Chapter Text
When Robin’s distress beacon lights up Bruce tries to keep his calm.
(Keyword being “try”.)
It could be a malfunction (unlikely) or an accident (even less likely) but Nightwing will have gotten the notification, too. So Bruce refuses to think too hard about why Robin— who should for all accounts be safe at the manor— would be in a tight enough spot to light the beacon.
So, Bruce takes a deep breath and tunes back into Diana’s musings of possible strategies and Clark’s occasional questions.
The distraction works just fine and Bruce is even able to contribute his own reservations about some particularly daring moves when his emergency comm line clicks open and Dick’s voice comes through in a frenzied panic.
Bruce doesn’t bother to excuse himself from his teammates when he stands in one smooth motion and strides out into the corridor.
“Nightwing, report!” he barks down the line, perhaps more harshly than he intends, but it does the trick and his oldest takes a shaking breath.
“Robin’s distress beacon,” Dick begins, sounding pained and oh so young “B it… it leads to Gotham harbor. It’s- it’s inside the bay.”
Bruce’s vision tilts dangerously.
No.
No, not again. Not again.
“I’m on my way.”
——
“How the fuck can you win with a one!? That makes no sense!”
Tim grins and jots down their scores while Jason starts collecting the cards to shuffle and distribute them for the next round. All while mumbling some truly impressive expletives.
“It’s wizard. That’s how it works.”
“Like fuck it does! You’re pulling my leg!”
Tim’s grin grows wider. “You’re just a sore loser.”
“If I was,” Jason replies, scowling fiercely, “I wouldn’t be letting you wear my clothes or my suit.”
“To be fair, I’m currently wearing pants that you volunteered yourself.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Give ‘em back.”
Tim raises an eyebrow and looks skeptically at his more or less useless left arm that shoots pinpricks of needles through his side with every move.
It had taken Jason and Tim one hour flat to peel him out of the suit, and then another half to realize that jostling his injuries to put him in a sweater just isn’t worth the pain and effort.
So now Tim is lying on the sofa with a heavily bandaged torso, borrowed sweatpants that are approximately fifty sizes too big, a comforter wrapped around his shoulders and a heater blasting crispy air in his face.
As far as crippling injuries go, he’s kinda hit the jackpot with the aftermath this time.
“Fuck you, short-stack.” Jason pushes Tim’s new pile of cards over the small table. “I ain’t losing this round!”
Even if Jason’s competitive nature threw Tim into a veritable panic at first.
But after almost two days of being coddled and yelled at for trying to stand up on his own… well, whatever reservations Tim had had about Jason have vanished.
It’s hard to remain scared of someone who freaked out over feeding him too-hot soup.
Just like Tim had always suspected, Jason is more bark than actual bite and tries his damndest to conceal that by fitting as many swears into a sentence as possible. Also, Tim might be just a little bitter about the fact that Jason is denying him coffee.
“Four!” Jason exclaims, glaring at Tim.
“You sure?”
“Bring it, Replacement!”
Tim shrugs and jots the prediction down, then adds his own with a hum of “three” and plays the first card.
What Tim is currently doing is stupid. Monumentally stupid. Jason threw his tracker in the harbor, and Dick is definitely still looking for Tim. For his body. And the mere thought of the elder’s desperation while doing so has Tim’s gut tie itself in knots.
But right now…
Tim hates it, he does. He doesn’t want Dick to relive the trauma of losing Jason by thinking Tim’s dead, but after carefully weighing the pros and cons of his plan…
Batman’s still off planet with the league, and Tim needs to use that.
Dick is a force of nature, but Tim is about eighty percent sure that he won’t be able to locate Tim without Bruce’s help. At least not until his panic recedes enough to help Dick remember that he’s not looking for Jason’s dead body; just Tim’s.
Which leaves Tim with approximately three more days to convince Jason to come home.
Right now he’s about three percent along with that plan. It’s a little discouraging.
“Ha! I fucking won!” Jason crows, collecting his stack of cards as Tim writes their scores down. “Two more rounds, Replacement. I will fucking crush you!”
But Tim can’t give up. Jason is alive, Jason can go home. And Bruce and Dick can finally heal.
“You know, this would be a lot more fun to play with-“
“You’re about as subtle as an elephant in a porcelain shop. The answer’s still ‘no’.”
Well, it was worth a try.
——
Robin isn’t in the harbor. Tim isn’t in the harbor.
Bruce wants to ruthlessly squash the surge of hope rearing its ugly head. Just because Tim— the body wasn’t in the harbor doesn’t mean it hasn’t been dumped somewhere else.
They’d found the tracker, blinking away steadily on the muddy sea floor. That alone… Robin’s tracker is integrated into the suit like an additional piece of armor. It’s almost impossible to find unless you know where it is. It’s even harder to remove without at least partially peeling Robin out of his suit.
