Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason hasn’t even been in Gotham for more than a couple months when things go to shit.

He’s been back from the dead for while now, he’s bided his time training with the League of Assassins, and he even has a decent handle on the Lazarus Pit’s lingering side effects with the help of meditation and breathing exercises that he’s learned.

He’s still fucking pissed at Bruce for leaving his killer to run the streets and take more lives every time he decides to break out from Arkham to take the city for a joyride, sure, but that one’s all Jason, and entirely justified.

He’s going to make Bruce decide — shoot the Joker, put the bastard down once and for all, or shoot the son that the Joker already murdered once. Bruce will have to decide what’s most important to him — to break his rule to save the Joker or break it to save Jason.

But here’s the thing — Jason isn’t letting Bruce walk away with the Joker if he picks wrong. If Bruce shoots him, he’s got enough explosives stashed away from supply shipments he’s liberated to level the entire building and take all three of them out.

Talia thinks his plan is fucking stupid, but Talia is still in love with Bruce more than a decade after their relationship ended messily, so he’s content to ignore her advice on the matter of dealing with Bruce.

Jason has spent months agonizing over the details of his plan, crafting contingency plan after contingency plan. He’s been working full time since he’s returned to the city to establish his identity as Red Hood, toppling the right pieces here and there as he works his way into power through the underbelly of Crime Alley.

Sure, maybe he’s over-prepared the whole thing, he used to be a fucking Bat — or maybe a Bird, actually? He’s not entirely sure how they categorize them now that there’s more of the themed vigilantes running around the Gotham rooftops at night. Are they all Bats? Batman and his Batlings who are also Birds?

Jason shoves the thoughts he’s muddling through out of his head and finishes off his drink, tuning out the murmur of the conversations around him.

It’s ten o clock at night on his fuckin’ birthday and he’s tucked away in some shithole bar in Crime Alley, drinking alone.

He’s not entirely sure what he just drank, actually. The last thing he remembers ordering was a fourth jack and coke, but the smooth minty flavor he gulps down this time definitely is… something else. He stares at the empty glass, frowning. It wasn’t bad, just unexpected. After a long moment, he flags the bartender down.

“Imma get another one o’ these,” He says, voice thick with the alcohol in his system, gesturing at the glass in front of him. She eyes him critically for a moment, and then nods and he tracks her movement as she heads over to mix the drink, some deep-rooted paranoia forcing him to be aware of his environment, of who’s handling his food and drink.

The motion is enough to make him dizzy and leave his head spinning, so when she drops the drink off, he tucks it close enough that it can’t be tampered with and rests his head on the cool, slightly sticky surface of the bar next to the glass for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut and listening to the ambient sounds of the bar around him.

The volume on the TV playing the news is turned up, and across the entire bar, all conversation goes silent. The hair on the back of Jason’s neck prickles, and he shifts his attention to the public safety announcement blaring on the news.

An Arkham breakout. Again.

Jason sighs and knocks his forehead back against the bar counter. He’s in his civvies and has drank way too fucking much to jump in to help with this tonight. He’s not even sure if he could walk back to his nearest safe house right now to gear up, let alone take out fucking—Killer Croc or something.

Plus, getting involved would inevitably draw the Bats’ attention. While he’s sure they’re aware of a new player working in the shadows and taking control of portions of the criminal element within the Bowery, it’s best to not tempt fate until the rest of his pieces are in place.

Black Mask is certainly starting to feel the pressure of Jason’s raids on his supply lines and the storage warehouses he’s blown up, but he’s nowhere near desperate enough to free the Joker yet.

Half a dozen B-list rogues and criminals have busted out, which will be enough to keep the Bat Crew busy. Probably not an all hands on deck situation, although Nightwing might pop over from Bludhaven to help. But they’ve got it handled.

He listens casually as the news details which vigilante has been spotted pursuing which villain, and yep, before long Nightwing is spotted in town jumping into the fray.

Jason downs his final drink, slaps a hundred dollar bill on the counter for the bartender to close his tab with a generous tip, and hauls himself to his feet to start on the walk to the little apartment that’s set up halfway between a home and a safe house, when there’s an urgent update on the news broadcast.

The Joker has taken advantage of the chaos and decided to spring his own escape, using Batman’s preoccupation to slip out, and was spotted hauling ass in a stolen car directly towards Amusement Mile.

On Jason’s fucking birthday.

He doesn’t even remember stumbling out of the bar, but he knows he’s not heading in the direction of the safe house apartment anymore.

He’s done with the dramatic plans, the clever actions meant to provoke reactions that will build towards a finale worthy of a best-selling novel. It’s all worth fuck-all if more innocent people die at the hands of the madman in the time between now and then.

The Joker, in all his insanity, can be really fucking predictable sometimes. Jason understands him, more than Batman ever will. Even loose-limbed and swaying on his feet, he knows where he’ll go. And against the little ringing alarm bells of his brain that try to tell him run away run away run away, that’s where Jason goes, too.

He knows what he’s gonna do is probably something he should be in his Red Hood gear for rather than his street clothes, but his place is the opposite direction at this point and he always keeps a gun on his person anyways, so he just keeps an eye on the cameras, shuffling through blind spots and keeping to the shadows.

Jason finds the Joker in exactly the type of place he expects to, lying low in some creepy-ass abandoned bowling alley that’s been decked out in clown decor by some of his goons while they waited for his inevitable escape. The fucker wasn’t expecting company, having counted on Batman being preoccupied with the other escapees, and was clearly intended to stay quiet for the time being, seated on a couch with a handful of henchmen, laughing away.

