Chapter Text
For the first few seconds, it’s like everything is in slow motion.
The first thing Peter sees is the gun. Held off to the side and pointed slightly down, as though aimed at someone lying or perhaps kneeling.
The second thing is the small black blur shooting upwards at an angle, too big to be a bullet, slicing a deep gash across the neck of the person holding the gun, then continuing back and embedding itself in the wall.
The third thing he sees is an expression of utter disbelief on the face of the person who is unmistakably Neal Caffrey, mouth agape and eyes wide. Distantly he notes that this Neal has the same black hair and unnatural green eyes as the boy from before.
The fourth thing he sees are Neal’s hands flying up, dropping the gun, the gun falling, reaching up to his neck, blood gushing past his fingers and staining them crimson as he begins to tip backwards. Peter starts running towards his CI associate coworker friend to catch him before he falls.
The fifth thing he sees, partially hidden by a leather jacket, is a red bat. A very recognizable red bat that Peter sees on the Most Wanted wall everyday. He thinks in a denial, but Neal hates guns and the universe responds by speeding time up to normal.
He’s a bit too far away to catch him properly so mostly he slows down the other man’s fall, making him touch down to the floor rather than hitting it.
As soon as he’s down, Peter whips off his suit coat and kneels down, presses it down on Neal’s neck, ignoring how the fabric soaks through almost immediately. Ignoring the smell of iron and copper so strong he can taste it in the air.
Ignoring how this kid can’t be more than 20 and is probably younger. Ignoring that this is the Red Hood, ignoring how this kid has Neal’s face but is the opposite of everything Neal has presented himself as, and trying to ignore how badly he’s failing at ignoring those things.
God, he’s just a kid. What happens to a kid that makes him decide to become one of the most brutally effective crime lords of the century? He should be finding a college and going on dates, not decapitating mob lieutenants and getting his throat cut.
Neal’s dimly glowing eyes find Peter’s own, unfocused, and he’s struck by the sheer helplessness and fear and other emotions he can’t decipher swirling around inside them.
Peter can hear people around him screaming, yelling, talking, running around, he blocks it all out. His sole focus is on the boy in front of him, the warm liquid soaking the fabric under his hands, and the steadily growing pool of blood under his knees.
Someone sits next to him and tries to move his hands but Peter doesn’t let them, the darkened suit jacket squishing unpleasantly and blood bubbling up around his fingers as he presses down.
He thinks someone is talking or maybe yelling at him, but everything sounds strange, murky and warped as though underwater. He ignores the sound, trying in vain to find a piece of cloth not soaked and dripping red. (He has a distant, probably hysterical thought that the dry cleaning bill for this suit will be through the roof.)
More cloth appears in Peter’s field of vision, white and gauzy (probably just gauze, didn’t Agent Trenton have that huge first aid kit earlier?), and it settles down lightly on top of his hands. He quickly shifts his hands to the top of the fabric and nods in thanks (probably? He’s not totally sure what’s happening.) It saturates far too quickly.
Come on kid, he thinks. I can’t watch someone else die today.
Neal gasps suddenly and bats away Peter’s hands, flipping over to his hands and knees. He coughs, ripping away the cloth glued to his skin and tossing it to the side with a wet thwap.
Peter lurches forwards to keep him from pulling off the stuff keeping his blood inside of him instead of on the floor. “No! Don’t do… that…”
He trails off, not totally sure what’s happening. The cut, deep and wide, is… closing? Thin green tendrils of what’s obviously magic twist and intertwine in a hypnotizing manner, leaving fresh scar tissue behind.
From the silence in the room, it’s clear that everyone else either saw the magic itself or noticed the stream of blood stopping, because apart from Neal’s heavy breathing the room is utterly silent.
Peter can’t make out too much of his face from this angle, but it’s clear that he’s not quite present yet.
He’s still the first one to break the silence.
“I lost,” Neal rasps out. “That bastard… I give him a choice where there’s only two options an’ I win both ways, an’ he fucking makes a new option where I fucking lose.”
Peter watches a clearly well-worn fury take over his features as he lets his head hang down.
“Bastard,” he hisses.
Someone off to the side squeaks, a high, frightened sound.
Neal jolts and does an acrobatic jumpy-twisty-flipy thing that it is very unfair for a man built like a tank to be able to do so gracefully, and lands on his feet facing everyone.
Unfortunately, when Peter looks at the younger version of his friend, he’s not met with charming, affable Neal.
Instead, the Red Hood looms over the room, bloodstained and a new gun in hand. A calculating gaze passing over each of them in turn, assessing every person individually. There’s a dangerous glint in his eyes though his stance has gone totally relaxed, as though no be one in the room is worthy of much consideration or concern.
“I’ll only ask once,” he says conversationally. Then his offhand tone turns to pure menace. “Where the fuck am I, an’ who the fuck’re all of you?”
~~~.0.~~~
It’s almost funny how similar he is to the kid from before, Peter thinks. Asking the same questions and everything.
The differences between the two are a bit too extreme to find any humor in it though. Jay was angry and violent, but once he relaxed a bit he looked like a normal (albeit horrifically scarred) teenager.
The man in front of Peter now, however, radiates more danger than when he was tensed up. Leaning up against the desk behind him and looking at everyone with a hooded gaze, he looks more like a predatory animal waiting to strike than like he is in any way off-guard.
Once the silence has lasted for an awkwardly long time, Red Hood smirks.
“Cat got your tongue?” He quips.
Peter isn’t sure why, but instead of something that makes sense, like ‘you’re under arrest’ (which if he was very lucky wouldn’t have been his last words) he blurts out, “Are you okay?”
Hood stares at him blankly, and the look is so much like the one Neal does the few times Peter surprised him that it hurts. “…What?” he finally asks.
He can almost see the words flashing in the other man’s head: “Red_Hood.exe has stopped working. Please reboot and try again later.” Meanwhile, Diana is trying to send him a message with her eyes that he would bet means ‘What are you doing!?’ Jones is searching the heavens for help. Agent Trenton is clutching his first aid kit like it a security blanket. Everyone else looks like they’re either about to scream, cry, pray, throw up, or a mixture of all four.
Peter relates to these feelings. Peter agrees that he should shut up. Peter does not know what he’s doing and is probably about to die and deeply regrets saying anything. But it’s too late to stop now that he has the crime lord’s full attention.
‘Are you okay.’ Who asks a murderous crime lord holding a gun if they’re okay? Peter, because apparently he wants to get shot.
“You heard me,” Peter says. “Are you okay?”
He closes his eyes and braces for whatever’s going to happen next, but instead of a gunshot or glass shattering or any of the other violent things he expected might happen, he hears a pained little laugh. He opens one eye and oh. It’s Hood.
Hood who looks very much like the teenager he is all of a sudden, blood and weapons notwithstanding. Peter’s heart clenches as the kid’s shoulders shake with choked laughter that might be sobs and he slowly slides down until he’s sitting against the side of the desk.
Hood’s eyes open, and the angle matched with the blood under them makes Peter think of another pair of eyes staring up at him just a few minutes ago, far bluer but no less exhausted.
“I’m so fucking tired,” Hood whispers. “An’ I just wanna go home.”
Before Peter can think of a response to that, blue light starts emanating from him. Between one blink and the next the Red Hood is gone.