Bruce hopes to any god that might listen that whatever happened to Tim is not as grisly as the images his brain keeps conjuring.
He hopes that if— if they’re too late, that Tim didn’t have to suffer long.
The almost inaudible thump behind Batman alerts him to the arrival of Nightwing and Bruce turns to greet his eldest son — perhaps the only child he has left— with dread heavy limbs.
“Report.”
Nightwing’s hands flex at his side. “Traffickers. Got the drop on Robin somehow and chased him into Crime Alley, then lost him there.”
Bruce closes his eyes, pushing back against the riptide of hope threatening to choke him. If he starts hoping the fallout of it being shattered would be catastrophic.
Regardless, Bruce will tear down Gotham brick by brick if he has to. Stopping isn’t an option, not until Tim is found.
“B, Crime Alley-“
“Red Hood.” Bruce interrupts him gruffly, casting a forlorn look over the distant skyline of dilapidated apartment buildings marking the border to Gotham’s most crime addled district.
“I know,” Nightwing presses, “but Hood— B, all our intel says that he protects kids.”
“And that he hates us.” Bruce reminds him pointedly. “If Hood found Robin in Crime Alley-“ he trails off, letting the implications of that hang in the air.
“But Robin is just a child!” Nightwing argues, stepping around Bruce until they’re face to face, jaw set. “Look, Hood hates traffickers and people who harm children. Even if Hood didn’t find Robin, theres still a chance that he’d help us find him. He knows Crime Alley better than anybody else.”
“He’s a criminal.” A murderer, he doesn’t say. Someone who’d filled a duffel-bag with severed head. But his voice sounds dull and defeated even to his own ears. There’s little— if anything— he wouldn’t do to get Tim back. Working with a criminal doesn’t even come close to the lines he’s still unwilling to cross.
That’s his child out there—his son— perhaps being tortured and abused in the worst possible ways, crying out for Bruce to save him. (Perhaps already dead, body cooling on Gotham’s unforgiving grounds.)
“I will attempt to open a comm line. You will go out and see if Hood’s henchman can get you in contact.”
Nightwing straightens, determination carving itself into the vigilante’s anxiety-taut frame.
“Copy that.” Dick says and flips off the roof, grapple line shooting out and then Nightwing’s silhouette swings between the buildings, steadily advancing on Crime Alley and its inhabitants.
Bruce watches for another second before he turns, heading back to the batmobile.
They will find Tim.
They have to.
——
Jason is meticulously cleaning his guns while Tim scrolls through the anime section of Netflix when Jason’s phone starts ringing.
To be fair, Jason’s phone rings often enough. Business demanding his attention at least via phone while the Red Hood is stuck taking care of his injured baby bird.
A crime empire doesn’t run itself, and he’ll be damned if his momentary absence enables one of the mob bosses to get a foot back in his business
“What?” He barks down the line, recognizing the number as that of one of his lieutenants. There’s not a lot of them, so whatever it is… is probably important, actually. Fuck.
The man on the other side— Dave? Dom?— clears his throat nervously. “We got a situation here, boss.”
No fucking shit. Every single man working under him knows better than to call Jason with trivial matters.
Jason doesn’t respond and lets the icy silence speak for itself. Whatever it is had better be good, because he ain’t leaving the Replacement unattended unless some idiot mafia boss decided to declare war on him.
In which case Jason would require approximately five hours tops to clear up the mess.
Maybe-Dave gulps audibly. “Nightwing, sir. He’s, uh, dropped in. And demands an audience.”
Jason snaps to attention.
Shit.
The bats have stayed out of Crime Alley since Jason asserted it as his turf, clearly deeming it too risky with what little information they have on him. Especially after he’d compromised all their safehouses.
But Jason should have known that wouldn’t last with their precious Robin missing.
Some damage control is in order. How much does Nightwing know?
“Fine. Patch him through.”
There’s some shuffling, Dave’s phone switching hands, and then Nightwing’s voice rings through the speaker.
“Red Hood?”
Jason blanks.
It’s only for a second, but the sound of Dick’s voice makes every muscle in his body lock and his brain screech contradicting messages before he manages to wrestle the reaction into submission.
“Nightwing.” Jason growls, relieved to find his voice hard and unwavering. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
On the other side of the room, Tim’s eyes have gone wide.
“I-“ the crackling whoosh of air. “We need your help.”
Jason almost chokes on his own spit, rewinding that sentence in his head several times before he’s sure that, no, he didn’t mishear.
And then he can’t help it. He laughs.
“Please, Hood,” the sheer desperation in Nightwing’s voice crests. “Robin’s missing-“
Nah, not really.
