t chased him down. Why he’s been staying out of it, and leaving it to Nightwing and Robin instead. Maybe this is finally a chance to puzzle that out.
Batman’s here now, and he can’t exactly ignore what Jason’s doing. Jason can’t ignore him either, no matter how unprepared he still feels.
“Batman,” Jason responds.
“What are you doing.” It’s barely a question.
Jason tilts his head. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
It’s pretty obvious, after all.
“You’re killing people in my city,” Batman says.
And — yeah. He is. He’s killed a few people tonight. That’s minor compared to the whole of the situation, which is really what Jason thought B would comment on first. But of course the killing is what Batman would narrow in on.
Jason means to say something about Batman’s methods. He means to poke at him about his code. What comes out instead is:
“Crime Alley isn’t your city.”
“Gotham is—”
“No,” Jason cuts him off. “Crime Alley isn’t your city. You’ve never given a damn about it before. Don’t pretend like you do now just ‘cause someone’s finally cleaning it up of scum the way you should have a decade ago.”
A decade ago, Jason was an Alley kid — not living on its streets, not yet, but he’d only been a year or two away from it. A decade ago, it was a surprise to find the Batmobile parked in the Alley. A decade ago, a lot of things were different, and the Alley hasn’t gotten any better since then.
Jason is making it change now.
“Black Mask doesn’t operate in Crime Alley,” Batman says.
Jason snorts. “Just ‘cause his high rise is in the Diamond District doesn’t mean he and his goons ain’t running roughshod over the Alley.” Mask’s subtle about it, sure, but he’s there. He’s the one controlling the whole of the drug trade — everyone kicks up to him.
Jason hasn’t been successful at taking over, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t aware of precisely how much of the Alley is under Mask’s thumb.
Given his failures at becoming a drug lord, Jason decided to take a different route. Which is why he’s robbing Black Mask. It had been easy to intercept the kryptonite last week — he hadn’t wanted Blackie to get his hands on that anyway, but it served a double purpose of pissing him off.
Now Jason is in the middle of stealing Mask’s helicopter full of ammo. Or he would be, if Batman hadn’t decided to show up.
Things are finally progressing — on the Black Mask front, if nothing else. He hasn’t been able to take over the drug trade according to the original plan, so really he’s just been going around doing his best to piss off Black Mask. It will all end the same.
He’s not exactly lying to Batman, either. He has ulterior motives, sure, but Mask is a threat to the Alley. Jason is dealing with it.
As he’s busy pointing out to Batman.
The night ends in a chase. Jason doesn’t get to keep any of Mask’s goodies, but Mask doesn’t get them either. B chases him around Gotham, and Nightwing joins in at one point. Jason can’t help but notice Nightwing’s efforts seem a little half-hearted.
Jason has an escape route, though. Just because he’d hoped Batman wouldn’t interfere doesn’t mean he’d counted on that. No one even gets hurt.
“Stay out of my city, B!” Jason shouts over the train. Then he opens the throttle on his bike and rockets away.
Jason is definitely doing a good job making Black Mask mad if he’s sending the Fearsome Hand of Four after him.
Jason doesn’t care about anything else, he is going to kill Captain Nazi. As soon as Batman gets out of his way.
“He’s literally a Nazi,” Jason says. “It’s in his name.”
“No,” Batman says.
The conversation probably would have devolved into a screaming match if someone behind Batman didn’t move.
That cyborg Nazi motherfucker is—
“Down!” Jason shouts, bodily shoving Batman out of the way. The hit Jason takes tosses him several feet away. He lands on his back. He can’t breathe, and he’s on his back, there’s smoke everyone, someone is approaching him, looming over him—
Jason comes back to himself halfway across the city from the fight. He doesn’t know how he got away. All he knows is his chest is screaming at him, and absent an absolutely iron grip on his thoughts, he can hear a faint echo of laughter.
Everything is finally, finally working out how it’s supposed to. Black Mask is in a rage. He’s going to break the Joker out of Arkham any day now.
It’s anticipation that has Jason’s stomach knotted in a hard ball. Anticipation that makes him continuously sweep Crime Alley’s streets, making sure everyone is still safe — or as safe as you can be in the Alley. It’s anticipation that makes his hands shake and his breathing so ragged when he wakes up from the nightmares.
Jason can’t stand the waiting, so he keeps going out. He keeps the Alley under control.