The alcohol dulls the fear that the laughter would trigger on any other day. Jason just. Slips into the building, pulls his handgun from his concealed carry holster that he wears when he’s out in his civvies, checks the magazine, and puts a bullet right into the back of each of their heads. He doesn’t even use the entire magazine, just five quick shots and it’s done. The laughter stops, and each of the bodies drop before any of them even have a chance to react.

Jason waits for a moment, and then another. His reaction time is slowed, but his brain eventually catches up to what he just did. A sense of relief trickles through him, and he’s… suddenly more relaxed than he can remember being in years.

He ditches the bodies there and leaves. Someone will eventually report the gunshots, the bodies will be found. He doesn’t really care, but he also doesn’t plan to be here when the cops show up. It’s a toss-up whether Gotham’s finest would feel professionally obligated to arrest him for murder, or to let him go because it’s the Joker. Knowing the city and the sheer magnitude of people whose lives had been forever altered or taken by the clown, he thinks the latter is more likely.

He slips back out the rear entrance that he came in through, belatedly tucks the gun back into its holster, adjusts the jacket so it sits naturally once again, and wanders back towards his Crime Alley safe house.

He’s so fucking tired, as if all the buzzing energy that’s pushed him for so long has suddenly vanished.

Jason makes it halfway back to the safe house he has in mind before he hears sirens approaching, heading towards the direction he came from. He stumbles into the closest alley and waits for them to pass, and then has to wait some more to vomit behind a dumpster. The alcohol burns worse as it comes back up. He really, really regrets drinking on an empty stomach.

Eventually, once his stomach is empty, he wipes mouth on his sleeve, grimaces, and musters up the willpower to make it to his safe house.

He considers heading to the bathroom, to bask under the water pressure and brush his teeth until his gums bleed, but his exhaustion drags him directly to the couch instead. He ends up laying along big green monstrosity, head propped up against the armrest on one end and booted feet on the other in a way that’s sure to do his neck no favors in the morning. He’s asleep before he has a chance to even consider taking the boots off.

********

Bruce is in the middle of apprehending one of the Arkham escapees, occasionally touching base with the others for status updates on their own progress in the mop up effort, when the comm comes on with a soft click as the group channel opens. There’s a long pause, long enough that Bruce feels a flash of concern, before Oracle speaks.

“Got an update for you guys on a developing situation. GCPD reports say a tip led to five bodies being discovered in the old bowling alley by Amusement Mile.” Oracle sucks in a sharp breath, and then continues. “Preliminary findings indicate one of the bodies was the Joker. I’m working back through nearby surveillance footage now. Is anyone available to follow up on the ground to confirm their findings?”

Bruce carefully finishes zip-cuffing the wrists of the escapee, attaching him to a street lamp and pinging the GPS beacon that he’s programmed to notify the GCPD of the location of a criminal they’ve caught.

He isn’t sure he believes the body they found actually belongs to the Joker. The rogue has been out of Arkham for less than an hour — the chances of him running into something he couldn’t handle in that time are next to non-existent.

But it needs to be followed up on, none-the-less.

Nightwing chimes in. “Robin and I aren’t too far and have finished up with the escapees we went after. We can drop by the scene and take a look. See if there’s any witnesses.”

Nightwing is the most experienced of his protégés and the best at handling people. Robin’s analytical mind and reasoning skills would be helpful in evaluating the scene and picking up on patterns. The two of them on the case would cover all avenues of approach.

“Acknowledged, report any findings,” Bruce grunts over the comm, and then checks the location of the GPS tracker he’d hit the last of the Arkham escapees with. He confirms that they hadn’t made it very far, and takes off along the rooftops in pursuit.

Bruce drops down on the woman, subdues her, and gets her detained and ready for police pickup within the span of a couple minutes.

The comm chimes as Robin connects.

“Well, it’s the Joker. No doubt about it to me, but I took a DNA sample to verify. He and four of his henchmen were dispatched by GSW to the back of the head. Ballistics indicate a handgun was used, and I’d say the shooter was experienced considering he took out five men before they had any time to struggle or react. Tall, too, based on the angle of the entry wounds,” Robin says.

The comm link chimes again a few minutes later as Bruce is driving through Gotham towards the cave.

“One witness, she reports seeing an armed white male exit the building shortly after hearing shots fired. At least 6ft, dark hair with a white highlight, wearing a dark colored jacket and jeans and a light t-shirt. Possibly injured, she said he didn’t seem very steady on his feet. She didn’t get a good look at his face, but the description should be enough for Oracle to track him along the cameras,” Nightwing reports. He pauses for a second, and when he speaks next, it’s laced with humor but a little more Dick Grayson than Nightwing. “So we’re buying this guy a beer, right?”

Bruce doesn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he waits for Oracle’s findings. Bruce is back at the cave in front of the computer before she connects in to the comm system again

“No hits matching the description on any of the nearby cameras, but I’ve got… I’ve got a match to someone who was spotted heading into Crime Alley about twenty minutes after the shooting. But… the guy I’ve got on the camera? He looks like Jason,” Oracle breathes. “I’m sending the footage to you now, Batman.”

