Chapter Text
Jason didn’t consider himself to be an unreasonable man.
Was he a little impulsive? Maybe.
Did he have anger issues and mountains of unresolved trauma? Yeah.
Had the Lazarus Pit left him far less sane than the average person claimed to be? Sure.
Yes, Jason had dolled out a bloody vengeance on Gotham upon his return, but he had never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. Batman might whine about excessive violence– might sternly speak about how they were not judge and jury– but Jason knew better than most that justice did not enact itself and that fairness had to be fought out of the world.
Jason was not an unreasonable man.
Drug dealers that turned unsuspecting kids into addicts or laced their goods with things that left dead bodies in their wake deserved to be taken out. The dead bodies they created deserved to be returned in equal measure upon their operations. It was only reasonable– only fair.
Traffickers that dealt in human lives deserved to die screaming– echoing their terrified victims’ cries. It was vengeance and it was justice that the punishment fit the crime.
Jason didn’t cling to any deluded sense of his own purity. He knew that his hands were stained a red that would never wash away, but he continued to try and even the scales regardless. Jason had been innocent when he died– a child who had yet to lose his angel’s wings. Now, he had risen from his grave in the form of a devil. He was here to enact vengeance, not good works. When he returned to his grave, it would be bloody where it used to be pure.
A balanced scale.
But in the midst of Jason’s takeover of Crime Alley and his war against the rot that seeped into the very bones of Gotham itself, there was another uneven scale. A Robin who had yet to have his wings clipped. A cuckoo in the nest who had stolen the place of a boy who was barely even cold in his grave. A spoiled brat who thought he could be the light to Gotham’s darkness.
Timothy Drake. Robin number three. The replacement son. The thief.
The last Robin had died screaming at the hands of a grinning demon. It was only fair, only reasonable, that this new Robin die at the hands of a new demon that carried the Joker’s old name.
He would watch, he would wait, and when he was ready, he would teach the little cuckoo exactly what happened when the original bird returned to find its place stolen. It was only reasonable– it was only fair. If the little bird wanted to be a Robin, then he deserved to find out what it felt like to have your wings clipped.
***
The Red Hood watched the front gates of Gotham Academy impassively from a rooftop across the street and waited for Timothy Drake to exit its doors.
It felt a little strange to be sitting openly in the daylight after spending so long slinking through shadows, but Jason needed to catch the little bird alone and school was the best place to do so. He could try to snatch Robin away on patrol, but the Bat had kept his little bird close ever since Hood had started making waves and it would be far harder in their vigilante forms. Besides, this wasn’t just about Robin. Timothy had weaseled his way into Jason’s home as Bruce’s new son. This was personal, so Jason would make it personal.
A bell rang from somewhere inside of the school and students began to stream out of the front doors. Jason kept a close watch over the many bobbing heads in the crowd until he finally caught sight of the black haired, blue eyed boy in question. The replacement didn’t walk over to a waiting car like most of the students, but he stood on the sidewalk looking about expectantly. Jason would have expected Alfred (or Bruce) to be waiting to pick up their precious little replacement son, but maybe they had gotten stuck in traffic or something. Regardless, replacement looked out over the line of cars for about fifteen minutes (Jason could barely stand to wait. He resisted the urge to try and grab the kid out of the busy horde of teenagers then and there) before he appeared to get a text message. Replacement stared at his phone for a solid minute, then he walked off the school grounds and casually strolled into the city as if Gotham was some safe suburb and not full of criminals, maniacs, and undead crime lords looking to snatch up a little bird.
Jason grinned behind his helmet and silently leapt across the roofs separating him and the replacement. Finally, he had his chance. This would almost be too easy.
Replacement had headphones on and obviously his spatial awareness was shit because Jason was grappling down from the rooftop above his head before the replacement even looked up.
Jason landed on the concrete sidewalk with a solid thud that drew attention to his post-mountain-dew-bath size. He was almost larger than Batman himself, and the many layers of kevlar and body armor added to his bulk. He towered over the Replacement and tilted his head to let his chrome red helmet glint in the afternoon light.
“Hello, Timothy Drake,” he said pleasantly, his helmet’s modulator twisting the words into a growl.
The replacement’s eyes went wide and he started to make a move to run, but he wasn’t fast enough to evade Jason’s lunge and the syringe in his hand. Jason grappled the teen in something that almost looked like a hug and jabbed the syringe into Replacement’s neck. Replacement struggled weakly, but he didn’t attempt to use any of the moves that Jason knew Robin possessed. It was the first rule of civilian kidnappings– don’t give away your identity unless truly necessary.
Replacement’s struggles faded away completely as the drug took effect, and Jason flung his limp body over his shoulder as easily as if he were a bag of flour.
By the time Replacement realized just how much trouble he was in, it would be far too late to use his Robin training to escape.
It was time to clip a little bird’s wings.