He hears the rumors of an arms smuggling group trying to set up in Robbinsville.
Jason’s eyes narrow beneath his helmet. That’s too close to his territory; they are not getting into the Alley.
The group is not terribly subtle. It’s easy to track them down. Easy to break into their warehouse and observe them. Suspiciously easy, in fact — enough that he’s so focused on the possibility of this being a trap that he forgets to watch his back.
“That’s a lot of guns down there,” Nightwing observes casually.
Jason nearly draws one of his own guns on him.
“The hell are you doing here?” he hisses instead.
Jason can’t see Nightwing’s eyebrows beneath the domino, but he’s pretty sure one is being arched incredulously at him.
“Same thing you are,” Nightwing says. He gestures at the smugglers below. “Crime.” He gestures at himself. “Vigilante.”
“I’m not a—” Jason starts to protest.
“Aren’t you?” Nightwing cuts him off.
Something about that stings. “Stop deluding yourself about me, Nightwing,” he spits.
“I don’t think I am,” Nightwing says, soft.
“Stay out of my way,” Jason says. He swings down to the lower levels; he’s seen enough, and he needs the escape from Nightwing.
By now he should know better than to go into fights too angry. It’s distracting, usually at all the wrong moments. Jason has trained to be able to do it, but it’s always a balancing act, one where it’s too easy to tip over one edge or the other.
Jason isn’t just angry. He’s unsettled.
I don’t think I am.
Who the hell does Nightwing think he is, saying that?
Jason shoots out someone’s kneecap, ducks under the wild swing of one idiot with a knife and pistol whips them. They fall, unconscious. One less enemy to worry about.
Nightwing doesn’t know Jason. He never did.
That apparently doesn’t stop Nightwing from following him into the fight. Jason is peripherally aware of the vigilante behind him, taking down other members of the group with his escrima. The two of them are doing a good job at cutting down the members of this little group.
Why the hell does Nightwing keep trying to talk to him. Why does he act like he cares—?
A heavy weight slams against him, bowling Jason over and almost making him miss the sound of the gun firing. He rolls with the movement, popping up to his feet and firing back at the shooter automatically. The shooter was the last of their opponents in the warehouse; everyone else is either unconscious or, like the shooter, dead.
Only once the threat is taken care of does he see Nightwing.
No.
Jason crashes to his knees beside Nightwing. He hastily pulls bandages out of his pockets, layering them over Nightwing's wounds. He shrugs out of his jacket, bundles it up, and uses it to press down on Nightwing's stomach. He frees one hands momentarily to activate his comm, making sure he’s no longer muted.
"This is Red Hood to all points," he says. "Nightwing is down. We're at the docks in Robbinsville, southeast of Sheldon Park. You need to get here now."
"Oracle can't — monitor every channel," Nightwing gasps out.
"Which is why I'm using your stupid channel," Jason spits at him. He's been listening in on the Bats for weeks now; he knows they're still using this comm channel. It's the same one they used when Jason was Robin; that’s why Jason was able to find it so easily. Jason tries to ignore the fear when he doesn't get a response. He snarls into the comm again. "Goddammit, Nightwing is down. Batman, Robin, whoever, get here."
No response.
"Why...?" Nightwing starts.
"Save your breath," Jason says.
Nightwing ignores him, because of course he does. "Why...have you been helping us? This whole time. If you say…you’re not a vigilante. Shouldn’t care ‘bout us.”
Jason doesn't let himself flinch. Not when letting up pressure means Nightwing will bleed out all that much faster.
"I haven't been helping you," Jason says.
"Have too," Nightwing says.
Jason is not going to get drawn into an argument with someone using the logic of a five-year-old. He changes tacks. "Ever think it's none of your business?"
“’S my family," Nightwing says. His voice is getting quieter. "Makes it...my business."
"Maybe I want the satisfaction of killing you all myself," Jason says. The words are hollow as they come out. Jason can't even convince himself of what he's saying.
"Had...chances," Nightwing argues, barely audible now. He's fast losing his grip on consciousness. "Think you're...not a villain. You're…like us. A good person."
"I'm not," Jason says. His voice catches. This is worse than Nightwing calling him a vigilante instead of a villain. This is Nightwing saying — this is Nightwing believing that he isn’t a monster. A monster that he spent years transforming himself into, all for a purpose and a plan that he keeps wavering on.