Bruce freezes. Jason is dead, there’s no way that the man in the footage could be him. But if the resemblance was enough to make steadfast, reasonable Barbara say something about it, to warn him before sending the video…

His mind jumps through the possibilities as he waits for the video to download to the screen in the Batmobile. Shapeshifter metas, clones, illusion magic… because Jason is dead. It can’t be Jason, even if there’s enough of a passing resemblance to give Barbara pause.

The video plays on the computer screen, taken from a camera at the end of an alleyway. A figure — dressed much like the witness described, in a black jacket with a light grey shirt and dark wash jeans — stumbles past the end of the alley, and then doubles back to duck into the alley itself. A moment later, he sees the reason for the change of direction, as red and blue flashing lights tear past. The figure staggers a little and then heaves, leaning over to vomit on the ground of the alley, arm wrapped around his stomach. He’s facing away from the camera, but when he straightens up and glances around, there’s a moment where the camera at the end of the alley catches his face in three quarters profile, illuminated enough by the reflection of streetlights in the puddles to highlight his features in muted amber light.

The Batcomputer’s automated facial identification program runs, and pings a match. Bruce doesn’t have to look at it to know what it says, because that displeased twist of the mouth and furrow between the brows, the cheekbones and eyes, chin and jaw a little broader with maturity… that’s Jason. It’s not something imitating his appearance from before he died.

That is Jason, alive and several years older.

That is Jason, who just killed the Joker.

That is Jason, alone in Crime Alley.

Bruce ignores the buzz of rapid-fire questions coming through on his comm, drags his cowl back on, and tears out of the cave back in the direction of Gotham. He has to find Jason before GCPD does.

******

Bruce has been searching Crime Alley for hours and turned up absolutely nothing by the time Barbara sends Dick to bring him in for the night. Dawn creeps over the skyline of the city, and yet Jason is still out of Bruce’s reach.

“Listen, B. You need to come back to the cave to regroup and go over things, get some rest and we can look again tomorrow. Oracle has combed through the footage all night while you’ve been out here and hasn’t found any other sightings of him. If it is Jason, and not just a lookalike or something, he knows where to find us. He’s always been good at staying under the radar if he doesn’t want to be found,” Dick reasons, a hand on Bruce’s shoulder.

Bruce shakes his head. “Something wasn’t right with him. He wasn’t moving well, and the vomiting… He’s ill or injured, and alone out there in Crime Alley. He’s legally dead, he has no means of making money or renting a house. I can’t leave him like that!”

Dick frowns thoughtfully. After a moment, he replies. “Jason grew up here, Bruce. He knows how to survive on the streets of Gotham, how to get by and to stay out of trouble. He’ll be okay for one more day. We need a plan of action. You’re not going to find him by prowling the streets and interrogating any civilians you encounter.”

Bruce sighs, and concedes to the logic for the moment. He trails Dick back to the cave, works on his report of the night’s events, neatly avoids Alfred and the lecture he knows would be waiting for him, and heads into his bedroom.

Dick returns to Bludhaven, with his obligations at home. Tim heads back to Drake manor.

He doesn’t even last two hours before he slips back down into the Batcave and starts to pour over all the surveillance footage he can pull together from Crime Alley and the surrounding area.

Barbara was right, though. Facial recognition software doesn’t pick up on any more matches for Jason. He has no clue how long he’s been in Gotham.

Bruce does absently note some data about the patrol routes of the new player who’s taken over Crime Alley in the last few months. The Red Hood toes the line between vigilante and budding crime lord. His presence has the Bats on edge, not sure where they stand with the new player in the city and unable to pin him down for long enough to have a conversation about his motives — or his use of lethal force.

News articles start to pop up about the Joker’s death over the course of the day, the GCPD pulling a still image from the surveillance video and publishing it as a person of interest, providing a number to call for tips.

Another article surfaces a couple hours later, covering the efforts of the massive social media campaign that is flooding the tip line with misinformation and fake tips.

Gotham protects her own, and it seems that the entire city has come together behind the person who finally took out the Joker.

And then evening falls, and Bruce is back on the streets again, not having slept at all.

Crime Alley citizens don’t have much love for Batman, Bruce soon realizes, especially once they realize he’s looking for the man who killed the Joker. They scoff at his questioning, tell him to fuck off and that they aren’t narcs and they didn’t see anything, take off running when he appears, and even the street kids who are out this late shout things at him when they spot him, often along the lines of “ACAB includes Batman!”.

When Jason had been Robin, there had been a much friendlier response to Bats in the Bowery and the Narrows. They recognized the accent, his attitude, his desire to protect the place he grew up, and saw a kindred soul. Bruce hadn’t realized how much that had lapsed since Jason’s death, and he feels a twinge of regret that he’d let the trust the people here had for him fall away.

Bruce spends days tearing through Crime Alley with the civilians stonewalling him in every direction, and with each day that passes, his desperation grows. Jason doesn’t turn up, doesn’t seek him out, doesn’t get spotted on cameras anywhere in the city. And then the days turn into nearly two weeks. Bruce can’t sleep, hardly eats, can’t focus on his other cases, leaving more and more work for Robin to step up and handle.

It comes to a head when he decides to seek help. Because who knows Crime Alley better than its protector?

*********

Jason hasn’t left his safe house except to patrol since he came back after killing the Joker.

He’s fucking embarsssed that he got caught on a security camera without a mask on. He knows better, he was trained better, he just. Was maybe too drunk to actually do any better at the time.

With his goddamn face plastered all over the news, he can’t even head down to the grocery store to restock unless he’s decked out in his full Red Hood gear.

