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Red Hood decides he’s not having a good day as soon as he gets the alert that the Joker’s escaped Arkham for the hundredth millionth time. His day gets worse when he’s immediately told to lay low at home before Oracle kicks him off their comms.
Fuck. That.
Jason is not a child . He is a fully grown adult who has worked hard to get past the trauma of his death. He does not need to be coddled or babied. He certainly doesn’t need to be sidelined during what would normally be an ‘all hands on deck’ situation.
It might not even be about them trying to protect him from his past trauma. It could be that they just don’t trust him not to kill the clown.
Jason’s not sure which thought pisses him off more.
Either way, it doesn’t fucking matter because he doesn’t answer to Batman. If they don’t want to share information that’s fine . But he’s not taking the bench. Not for this. No fucking way.
The fact that Bruce is benching him, but he hadn’t heard Tim and Damian being called home just twists the knife a little more. Because Tim and Damian are kids . And there’s nothing the Joker likes more than taking away someone’s innocence.
Jason knows all about that firsthand.
He knows not to underestimate the Joker. He knows to be careful around him and keep his distance. Is Tim going to exercise the same caution? Is Damian?
Jason’s fairly sure the answer’s ‘no’. Which is why it’s such complete and utter bullshit that it’s Jason that’s being sent home, as opposed to the two kids with no self-preservation instinct.
Yeah, there’s no way he’s going to let Tim and Damian be out here with the Joker while Jason’s at home playing a terrified kid. If that means Jason has to look for the Joker with no backup then so be it.
Better for him to confront the Joker than Tim or Damian.
That decided, Jason makes for Amusement Mile. It might be a little too obvious, but Jason’s only one person. He can’t afford the normal grid movements the rest of the bats and the birds are doing right now.
No, Jason’s going to go visit the obvious Joker scenic spots, start kicking, and see who comes to complain. And if it so happens to be the Joker? Then Jason has two bullets: one for each of his knees. He only hopes that it’ll cause permanent injury.
He’s quick to rethink his plans of a loud entrance when he gets to Amusement Mile and spots a crowd of face-painted goons all huddled up and glancing up like they’re expecting Batman to pounce on them any minute. And isn’t that some good luck? Both that the Joker has deemed to hire himself at least a dozen brain-dead henchmen so quickly after regaining his freedom, and that those same brain-dead henchmen are so busy watching the sky for Batman they don’t notice Red Hood on street level.
He ducks into an alley and waits. Eventually, those goons are either going to go back to their base, where the Joker is probably waiting for them, or they’ll go to whatever sight they’re planning on wreaking havoc on next. Either way, Jason wins. He’s either ruining the Joker’s knees or ruining his plans. And he’s not picky; he’ll consider either one a victory.
The goons check the skies several more times but do eventually start moving. Hood follows them to a warehouse and watches them go in.
He’s not close enough to see or hear anything inside, but he knows better than to follow them in through the front door. He grapples up and goes in through a high window that lands him in the rafters instead.
The Joker’s high-pitched cackling immediately reaches his ears and he flinches before he can stop himself.
Jason focuses on his breathing, forcing himself to remain calm. He draws his pistol and aims down the sights. The aim isn’t nearly as good as a rifle, and he’ll have to calm down his breathing before he can make a successful shot, but Jason can only work with what he has.
He looks down and the Joker’s purple fucking suit is unmistakable. He’s pacing in front of six people, tied three each to support beams, and there are about three times as many goons scattered around the warehouse. How the fuck Joker has managed to hire so many people so fast is a mystery.
Jason realizes that the Joker’s got a crowbar when the insane clown clocks someone across the face with it.
And Jason’s dealt with the Joker after he’s come back from the grave. And it’s not like Jason came back and started avoiding crowbars. None of this is new and none of this should be sending him into a panic. But what he knows should happen and what is actually happening are two very different things.
Jason hears the beating of his heart and feels how it beats against his chest in rapid fire. He thinks there may be a possibility that he’s not actually as over all his trauma as he thought. He tries to calm himself. His breathing’s regulated. But that’s as much control as he seems to have over his body at the moment.
His heart’s still beating faster than he can count and Jason knows that he’s not going to be able to get a clean shot in his condition. And, if he can’t get a clean shot, he won’t shoot. He may be panicking, but he’s not stupid. He’s not going to alert the Joker to his presence unless he’s certain the clown can’t run away.
Even though he’s in no condition to do that right now.
Jason’s senses must be dialed up at a fucking twelve out of ten because at that moment he fucking sees the bullet cutting through the air. And then the Joker’s head snaps to the side and keeps flying, his body dragged behind like a ragdoll until gravity has him crashing to the floor.
Jason doesn’t need to check; the clown’s definitely dead.