The vocoder saves him, keeping his voice even as he speaks.
It doesn’t matter. Nightwing doesn't respond. He doesn't argue.
"Nightwing," Jason prompts.
Nothing.
"Nightwing, goddammit. Nightwing! You have to wake up." Jason's voice rises with his steadily growing panic. He presses down harder, and listens desperately for the sound of the Batmobile's approach.
"Nightwing, Batman's on his way," Jason tells him. "You have to stay awake until he gets here. He's coming."
B has to be on his way. There's no way he isn't. They heard his message, they did, he and Robin are on the way—
“Wing, come on. Please. Please.”
There's still nothing. Just another Robin, bleeding his life away in a lonely warehouse.
No. No, this can't happen.
Not again.
No more dead Robins.
"You are not dying on me, you hear that?" Jason spits at Nightwing. His heart is pounding in his ears. "I'm not going to your funeral, Dick. You didn't go to mine, so don't you dare make me go to yours.”
How long has it been? How much longer can Jason afford to wait? He can’t exactly call an ambulance — though if that’s the only way to save Nightwing, he’ll do it. He will.
If he does, it will bring everything crashing down. They’ll take Nightwing’s mask, and Gotham will know.
He might not have a choice—
A second pair of hands suddenly join his. Small, but surprisingly forceful. The Replacement is pale under his mask as he helps keep pressure. Batman looms over them both.
Jason hates himself for it, but there's a part of him — a large part — that relaxes at the sight of him. Everything is going to be okay. Batman is here.
Of course he made it in time for Dickiebird, the Pit murmurs in the back of his mind. Jason tells it to shut up.
"Two gunshot wounds," Jason reports. It's automatic to fill Batman in. They're partners, and this is the difference between life and death for Nightwing. "This jackass took them for me. He lost consciousness about two and a half minutes ago. Probably the blood loss."
"Can he be moved." Batman's voice is clipped as he asks that flat question.
There's only one answer to that. "He'll die if we don't."
Batman immediately stoops, getting his arms under Nightwing's limp body. Jason nods, and he lifts, careful that Jason's hands aren't knocked loose. Robin backs off as they stand in tandem.
It's only once they make their way to the Batmobile that Jason realizes the strangeness of this all. Batman should have sent Jason away, or Jason should have left. They shouldn't trust him like this.
You're…like us. A good person.
He's not. He's really not. He'd told Nightwing that, and he'd known Nightwing would argue with him if he had the chance, and—
Jason could leave now. Nightwing is in the Bats' hands now.
Jason doesn't back off.
The manor is still so far away. Doc Thompkins is gone from the city, abandoning it after the latest dead Robin. Jason can't let it become three out of four. Not when there's anything he can do to prevent that.
He doesn't wait for Batman to either give him permission or send him away. He gets in the Batmobile along with Nightwing. Robin gets in beside him.
"Drive, old man," Jason says through gritted teeth.
Batman's stride falters very briefly. He recovers, sliding himself into the driver's seat and flooring it away from the docks.
Nightwing's head rests in Robin's lap the whole way to Bristol. Jason watches Nightwing's face, tracking the pallor of it.
B always kept — keeps, surely — pints of their blood in the Cave, plus additional units from the hospital. Depending on how much blood Nightwing has lost, depending on how recently they've had to use their blood stores, there should be enough. Bruce is paranoid like that. There's going to be enough.
Fortunately, even if there isn't, Jason is O-. He can donate.
Jason doesn't dare lift his hands long enough to check Nightwing's pulse. Robin does it for him, gloved fingers resting against Nightwing's neck the whole drive. He would let Batman know if Nightwing dipped too far into danger.
Nightwing isn't going to die. He can't die.
He can't do that saving Jason from his own mistakes.
"You stupid bastard," someone says. It takes Jason a moment to realize it's him. "You goddamn idiot."
Finally, finally, they arrive at the Cave. Alfred is there waiting; he’s already hooking Nightwing up to blood as soon as Jason and Batman get him onto a gurney. And then—
Then there’s nothing else Jason can do. His expertise is firearms, explosives, poisons.
All ways you kill people, not ways you save them.
His gloves are soaked with Dick’s blood. Jason looks down at them for a long moment before slowly, mechanically heading toward the showers.