And based on the way Batman has been tearing up Crime Alley since the night it happened, he knows the Bats haven’t missed the shockingly high quality footage of the long-dead Robin stumbling drunk into an alley and puking his guts out after killing the Joker. Batman has been harassing every civilian he finds in Crime Alley after dark with a game of twenty questions, to the point where half the regulars are in hiding and the other half spit and curse at the name and beg the Red Hood to do something about it.

Jason’s life has gone to shit, in other words.

Eventually, Jason lands on the roof across from Batman. The black-clad vigilante has been standing around for nearly an hour in plain sight along one of the Red Hood’s patrol routes tonight, in a blatant attempt to draw the Red Hood out. Jason isn’t entirely sure if his identity under the helmet has been compromised and Bruce is here for Jason, or if he’s here to confront the Red Hood.

Either way, Jason faces him head on.

“Get the fuck outta here, Batman. You’re terrorizing my people in pursuit of whatever mission you’re obsessing over this time, and I’m not gonna put up with it any more,” He snaps at Bruce from across the roof, his posture bristling with barely concealed aggression. He’s not gonna give away anything and risk Bruce putting together the pieces if he doesn’t already know.

Bruce’s body language remains loose and calm, but Jason doesn’t let that fool him for a moment. Bruce is always ready to react even when he appears relaxed.

“I’m looking for someone,” Bruce starts, hesitant. “I have reason to believe he’s in Crime Alley, but I haven’t been able to locate him. I’ll agree to stay out of your territory, if you can help me find him.”

Jason tilts his head to the side as if thinking. Internally, he feels a rush of relief. Somehow, Bruce hasn’t managed to put two and two together to come up with the idea that Jason showing up in Gotham to kill the Joker came within a month of the Red Hood’s debut with a bag of heads is a little bit suspicious.

“Sorry, nope. Fuck that. I don’t do dirty work for Bats,” Jason scoffs.

Bruce takes a deep breath before he responds.

“Bruce Wayne has asked me to help find his son, who he has reason to believe is alive after several years... presumed dead. This is a… sensitive issue, because the missing son appears to be the man who shot the Joker. To be clear, Red Hood, I am not seeking this man out to arrest him for what he did. I am simply trying to help reunite him with his father and brothers.”

What the fuck. That was not the angle Jason expected Bruce to come at him with for this, and he’s honestly a bit blindsided. He’s thankful for the helmet that covers his flabbergasted expression.

And, fuck, with the Joker dead, his civilian identity exposed on a global level, why not have some fun as the Red Hood at Batman’s expense? And, speaking of expenses…

“Well, if Brucie is involved, I imagine he can afford to pay for my services if I agree to help look for this kid?” Jason asks casually.

“Wayne would pay anything to have his son back, Hood. He can wire you an upfront payment to start and you will be payed generously once he’s found.”

Score. Jason smirks under the helmet.

“Alright, you’ve got a deal. I find the kid for you and Wayne, you stay out of Crime Alley and quit harassing people, and I get paid. Now get the fuck out of here,” Jason drawls. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so excited to take a contract in his life.

Batman sets a device of some sort on the ground.

“You can contact me with this when you have an update,” He says in a gruff tone, before he steps off the roof and grapples away.

Jason investigates what he left and realizes it’s a comm, undoubtedly with a tracker built in. He cracks the thing open, plucks his toolkit out of his belt, and guts the device, removing and disabling everything except for the communication ability.

Jason pockets it once he’s satisfied that it’s harmless, and drops down to street level, sauntering into a nearby convenience store. It’s one he’s been shopping at every few days since his picture started floating around, and the teenager at the counter hardly gives him a second glance anymore, surfing their phone while they wait for him to gather his groceries.

Jason checks off his list mentally as he gets what he needs for the next few days, leaves a generous tip at the counter for the kid’s nonchalant acceptance of his presence, and heads back to his safe house in a roundabout path to shake any possible Bat-shaped tails.

He drops the comm on the coffee table, gets the groceries put away in the refrigerator and cupboards, and then starts making himself dinner. He gets bored later that night, and with a little adjustment and some subtle hacking into the Batcomputer, he adjusts the comm to tune into the main Bat lines rather than just the pre-programmed direct line to Batman that it was initially set up for.

Jason manages to hold out an entire two and a half more days before the boredom of being on house arrest when he’s not on patrol gets unbearable. He’s cleaned the house top to bottom multiple times, reorganized his furniture, reads through half the books in the shelf he’s been stocking, fucks around on his laptop for hours and hours, exercises and sleeps and cooks, but it’s not enough.

He’s sprawled on the ugly green couch in the center of his living room when he finds himself eyeing the comm device.

He doesn’t have a plan, really. He just knows he’s bored and has the means to fuck with Bruce a little, sitting right there.

He slips the comm into his ear, and holds the vocal distortion mechanism that he’s built to install into a replacement helmet close enough to his face that it’ll disguise his voice.

“Found the kid. Jason, right?” He says.

There’s a long pause.

“Who is this? How do you have access to this line?”

Oops. That’s Barbara. Jason had sort of forgotten that he’d reprogrammed the thing to connect to the main Bat comm line rather than directly to Bruce.

“Batman left a comm for me when he asked me to look into things in Crime Alley for him,” He says.