What he does need to check, however, is where the fuck that bullet had just come from. He follows the likely trajectory from where it had made its impact and traces it back up to the rafters. He starts looking for a hidden shadow. Some sort of assassin who might have been responsible for this.
Except when he finally locks eyes with the gunman, the guy’s not at all trying to be discrete. He gives a thumbs up and then waves.
And, fuck, it’s weird, but Hood finds himself waving back before he thinks better of it.
The guy’s a mask: covered from the top of his head to his feet in a mostly black suit with some blue and white stripes on the chest, shoulder pads, and helmet. There’s white on the knee pads and shin guards, and also on his arm guards. A red visor splits across his helmet. Jason’s not familiar with the costume, which is saying something, because Jason goes out of his way to keep up to date.
“Hey man,” the mask says, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “Did I take your shot? I was waiting for you, but you were taking forever, you know? And I don’t really sit still for very long. I mean, I can , obviously, but I don’t like to if I can help it.”
It’s a lot of words, but they don’t actually make a lot of sense. Though, in the stranger’s defense, Hood may still be a little out of it from the fear-filled adrenaline rush he’s still coming out of. “Who are you supposed to be?” Because figuring out who this guy is and if he’s a threat is more important than trying to decipher his ramblings. “Some new villain of the week?”
“ Villain ?” the guy exclaims. He waves his hand down at the very dead Joker and the now even more traumatized people still tied to the warehouse’s support beams who had just seen the Joker’s brains explode from the opposite side of where the bullet had entered. “Would a villain have just killed that guy?”
“Yes?” Jason wonders if this is maybe another one of the Joker’s victims. Put through so much torture they’re half out of their minds. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Then he thinks about his return to Gotham and the several heads he may or may not have cut off and shoved into a duffle bag. He probably should not be thinking of the Joker’s torture as a cause for mental instability. He’s sure he won’t like whatever road it brings him down.
“Pft! No !” The guy straddles the rafter he’s on and scoots on his ass until he’s directly across from Jason. They’re separated by three of the wooden beams, and after seeing that display, Jason’s very certain he can get away from this guy if it turns out he’s an insane criminal who wants to kill him. “I’m a good guy!” the man insists, swinging his leg over so he’s sitting on the beam instead of straddling it. He swings his feet. “That’s why I just killed that bad guy. Duh .”
And, well, Jason would be a hypocrite if he argued with that kind of logic, wouldn’t he? Jason won’t judge the guy. There is someone who will though. “You do realize you’re in Gotham, right? There’s a no kill rule.”
“Oh, what, so I was just supposed to let that guy live ?” the guy scoffs. “That’ll never help the criminal population of the world go down. Plus, there’s a no kill rule all over everywhere. I’ve never followed it before. I’m a hero. That means I serve a higher purpose.” He nods firmly.
And, yet again, it’s not really anything Jason has an easy time refuting. He may have calmed down compared to when he had first returned to Gotham, and he may have re-adopted a lot of B’s policies, but that doesn’t mean that he’s ever actually renounced his thinking.
Also, Jason might be, just a little bit, smitten. He definitely doesn’t want this guy getting dumped into Arkham for murdering a psychopath like the Joker, regardless of how easy it apparently is to break out of the place. “Yeah, well, we’ve got more than just police here enforcing that no kill rule.” The guy tilts his head. “You can’t tell me that you’ve never heard of Batman.”
The guy shrugs his shoulders. “Nope! Should I have? I’m not really from around here. I’m from Washington. The state, not the city. But then, my friends and I? We fucked up all these alien butterflies, and blew up this like silo thing, and then there was this little midget after us. Anyway! Needless to say, we couldn’t really stick around. So we split up and I decided to lie low here until my friends come and get me!”
Jason has no idea what any of that means, but the guy sounds happy about it, so he doesn’t really push. And they really need to leave anyway. It’s only a matter of time until the grid pattern the bats are following leads them here. And Jason very much does not want to explain how the Joker turned into a corpse. “We should probably get out of here,” Jason says. “Before we’re caught.” He glances down at the hostages still tied up. He doesn’t particularly want to leave them there, but he can’t devote any more of his time to this warehouse. Not if he wants to leave before he runs into one of his siblings.
“A hero’s work is never done,” the man says with a sigh before standing in a crouch and hopping across the wooden beams like they weren’t twelve feet above a slab of cement.
Jason’s usually very protective of his safe houses. Not even the bats know where they all are. But for the Joker’s killer? Jason figures he can give up one safe house.
Jason learns the guy’s name is Vigilante, which is pretty on the nose. Jason can respect it. Vigilante absolutely flips his shit when he finds out Jason wears a domino mask under his helmet. Jason’s pretty sure he’s never gotten called so many variations of ‘smart’ before.
Vigilante opts to keep his helmet on since secret identities are important, and he wasn’t smart enough to think to wear a domino mask underneath it, even though that’s the most brilliant idea ever and he’s absolutely going to do that from now on.