It’s hard to get the gloves off. His hands are trembling almost too much to manage it, but he does it in the end. The water from the sink is near scalding hot when he sticks his hands under the faucet and starts scrubbing himself clean.
Dick’s blood is literally on his hands. Jason’s red helmet — red like blood, red like Robin — stares back at him from the mirror, and Jason can’t take it. He scrambles to remove the helmet, letting it drop to the ground.
Jason didn’t wear his domino mask when he went out tonight. He meets his eyes in the mirror. Green, so green now, because Talia tossed him in a Pit. Would she ever be willing to do the same for Dick if he d—?
Blood wells up across Jason’s knuckles; he ground several glass splinters into them when he punched his reflection.
That was foolish, Talia’s voice remarks in his head.
Jason doesn’t look at the broken mirror again. He just leaves, heading back toward the med bay. He stops before he gets halfway there, sinks down to sit crosslegged on the training mats.
If he goes to the med-bay, it’s all real again. He’ll have to wait there with the Replacement and Bruce until they find out if Dick—
Jason draws his knees up to his chest. Crosses his arms over the top of them and buries his face there. Tries to calm his swirling thoughts.
It doesn’t work.
He doesn’t know how long it’s been before he hears Batman’s approach, then the rustle of movement that means B is either crouching or sitting next to him. He’s aware enough to know that it’s strange — that Bruce waited so long, that he’s settled himself down in a less defensible position, that he let Jason hear him at all.
Jason took off his helmet. As soon as he looks up, it will all be over. All his plans, destroyed.
It was over the moment you shot a man to save the Replacement’s life, a part of his mind points out to him. Not the Pit. Maybe the part of him that used to be Robin. The part that, for all it raged, couldn’t kill Bruce when he had the chance.
Jason doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He assumes Batman is going to arrest him. No matter what Nightwing says — Jason isn’t a good person. He’s not a vigilante.
He’s a killer in Batman’s city. This only ends one way.
He just has to hope it will be Blackgate instead of Arkham.
All Jason wants is one last bit of knowledge. One reassurance.
He unsticks his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth. He asks the question he sat down here to avoid answering in the first place.
“Is Dick going to be all right?”
His voice is smaller than he means it to be, especially given it’s muffled by the way he’s curled in on himself. He isn’t sure if he’ll be able to ask a second time. He has to hope B heard him.
Batman doesn’t need him to ask again.
“You kept him stable until we could get him back to the Cave,” he says. “Alfred’s still working on him, but — yes. He’s going to be okay.”
Jason can’t stop the tears. They sting as they fall, and he shifts, uncurling so he can rub them away. He remembers too late the damage he did to his hand. He remembers too late he didn’t want to let B see his face.
He braces himself. Watches B out of the corner of his eyes with tear-blurred vision.
“Oh, Jay-lad,” Bruce says. His cowl is down as he sits next to Jason. He doesn’t sound surprised as he says it. Just sad. Just concerned, as he draws Jason’s right hand carefully into his lap, examining the injuries.
Jason…doesn’t know what to do. None of this was ever in the plans. None of it ever ended in Bruce next to him, watching him with tender eyes, like Jason isn’t a killer. Like Jason hasn’t spent weeks — years — spitting in the face of everything B fights for and everything B taught him.
Bruce reaches into his belt pouch. Pulls out a tiny first aid kit before Jason can tense, and starts delicately pulling the mirror-glass splinters out with a tiny pair of tweezers.
Batman, for all he didn’t respond, took Hood’s word over the comms that Nightwing was down. He didn’t argue about Hood coming with them to the Cave. He hadn’t bothered to blindfold Hood, even when B is the most paranoid bastard Jason has ever met. All of which means…
Jason wets his lips. “When did you know?”
“That you knew us somehow? Early on,” Bruce says, not looking up from his task. “You weren’t exactly subtle. As for the rest—” He sighs. “Nightwing was on a line with Oracle the whole time, and then after you called us, you kept your comm active, too.”
They were listening the whole time. They’d heard the whole conversation he had with Nightwing, and Jason had said — what? What was so incriminating?
“There are a limited number of funerals that Dick hasn’t been present at,” Bruce says.
And that was enough for Bruce to leap to ‘my first dead Robin is alive’? Jason stares at him incredulously.
“That’s a leap.”
“Did you think you could keep it from me forever?” Bruce asks mildly. “You’re my son, Jay-lad. I know you.”