“And how exactly,” Hood cuts him off, idly putting his feet up on the table. “Is that my problem?”
“There’s- there were traffickers- we didn’t catch- Robin-“
“Goodbye, Nightwing.”
“No!” Dick shouts, true panic bleeding into his voice. “Please, he’s just a child! Hood!”
Jason’s finger hovers over the button that will end the call, but something in Nightwing’s voice and the way the Replacement is looking at him with such raw longing in his face makes Jason hesitate.
Nightwing latches onto that hesitation like a bloodhound. “Please, I know you hate us, but he’s a kid, Hood. He’s just a kid, and the traffickers— if they got him—“ a heaving breath, “Please. Batman and I— whatever you want, it’s yours. Just… help us.”
Jason’s insides feel weird, like his body temporarily forgot how it’s supposed to work. Reality is a concept so far out of reach not even the pit’s whispers can touch him.
“Where was that kind of devotion when your last Robin kicked it?” he hears himself ask.
Tim’s expression shatters at the same time that Nightwing’s breath stutters.
“What- How-?”
Tim’s lips are moving and Jason is sure he’s saying something, but he can’t hear him over the rushing in his ears and Nightwing’s wounded noise of protest.
“Don’t,” Nightwing whispers then. “You have no idea how much it destroyed us.”
He hears the words. Understands them even, but there’s a wall in Jason’s head refusing to string his thoughts together into coherent sentences.
“Please, Hood. He’s just a kid.”
Jason swallows.
“Ok.” He says, suddenly breathless. “Ok.”
——
Tim doesn’t know what Nightwing says, but it makes Jason’s face shift from consternation to fury to shock and eventually into a blank mask.
And then he hangs up and just stares at Tim.
Unmoving.
“Jason?” he calls out tentatively, shifting forward until he can grab the armrest to pull himself into a sitting position despite his screaming ribs.
The older startles, blinking a couple times before he seems to process Tim’s struggling and immediately hisses “Don’t you even think about it, Replacement!”
Tim stops, torn, but eventually chooses to acquiesce.
“What happened?”
Jason huffs.
“I’m going out.”
——
Jason has no fucking clue what he’s doing. Or why he’s doing it.
No, scratch that. He knows why he’s doing this.
The sound of Dick Grayson on the verge of tears is enough to break hardened criminals and make you feel like you’ve just kicked a puppy.
But fuck if Jason will go down without a fight.
That’s his Replacement sitting on the couch. His responsibility. Tim came to Jason— to the Red Hood— for protection, and Jason would really like to know why the fuck the baby bird thought he was the best fucking option.
And also why the flipping fuck they let Robin go out ALL BY HIMSELF. (Y’know, since the last time a Robin did that had gone so very swell.)
He tracks Nightwing’s steps through the dingy streets of Crime Alley with ease. A bird so far from the nest leaves quite a trail of antsy people in its wake, so Jason only has to swing a couple blocks until he’s caught up.
Nightwing’s silhouette is perched on top of a crumbling gargoyle and Jason shoots out his grapple line with absolutely zero regard for silence.
The vigilante turns to greet him, the line of his body tense. “Hood”
Jason tilts his head. “Dickwing.”
Nightwing huffs, a parody of his usual humor.
“Did you—“ the vigilante swallows visibly. “Do you know anything?”
“Nah-uh, birdy.” Because even though he isn’t planning on torturing the Replacement anymore doesn’t mean he’s going to walk out of all this trouble empty handed. “What’s in it for me?”
The lenses of Nightwing’s domino narrow and Jason finds himself mildly impressed. Looks like the masks got an upgrade since he last wore one.
“What do you want?”
“I want a lot of things.” Jason admits. “For one, I’d like for Batman to pull that stick out of-“
“What do you want for your services!?”
“Gee, way to make a guy feel special…”
The corners of Nightwing’s mouth curl into a faint scowl. “Hood, this isn’t funny-“
“I’m not laughing.”
“Then what do you want?”
The Joker’s head, is on the tip of Jason’s tongue.
The words curl along his gums like acid and the green writhes along to the beat of his heart. Kill him, he wants to say. Kill him, have Batman kill him, and I’ll get you your baby bird.
It would be so, so easy
“Why?” Is what ends up coming out of his mouth instead.
The green recoils, confused.
What do you want, Nightwing had asked.
All of Jason’s plans boil down to one single thing, and it’s currently handed to him on a silver platter. He should use this. He should. Why isn’t he? It would be two birds with one stone.
(The hidden question: is the Joker’s life worth another bird’s?)
And the reply to Jason’s request should be obvious. Nightwing- Nightwing wouldn’t hesitate to promise him the fucker’s head, right?