“He left you a comm that I set up to link directly to an airgapped private channel. Again, how do you have access to this line?” Barbara is pissed, probably trying to activate the tracker that Jason had removed in order to pinpoint his location. The tracker that’s broken and sitting at the bottom of the river somewhere.

“Is he here? He’s gonna wanna hear what I’ve got to say about Jason Todd,” Jason says, ignoring her question. He hears a sigh of frustration from her, and then after a moment, there’s a click as Batman connects to the line.

“Hood,” He says, voice a full-on Batman growl and clearly displeased. “I gave you a private line to reach me, you had no reason to compromise our main line. This is an unacceptable breach of privacy.”

Jason laughs. “Fine. I’ll fuck off, then. Man, no wonder the kid’s avoiding you guys,” And reaches up to turn off the comm and cut off whatever they respond with.

Jason takes a nap right there on the couch, and when he wakes up in a much better mood.

He heads out on patrol later that night, and of course, Batman drops in on him within the first hour. This time, he’s got Nightwing with him.

Jason guesses the little hacking display ruffled some feathers if Batman brought a bird along as backup.

Jason leans against the wall of the alley he’s in, an unconscious mugger next to him, arms crossed over his chest. The position leaves his hands near the holsters in case he has to shoot to get out of this one.

“Jason Todd,” Batman growls, and Jason’s pulse skyrockets for a split second until Bruce continues with, “Where is he?”

“He’s gone to ground and isn’t interested in letting you find him. Would be shitty to spill his location to you when he asked me so nicely not to,” Jason says. Batman’s mouth flattens into a tight line and Nightwing looks shocked for a second, before he schools his features back into neutrality.

“But you found him?” Nightwing asks. “He’s…okay?”

Jason laughs. “Yeah, I found him. He’s fine.”

“Did he say why he hasn’t gone home? To… the Waynes?” Nightwing asks hopefully.

Jason hums, taking a moment to decide what to say next, and then shrugs.

“Wouldn’t be welcome there,” He says with forced indifference.

Batman freezes. Jason doesn’t think he even breathes for a long moment. And then, voice more shaken than Jason can remember hearing it, Bruce asks, “What do you mean? Why would he think that?”

“He said Wayne accused him of something he didn’t do. Disowned him right before he died. And then he came back and actually did the thing that Wayne accused him of. So, the kid doesn’t really have a home to go back to. He says Wayne is just trying to save his public image and get control of him before the media puts two and two together and someone recognizes Wayne’s dead kid as the guy who killed the Joker.”

Jason may have put a little too much personal insight into that to pass muster as “this kid I tracked down told me this”, but it does the trick for the moment, because Batman is reeling from his words, radiating guilt, a hurt noise tearing from his throat.

Jason feels a vicious sense of satisfaction in Bruce’s guilt. But then, between one breath and the next, Nightwing turns, apparently forgetting all semblance of secret identities.

“You did what?” Dick hisses at Batman, fury etched across his features. He takes a step towards Bruce, who, to Jason’s astonishment, steps backwards away from him.

“I—“ Batman starts, but Dick lunges at him before he can speak, practically howling in rage.

“You fucking disowned him?! And then didn’t tell me he even died, didn’t give me the option of coming back from the mission early to go to his funeral? What the fuck is wrong with you, Bruce?!”

Dick punches Bruce in the face, and Bruce, against all odds, lets him.

Jason is shocked at Dick’s display. Sure, he and Dick had started to become closer before Jason’s untimely end, but when Talia had showed him the photos of his funeral, the articles noting Dick’s absence, he’d assumed that they hadn’t been as close as he’d thought they were.

But this? Hearing that Dick hadn’t known he was dead until after the funeral? Jason… doesn’t know what to do with that information. It doesn’t fit the world view he’s had since he came back to life, since he was ripped from his catatonic state choking on the Lazarus waters.

So Jason runs. He leaves Dick and Bruce brawling in the alley — although it’s looking awfully one sided from his perspective — and gets the hell out of dodge and back to his current safe house.

Once he’s home, he yanks off the helmet and strips down to his underclothes, tossing the gear haphazardly onto the bed and ducking into the bathroom. He turns the water on in the shower as hot as it’ll go, scrubs off the sweat and grime from patrol, and tosses on some clean boxers. He wanders out to the kitchen to grab some tea or something to settle down, when he runs into Robin climbing through the window.

They make eye contact and both freeze.

“Uh,” Jason starts.

“I’m sorry!” Tim Drake says, voice high and strained, “I was just checking into suspected Red Hood safehouses! I didn’t mean to — but I heard the conversation through the comms, I promise I won’t tell Bruce about this!” And then the window clatters as the kid throws his body back out the way he came and takes off with the swish of a grapple line.

Jason sits down on the couch, and drops his head into his hands with a long-suffering sigh.

Chapter Text

After the disaster of the new Robin finding his safe house, Jason is sure the game is up and that Robin will have reported back to Batman. He hardly sleeps the next couple of days, expecting a visit from Bruce at any time.

Jason is sprawled on the roof of a building near the docks, shivering in the rain that’s pouring down in sheets. He’s got a waterproof coat over his normal gear, but it doesn’t help as much as he wishes it would when the wind throws the rain around this much.

He peers down through the scope of a rifle at the people who come and go. He’s barely an hour into the third night of staking out this particular warehouse, and each night the weather and boredom has made it more miserable than the last.