Jason pulls his hand back sharply, even though Bruce wasn’t done cleaning the scrapes yet.
“You knew me,” Jason corrects.
“That doesn’t stop you from being my son,” Bruce says. He doesn’t make any move to subdue Jason, or cuff him, or — anything. All he does is sit there.
“I’m not your son,” Jason says, a knee-jerk reaction. “I’m no one’s son. I—”
He doesn’t know where the rest of that sentence is going to go. Any possibilities dry up at the faint hurt that splashes across Bruce’s face at his words.
Jason doesn’t understand it. B replaced him quickly enough, after all, and Jason wasn’t only trying to provoke Bruce. He’d meant it when he said Bruce didn’t know him any more.
He doesn’t know what Jason has done. He doesn’t know the scope of it.
“I’ve killed people, B,” Jason says quietly. He stares down at his hands, because he can’t bear to see Bruce’s face as he confesses. He can see specks of blood still ground under his fingernails where it had soaked through his gloves; he must have missed it earlier while washing up.
The requisite joke about ‘blood on his hands’ still isn’t funny.
“I’ve killed a lot of people,” Jason continues. “Not just in Gotham. I — I had a plan. I did all of this to—to—”
To make the Bats and Black Mask and the Joker angry. To get them all to a place where Jason could force Batman to make a choice. To finally end Jason’s nightmare.
He kept getting derailed from his master plan, but he’d tried to stick to it. He’d accomplished it, mostly. He’d made Black Mask furious. He’d waved the name ‘Red Hood’ out there like a taunt for the Joker to leap on.
He’d — lead the Bats on merry chases throughout Gotham.
He’d killed people in front of them.
And Nightwing still tried to call him a vigilante.
“All of this,” Bruce echoes, when Jason doesn’t finish. “Including saving your brothers — and me — multiple times?”
Jason’s head jerks up. Bruce doesn’t sound mad, or condemning, and he doesn’t look it either. He seems — well, mostly he seems old. Older than he should be, even given the years Jason was gone.
He also seems weirdly…fond as he says that.
“That wasn’t exactly in the plan,” Jason admits.
“But you did it anyway,” Bruce says.
“Don’t — don’t say that like it means something,” Jason protests.
“Doesn’t it?”
I’m not a vigilante, Jason had tried to say in that warehouse.
Aren’t you? Nightwing had asked.
“No, it — I — ” Jason clutches at his head. The Pit bubbles in the back of his mind, and it hurts. Why won’t Nightwing and Bruce just act the way they’re supposed to?
What isn’t Bruce mad at Jason? Why won’t he arrest him? Why won’t he kill the Joker?
Why won’t he save Jason?
Jason comes back to himself curled against Batman’s armor. One gauntleted hand is running through Jason’s hair. It feels like warm memories from years ago: Jason, awake because of nightmares or illness, and Bruce, settling down on the couch next to him; the two of them watching movies together as Jason leaned further and further into Bruce, relaxing into that gentle touch, until he eventually fell asleep.
It feels exactly the same.
It feels like home.
Jason wasn’t supposed to miss this. He wasn’t supposed to miss Bruce and Alfred and even Dick.
None of this was supposed to happen.
Jason shouldn’t have died, either, but that never stopped the universe. He’s just had to learn to roll with the punches.
It’s too tempting to roll with this one. Jason’s resolve is splintering. Hard as he’d fought against it, it’s been breaking since he stepped foot in Gotham again.
“Jason,” Bruce says. “It’s okay.”
Jason wants to believe him. He wants so badly to believe him.
“’s not,” he says. It seems like all he does these days is disagree with what family members tell him.
“It will be,” Bruce says. “We can fix this.” His voice breaks. “Jay, you’re back. We can fix anything. You’re here.”
You’re here.
Jason lets those words settle into his core.
It should sound like a platitude. Like Nightwing’s blind faith in him, the faith that he still doesn’t understand.
It doesn’t.
It sounds like —
It sounds like welcome home.
It sounds like I missed you.
It sounds like everything Jason has been aching for over the past few years. Everything that had been swamped out by the rage and betrayal — except now he’s been emptied out of those, and all that’s left to fill him is this offering.
You’re here.
It will be okay.
Jason doesn’t know if he believes Bruce yet.
But…he supposes he’s willing to stick around and see.
“…I’m here,” Jason says.