And then Jason could go home (finally, please, he’s so fucking tired).
But the terrified fifteen year old that had died in that awful warehouse as he watched the timer tick-tick-tick down had snatched the reins and spat that one word out like the answer could finally put him to rest.
Nightwing’s head tilts quizzically. “Why what?”
Jason grits his teeth. “Why do all your Robins feel the need to fly solo?”
The vigilante’s back straightens in obvious preparation for some kind of scathing reply, but Jason doesn’t feel like playing around.
“No,” he growls, the vocoder struggling to interpret the sound and settling for static. “Think long and hard about that answer. The condition in which you’ll find your baby bird depends on it.”
Nightwing’s mouth snaps shut with a click.
A gust of polluted air whistles through the cracks in the building, displacing pieces of loose debris and Jason watches dispassionately as a tiny rain of dust vanishes from view.
“We— I— forgot that they’re just- that they’re just kids. They think wearing a suit makes them invincible,” Nightwing says, so softly Jason has to strain to hear. “It doesn’t.”
Yeah, Jason had noticed when the first hit with a crowbar shattered his fucking collarbone.
But that’s still not enough. Jason didn’t go to Ethiopia because he thought he was invincible. And he’s pretty fucking sure the same goes for the Replacement.
Like, goddamn, that kid’s martyr complex rivals Nightwing’s. And that’s saying something.
When Jason still doesn’t say anything, the visible part of Nightwing’s face twists into a scowl. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Hood. I should have tried harder to be a better br— to be nicer to him. Someone he could trust before going out on his own.”
Only that Nightwing was off planet when Jason got murdered, and he knows for a fact that the vigilante dropped his current mission immediately when the Replacement lit his distress beacon.
“But it’s not Nightwing and Robin, is it? Where was the Bat? What does he do to your birdies that running seems like a viable option?”
That’s… a low blow, Jason will admit. But nobody ever excused him of being polite.
Nightwing huffs a breathless laugh. “Have you met B? He loves us, but even a brick wall can express emotions better than he can.”
He loves us, rings in Jason’s head long after Nightwing’s voice has tapered off.
Not enough, not you. The green hisses, sinking its teeth into the tender remains of Jason’s heart. Not an expendable street rat from Crime Alley.
“That didn’t save the first kid.” Jason says numbly, voice made more menacing filtered through his helmet.
The vulnerability Nightwing had allowed to slip onto his face fades into a mask of carefully practiced indifference and Jason plows right on, itching to wipe that disgusting sentimental-fake-pity me facade right off his face.
“Did he cry for you? Did he wait for you to come and save him? Did he die sad? Angry? Afraid?” Jason hisses, advancing on Nightwing with tiny steps that make the big bird tense up. “I wonder, did he die thinking you didn’t care enough to spare the fucking time to come and save him?”
He sees the punch coming from a mile away but the force of it still almost knocks him clean off the roof as he blocks it with his forearm.
“Screw you!”
“My, don’t ya wanna ask me out for dinner first?”
Nightwing snarls, pulling his knees up to his chest and suddenly there are feet planted flat against Jason’s chest plate as he’s thrown backwards.
The world spins around him as his body automatically adjusts to having his balance thrown, digging his gloved fingers into the crumbling concrete before rolling clean over his shoulder to regain his footing without offering his body up for another attack by not moving. But when he scans the roof for Nightwing, the vigilante is still in the same place as before, fists clenched at his side, knuckles white.
Fucking acrobat.
Jason dusts himself off with a glower that’s thankfully concealed by the helmet.
“Look,” Nightwing says, voice purposely neutral and revealing absolutely nothing. “I don’t know how you have so much information on-“ an audible swallow “-on Robin, but right now I don’t have time for your games, Hood. So just tell me what you want in exchange for your help. Money? Free rein over Crime Alley? M-“ Nightwing’s mouth twists. “Me?”
Jason blinks. The fu-?
Shit, no. Fuck. Jason knew his earlier quip would bite him in the ass.
“Fuck no!” to his (second, heh) dying day, Jason will deny that he yelps. He clears his throat and watches a bit guiltily as the vigilante’s shoulders sag with relief.
“No, a favor will do. You and Batman will owe me one, if I can bring your birdy back in one piece.” Not that that will be hard to accomplish.
“Yeah, ok. Deal.” Nightwing agrees immediately. “Whatever you want.”
A minute passes in which they just stare at each other, assessing.
Far below them a car passes through the streets donning only one working headlight that briefly illuminates them both in clashing colors of red and blue.
It feels surreal, like looking at a mirror image of what he could have been if life had been kinder.
Jason turns away first and makes his way back the way he’d come.
“Wait, if you find anything-“
“Don’t bother. I know how to find you.”