He’s honestly ready to call the tip about some weapons dealers preparing a shipment out here a bust. Everything he’s seen so far has pointed towards this being an entirely above-board operation, the shipping manifests match the cargo he’s cracked open to check, and his thermal scans haven’t revealed any additional bodies beyond the general dock workers who’ve already left early for the night due to the weather.

He’s just shuffled back from his rifle stand and hauled the case over to start collapsing his gear down when there’s a flurry of movement. A box van barrels around the corner, tires screeching as they nearly lose control due to the water on the road, and then pulls to a stop in front of one of the half-full shipping containers Jason had cleared the night before.

Half a dozen people dressed in black tactical gear pour out of the van. Three check over the area, calling out as they find themselves alone, and then they stand guard while the others begin to unload boxes and then reload them into the shipping container. Jason can’t hear anything they’re saying from here, but it looks to be the activity he was looking for.

And then they drag out a body.

Jason narrows his eyes and settles back at his rifle to turn the scope to get a closer look at the new activity.

The body is dead weight, a black bag over the head and hands bound behind it. Two of the men in tactical gear drag the body towards the dock, and then drop it on its face without any ceremony. The body’s hands flex behind them and Jason stirs in surprise as he realizes that this person is still alive.

The two men exchange some words, pull out a handgun, and then one kicks the person over onto their back and levels the weapon at the head of the bound man.

Jason sees the blue bird insignia across the chest, and he acts.

It’s instinctual to send two bullets in quick succession into the chest of the man holding the weapon, and a third into the head of the second figure.

They both drop instantly.

The rifle is suppressed and he’s using subsonic rounds, so the rain and thunder provide enough background noise to drown out what’s not muffled. The men loading the shipping container don’t even realize their friends are dead before Jason is adjusting his rifle back in their direction and firing off four more rounds in quick succession.

The body — Nightwing — still lies where he’s been dropped, shifting sluggishly. Jason swears under his breath, packs up the rifle, and grapples down to street level.

He hasn’t had time to work through the bombshell that Nightwing dropped on him when he last saw him. He wants to be as angry at him as he is at Bruce, but Dick… Dick is as much a victim of Bruce’s terrible parenting as he is. He can’t blame him for not knowing he was dead in time to make it to his funeral. The flash of white-hot rage that flares up in Jason at the thought is directed entirely at Batman.

He reaches the older vigilante sprawled on the wet pavement.

“Nightwing. You awake?” Jason asks, nudging him with his boot before crouching down next to him.

Dick groans but doesn’t move. The way he’s laying on his arms can’t be comfortable. Jason tips him to the side and cuts his hands free from the heavy plastic zip tie binding them, but Dick doesn’t do much more than shift a little. Jason ends up pulling his arms out from under him to get him repositioned, and then checks him over for injury. Dick’s lack of responsiveness is concerning, but he doesn’t find any head wound, or any injuries beyond minor cuts and scrapes. He can’t even find a needle-mark to indicate he’s been dosed with anything.

Jason sits back on his heels and breathes. Dick needs to go to cave for medical treatment to figure out what’s wrong with him. But for the moment his vitals are stable, and Jason has some clean up to take care of.

He drags the bodies to the shipping container one at a time, grunting and cursing at the weight of the bastards in their heavy armor. Then, he reverses the van, parking the old thing as close to the container as he can. He pulls out some C4 from his gear bag, and sets the charges on the crates and in the van, and links them to a remote detonator. It takes all of ten minutes to accomplish, and then he’s headed back to Nightwing.

It takes a bit of work to maneuver the other man over his shoulders into a fireman’s carry, but he’s able to get him over to his motorcycle and mostly propped up in front of him, caged in by Jason’s arms and secured in place with a strap across his chest.

Dick still doesn’t really rouse, just twitches and groans. Jason kicks the motorcycle into gear and takes the slowest ride on the thing possible, the dead weight in front of him making it one of the sketchiest trips on the thing that he’s ever made.

He rolls up to the secret entrance to the cave, and after a moment of consideration, tries his old access codes.

And they work.

Sloppy, Jason thinks with a scoff, to leave the dead kid’s codes in the system. It’s a huge security risk, but it benefits him in the moment, so he can’t find himself to dwell on it any further. He continues down the tunnel towards the cave.

The cave is empty, Jason notes, with both Robin and Batman out on patrol he’s probably just got Alfred to contend with in the Manor above. He drags Dick off the bike and into the med bay, sets him down on one of the empty cots, and then after a moment of thought, hits the panic button on Nightwing’s suit. He really should have just done that in the first place rather than risk taking him here on the bike, but hindsight is 20/20 and all.

Jason can’t really do much more for Dick until a tox screen is done, and Alfred will be down soon to take over, so he steps out.

Crisis averted, he takes a moment to look around the cave before he leaves, noting the changes.

And he fucking freezes.

His Robin suit, tattered and stained in his blood despite someone having made an effort to wash it out, sits suspended in a glass case.

It’s like a magnet pulling him closer, he can’t control the steps he takes towards the thing.

He sees the placard, and in a haze he reads the inscription.

A Good Soldier.

A Good. Soldier.

He doesn’t realize he’s even moved before his fist comes down on the class with a crack, sending spiderwebs through the entire thing. His hand throbs in pain, but the gloves are reinforced and padded enough to prevent his knuckles from breaking outright.

He died.

He was fucking fifteen and he was beaten and blown up and he died, and this fucked up shrine that his father built was dedicated to a good soldier.