They end up watching television on Jason’s cheap flat screen. He thinks it’s some rom com from the nineties, but he’s not really watching. Instead, he’s listening to Vigilante rant about not being able to drink or smoke while he’s wearing his helmet, and how he should install a straw in it. Except that would look stupid. And should he go for looking badass or being badass? Because being able to drink beer while killing some criminals is the epitome of badass.
Jason really can’t follow, but he doesn’t mind listening to the guy talk. And his bizarre weirdness is kind of cute. He can’t help thinking the guy would be best friends with Harley. “Be hard to talk with a straw in your mouth all the time,” Jason points out when Vigilante pauses for breath. He frowns. “And can you even smoke through a straw?”
Vigilante drops his head. “No, I guess not,” he replies, sounding utterly defeated.
Jason laughs.
Then Jason’s phone rings and all the light heartedness he’s been feeling flees out of him. Because that’s Bruce. He knows before he even fishes his phone out and confirms it on the caller id. They’d left the warehouse almost an hour ago, which is a very slow response time for Batman. So he’d either took longer than normal to find the Joker or he was running around gathering evidence to see whether or not Jason is the one responsible for his death.
Or maybe B just got caught up taking care of all the traumatized victims he and Vigilante had left behind. Jason can hope.
Jason takes a deep breath in and then releases it. He puts a finger to his lips, waiting for Vigilante to nod, before he swipes to answer his phone. “B,” he greets, hoping he comes across casual. “What’s up? Have you found him yet?”
“Jaylad,” Bruce greets. Jason would be on edge from the nickname alone, but the soft decidedly-not Batman way he says it has Jason standing from the couch and pacing.
“What? What happened?” Something happened. Something bad. One of the birds was caught, maybe. Tim or Damian. Maybe even Nightwing. Jason hadn’t actually checked on who the hostages surrounding Joker had been. It was a stupid decision. Just because no one had looked hurt didn’t make it true. It’s not as if Jason could have spotted a broken bone from three fucking stories up. Judging from the tone of Bruce’s voice, Jason hadn’t even been able to spot one of the birds from three stories up.
“Everyone’s fine,” Bruce says, disrupting Jason’s panic attack. “No one is hurt. Where are you?”
It throws Jason for another loop. And he mumbles, “At home,” before he thinks better of it. If no one is hurt then what’s with the gentle hand holding? Surely B doesn’t think he needs to cushion the blow before he tells him about the Joker dying.
Unless Bruce has found out Jason did have something to do with his death, and he’s being gentle to cushion the blow of telling Jason that he’s going to be carted off to Arkham.
“At home?” Bruce repeats, sounding confused. Maybe that messes up whatever evidence Bruce has been stacking against him.
“Yes,” Jason snaps. “At home. Like you told me to. You know, when you benched me. You wanna fill me in on what’s going on now?” He won’t go to Arkham. He didn’t even kill anyone, so it’s not like Bruce can blame him for what happened. But he doesn’t want Vigilante to go to Arkham either.
“Oh! Oh! Put it on speakerphone!” Vigilante declares, loud and happy. “I wanna know what’s going on too.” He’s either forgotten Jason’s directions to be quiet or doesn’t care enough to listen in the first place.
“Who are you with?” Bruce is quick to ask, suddenly tense.
“No one,” Jason says. He turns around to face Vigilante, ready to pester Bruce about why he’d called in the first place, but he sees Vigilante’s shoulders slump. “A friend,” he corrects.
“For real? Friends?” Vigilante asks, bouncing up from the couch. He seems to forget that Jason’s still on the phone. “This is going to be great! We can do all the things friends do that Chris never lets us cause he says it’s gay! Not that I have a problem with gay stuff. It’s Chris who has a problem with the gay stuff. He’s cool though. I bet you’d like him. He’s-”
“V,” Jason hisses, getting Vigilante’s attention and putting a finger to his lips again. Bruce has definitely heard everything, but at least none of it is incriminating.
“Oh! Right! Quiet time! Got it!” Vigilante loudly whispers before miming zipping up his mouth and tossing the key.
Bruce is quiet on the other end. Normally, Jason would wait him out, but he knows he doesn’t have much time before Vigilante starts rambling again. “What did you want, B?”
“I’m coming over,” Bruce answers.
“The fuck you are,” Jason snaps, but Bruce has already hung up. The fact that Jason stops himself from growling speaks to his strong willpower. He doesn’t know what Bruce wants, officially, but he can make some guesses. And he can assume that if he comes here and sees an unknown mask he’s going to make some connections that Jason doesn’t want him making.
“What’s up?” Vigilante asks, head cocked to the side. “Was that one of the call warranty guys?”
Jason turns and frowns at him. He tries to piece together what the fuck that sentence means and comes up blank. “Was he what?”
“Those warranty guys. You know, the ones that call you.” He makes a fist, thumb and pinky out so his hand looks like a phone and puts it up to his ear. “‘Hello? Red Hood? Yes, we’re calling you about your car’s warranty.’” He drops his hand and shrugs. “You know, those guys.”
Jason sighs and decides not to think about why Vigilante would ever come up with that as a good guess. “No. That was my dad.” His chest twists at that, but ‘dad’ really is the best way to explain Bruce to a stranger. He forces himself not to think of it any more than that. “And he’s coming over, which means no masks.”
“Oh. I see what this is,” Vigilante says, crossing his arms. “I know what’s going on here. You almost got me. But you folded your hand too soon.”
“What?” It’s not even worth trying to puzzle out what any of that means.
“I’m not taking off my helmet for you. Do you think I’m stupid?” Vigilante forces out some very fake laughter. “I’m laughing even thinking that I would tell you my secret identity.”
“V, trust me, it’s way safer to be a civilian,” Jason replies. He thinks of some way to convince him. “It’s like giving your secret identity a secret identity.”
“So it’s like a double secret,” Vigilante says, sounding awestruck.
It doesn’t make any fucking sense to Jason, but he nods anyway.
“Okay, but you can’t watch me take my suit off,” Vigilante says, pointing at him like he’s just caught him in some kind of lie. “I need a place to change.”
Jason gestures to his bedroom and tells him to help himself to whatever. He hopes that’s a permission he won’t later regret. While Vigilante’s in the bedroom, Jason uses the opportunity to head to his bathroom peel off his mask, and change into the sweats and t-shirt he’d woken up in this morning. He stows his suit in the hall closet.
Vigilante doesn’t take too much longer to come out of the bedroom, wearing jeans that are way too baggy and Jason’s Wonder Woman t-shirt. He also insists he has no idea who Vigilante is and that his name is Adrian. He tells Jason that he just came in through the window.
Jason figures it’s better not to expend the energy arguing about it.
Bruce comes over in civilian attire, but his posture is all Batman.
“The Joker is dead,” he announces as soon as he closes the front door behind him. He's watching Jason's face, and Jason doesn't know what the expected response here is, so he keeps his face blank instead of giving one.
Unfortunately, Jason's always been an impatient bastard. “Good,” he eventually says.
“Who's the Joker?” Adrian asks, looking between him and Bruce and then back again. Jason doesn't know if he's trying to appear innocent (in which case, not really working) or if he really doesn't know who he'd just killed. It's a conversation for another time. For now, Jason ignores him and Bruce follows his lead.
“I need to know your whereabouts for the day. Where were you?” Bruce asks.
Jason has to fight not to roll his eyes. “I already told you. I was patrolling, then everybody started freaking out about me having to go home, so I did. I've been here since.”
Bruce finally turns to Adrian. “Yes. I see. With your ... friend. And what have you two been doing?”
Jason doesn't appreciate the suspicion. He's about to sidestep the question entirely and complain about the lack of trust instead, but Adrian answers first.
“Mostly? We were making out.”
What ?
“What?” Bruce asks.
Adrian nods, the happy smile on his face growing. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Hot and heavy. Lots of tongue.”
“What?” Jason asks. Except that's the wrong question since he's apparently involved in this imaginary make out session and it's now his alibi. “I mean-” It's not as if he can deny it without coming off suspicious now. So, fine, he can play along. “This isn’t how I wanted to come out but … yeah.”
Adrian snaps to him, his eyes wide. “Oh, shit! You’re gay?”
It's not the best reply if their play here is trying to convince Bruce they were too horny to run around murdering the clown.
“… Are you not?” Bruce asks Adrian, raising a single eyebrow.
Adrian, at least, doesn't look flustered. Small miracles. He shrugs. “Don’t know. Never really thought about it. But I do really like his thighs.” He turns to stare at Jason's thighs and Jason feels his face heat up in response. “Like … really . What do you think the radius of those tanks are? Wait … is it radius? Diameter? Circumference?”
Bruce doesn’t stick around much longer after that.
Jason's kind of mystified by how well that actually worked. Adrian might secretly be a genius. “Well, good thinking. Chasing B off like that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him run away faster.”
Adrian blinks at him. “Good thinking about what?”
And the rant Adrian has just gone on about Jason's thighs had to be a ploy, right? Nobody likes thighs that much, especially not Jason's, of all people. “You weren’t seriously ranting about my thighs?”
“Did you not hear me? I can repeat it,” Adrian replies, looking very ready to do exactly that.
And, well, fuck it, right? Adrian’s cute and he has just killed the clown, so Jason owes him some sort of thank you. He smirks at him. “Or you can show me how much you like them.”
END