Jason strides over to the vehicle bay, tossing everything he finds in the tool shelves aside until his fingers find a tire iron. He whirls back and in a matter of seconds is at the case again. He brings the metal down on the glass, over and over and over again, shatters it into a million pieces, knocks the suit to the ground, warps the metal frame that suspends it. His eyes burn with tears and he feels intensely, horrifically betrayed.

Batman didn’t save him. Batman didn’t avenge him. Batman didn’t grieve for him as his son. He was just a lesson learned, his memory just a tribute to a soldier lost in a war. Batman didn’t even tell his brother he was dead, didn’t invite him to Jason’s funeral.

His heart pounds in his ears and feels himself choking on smoke, feels himself buried under the rubble, his broken body unable to escape.

He feels himself waking up in a dark coffin, choking on grave dirt and worms as he claws his way out.

Forehand or backhand?

Someone clears their throat behind him.

Jason is jolted back to reality, his pulse racing. He’s standing over the remains of the memorial case, his chest heaving wildly in uncontrolled breaths.

Jason forces himself to turn, to face Alfred. The old man stands behind him holding a shotgun aimed at Jason, gaze sharp and assessing, taking in the Red Hood and the scene that surrounds him. Jason follows his gaze as it flicks over to Nightwing on the cot in the med bay, then back to the destroyed case, and then directly at Jason. He feels his fingers twitch around the tire iron, feeling uncomfortably exposed considering he’s covered head to toe.

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Alfred draws in a sharp breath, deciding on a course of action.

“Well, it was about time somebody did something about that horrid case,” the butler says, tone mild. The shotgun is lowered, and Jason shudders out a breath of his own, trying to slow his racing pulse.

“Jason would kill me if I left that thing standing,” Jason says after a minute, and Alfred’s lips twitch up in a tiny smile. Jason tips his head to gesture towards Dick. “Some arms dealers got the jump on him, were gonna dispose of him at the harbor. They drugged him with something.” He says, intensely grateful for the way the modulator disguises how unsteady and hoarse his voice is.

Alfred glances over him one more time, and then he nods. “I see. He will receive the treatment he needs.” Alfred pauses for a moment, and then continues. “Batman will be arriving shortly. I recommend you be gone before he arrives. He… won’t react well to this scene,” He says, eyes flicking first to Nightwing and then at the destroyed case. “Thank you for bringing him back to us, Master Hood.”

Jason takes a deep breath, pushes everything that’s roaring in his mind in that moment down and squeezes back the tears that prick hot and damp at his eyes, and nods back at him. Then he’s on his bike and back out of the tunnel, leaving the cave behind again.

Fuck Bruce. Fuck him.

******

Jason is being followed in the days after the incident at the cave, but contrary to his initial suspicion, it's not Batman.

Robin’s interest in Jason has ramped up, and the kid has taken to tailing him on patrol.

At first, it’s subtle. The kid just so happens to run routes that skirt along the edge of Jason’s territory in Crime Alley, and he’ll occasionally get a flicker of a black and yellow cape in the corner of his eye.

And then the kid drops in on his next stakeout. And the next.

Tim makes an effort to kick up conversation, friendly enough at first glance, but Jason’s got a suspicion that he’s fishing for information. It leaves him prickling with unease, his words a little sharper than they might otherwise be. He doesn’t like not knowing where he stands with the kid, how much he knows, who he’s told.

The feeling of unease only intensifies as he realizes that he’s being interviewed and his answers assessed and picked apart.

Eventually, Tim drops a few leading questions about the identities of the Bats, and Jason admits that he knew who they were behind the masks even before Nightwing lost his shit on Bruce the other night. The honesty seems to put Tim at ease, and from there the conversation is a bit less stilted.

But he still can’t figure out how much the kid actually knows.

It takes a few nights of this routine for the realization to strike that Batman is letting this kid run wild in Crime Alley without adult supervision. Sure, Jason is eighteen and a legal adult — technically. If you count the time he was rotting in a grave. He finds himself spiraling into the mindfuck concept of if his age is based around the time he spent conscious and alive or the total time he’s been on the earth.

But. He’s basically eighteen and a crime lord, he doesn’t count as adult supervision. And yet he finds himself keeping an eye on the kid, because apparently Batman is avoiding the Red Hood entirely now after the reminder of what he did to Jason.

It surprises him how curt the residents of this part of Gotham are towards Robin, at first. He remembers having a close rapport with the community here even when he worked with Batman, and he’d assumed that friendly relationship had carried over to his replacement.

Apparently not. Must be the kid’s Bristol accident, rather than the familiar Crime Alley drawl that Jason never really unlearned.

The chill towards Robin begins to fade the more they see him hanging around the Red Hood, but it doesn’t quite settle into the friendly familiarity that Jason-as-Robin had with the community that he grew up in.

Nightwing even drops in on one of the Red Hood’s patrols, as well. He finds Jason after a brawl with some low-level gangster who’s now unconcious and bound on the pavement, and awkwardly thanks him for saving him, and then after a moment, asks, “Why did you destroy the memorial?”

Jason’s temper tries to flare immediately, but one glance at the misery and grief that radiates off of Dick has him shoving down his initial response and thinking through what he wants to say.

After a long pause, Jason manages to piece together the words. “He was just a kid. A kid who died, brutally. He should have been remembered as… as a beloved son, not as a good soldier, not displayed as a lesson of what happens to Robins if they don’t listen. If I left that case up, I’d be… I’d be doing a disservice to the memory of that kid who died.”

Dick sucks in several shallow, shaky breaths, processing what he said, before he seems to come to a conclusion.

“Can you tell me about him?” Dick asks, voice soft and hesitant.

Jason isn’t sure how to respond to that. Hell, he isn’t even sure who he is now, let alone how to explain it to someone. He’s not that kid anymore, but everything that kid went through shaped who he’s become.

“I don’t think that’s my place,” Jason says after a long moment.

“Okay, yeah. I — I understand. Can you tell him something for me, then?”

Jason hums, noncommittal. The noise gets garbled by the voice modulator.

“Can you tell him that I miss him? And that… I’d really like to see him. Whatever he needs in order to feel safe, I’ll do it. No Bruce. No trackers. Hell, we can… can meet outside of Gotham or something, if he wants to be sure Batman won’t show up. I just want to see my brother again. Please, Hood. You’re our only point of contact to Jason, and I just… I need to know he’s okay.”

Jason’s heart catches in his throat and he stills where he’s standing. Dick’s entire face is tight with hope as he awaits Hood’s answer, and Jason can’t find it in him to say no.

“I’ll tell him,” He manages to choke out.

And then Dick is thanking him, earnest and choked up, and Jason feels a creeping guilt deep in his gut as Nightwing grapples away into the night.

*******

After that emotional disaster of a conversation, Jason elects to take a night off, sprawled on his couch with a bottle of whiskey.

He may not be the same kid he was, but he thinks, maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t hurt to remind himself of who that kid was.

When he was younger, he spent hours and hours combing through his favorite books, carefully annotating them with his own commentary.

Reading was an escape for him before he ended up with Bruce, and access to the manors library didn’t change the fact that he kept personal copies of his favorites tucked in his nightstand and bookshelf in his room that were his.

He misses his fucking books.

He doesn’t think Bruce would have thrown out his things, based on the awful memorial case in the cave. They’re probably boxed up in storage somewhere in the manor.

Jason wonders idly if the manor’s security is as out of date as the cave’s had been, and if his old routes for sneaking in and out of his room would still be there.

Only one way to find out, he figures

Get in, get Pride and Prejudice, and get out.

It’s the best idea he’s had in a while.

He rolls off the couch, digs his Red Hood gear out of the crate it’s stored in, and with a bit more of a struggle than he’d like to admit to, manages to get the suit pulled on.

It’s easier than it should be to break into his old bedroom. The window lock he altered to be able to sneak out works just as well to let him slip back in, even years later. But when he drops to the floor and looks up to check the room over, he stumbles.

He expects it to be emptied out, that any of his personal belongings they might have kept to have been boxed up and stored in a corner of an attic somewhere.

Instead, the room is entirely unchanged from the day he left it, frozen in time.

There’s schoolwork spread across the desk, his backpack sitting open next to it on the ground. His bed is made exactly as he’d left it, the blankets slightly rumpled from his rush to get moving to look for his mom that morning.

Someone has been in to clean it recently, Jason notes, based on the lack of accumulated dust in the room.

He shakes off the prickle of unease that the room causes, and heads to his bookshelf. There, exactly where he left it, is the worn but well-loved copy of Pride and Prejudice that he was looking for.

He slips the book into the lapels of his jacket and turns to leave, but after a moment he pulls it out again. He sits on the bed and flips it open, and finds a little piece of himself in each of the notes scribbled in the margins.

*****

Jason arranges the meeting at a cafe in Metropolis, and shoots a text to Dick with the location and after a moment of consideration, a second text stating that he could bring the new Robin along, too. Once the confirmation of the message being delivered comes through, he promptly destroys the burner phone and tosses the pieces.

Choosing a public space in Superman’s city, he figures Batman won’t turn up uninvited, so it’s about as safe as he can get. And hopefully, the public space will reduce the freak out from Dick when he finds out, if Robin hasn’t already spilled the beans.

Jason doesn’t get time to work himself up over the upcoming meeting, because Batman decides he’s done avoiding Red Hood and suddenly the old bastard is everywhere. Between him and Robin and Nightwing’s occasional drop ins, Jason is seeing Bats around every corner and in every shadow and it’s driving him insane.

Batman eventually goes from lurking to cornering him at the end of his patrols and handing him a heavy-ass cardboard box.

“Deliver this to Jason.” He grunts.

“Do I look like a fucking delivery boy?” Jason snarls, dropping the box to the ground and squaring his shoulders at Batman.

Batman frowns, and his hand shoots out. Jason flinches back, ready to dodge the blow, until he realizes Bruce is holding a white envelope. After a long pause, Jason snatches it.

“For your time. Thank you.” Bruce says, and while Jason is peeling the envelope open and pulling out what is frankly a concerning amount of cash, at least several thousand dollars in large bills at a glance, Batman pulls a vanishing act and disappears into the night.

Fine, then. Jason can play delivery boy to himself if it means scamming money off of Bruce as penance for being a shitty father.

When he unpacks the box at a low priority safe house nearby, it turns out to be full of… books.

He realized that maybe his drunken visit to the Wayne manor didn’t go quite as undetected as he thought.

He carefully removes a handful of tiny trackers from the books, and another two off the box itself.

In a fit of pettiness, he swings by the cemetery and dumps the trackers off at the granite headstone marking his grave before he takes the books home to his apartment. If he shivers at the sight of the stone, the memory of his fingers bloodied from clawing at satin and wood, of choking on mud, then that’s no one’s business but his own.