Chapter Text
Jason checked his helmet’s HUD and grinned. 2:37 AM. It was showtime.
He double checked to make sure that the knives and guns attached to the Red Hood costume glinted ominously in the moonlight. Then he leaned against the wall, crossed his arms, and assumed his best “nonchalantly threatening” stance.
Just in time, too, because at 2:38 AM the replacement Robin came stumbling in through the window.
Apparently the little bird was tired enough that he didn’t immediately notice Jason lurking in the shadows. The living room of the replacement’s townhouse was messy and dark enough to give Jason a little cover, but come on. Jason had been hoping for a reaction.
The kid wasn’t fully in costume—he had a hoodie over the top half of the Robin suit and was carrying his wadded-up cape—but the sight of the stolen colors still made Jason’s blood boil. And how come Drake got to have pants as Robin? It was so unfair.
Drake plodded across the room towards the stairs at the end of the hall.
Yikes. Terrible situational awareness. Time to take matters into his own hands.
Jason cleared his throat. “Boo,” he hissed. His voice modulator distorted the sound into a nice demonic crackling tone.
Drake let out a high-pitched shriek and spun to face him, hands up and stance widening in preparation for a fight. Then he seemed to recognize Jason, and his hands dropped. He reached over to flip the wall switch. Light flooded the room, utterly ruining Jason’s ambiance.
“Geez, dude. What the heck?” the replacement said, looking more annoyed than terrified. Had this child no common sense?
“Hello, replacement,” Jason said.
“Um. Hi?” Drake lobbed the Robin cape at the couch, where it landed on top of some stray papers in a puddle of yellow and black. Had Jason mentioned that the replacement's house was a disaster zone? Because it was. Alfred would be horrified. “Why are you in my living room?” Drake asked.
Then he frowned. "I had better not be hallucinating," he muttered to himself. "It hasn't even been 50 hours."
Jason could not believe this shit. Seriously, what the fuck? Was he implying he hadn't slept in the past two days? Did Alfred know about this?
Jason took out his left pistol and fired a shot into the drywall near the replacement's head. The replacement jumped about a foot, whipped out and extended his bo, then collapsed it again. He poked the bullet hole with one finger. His eyes widened.
He turned back to Jason with an outraged glare. "What the heck, man! What was that for!?"
Jason smirked behind the helmet. "Hallucinations don't leave bullet holes, pretender."
"And you couldn't have- I don't know, thrown a pillow?" Drake continued to look vaguely outraged. "Seriously, Jason?"
Ugh. They were getting off-topic. Jason spun the pistol he'd just fired around his finger. “You and I need to have a little chat,” he growled.
The replacement visibly moved on from the bullet hole, smoothing his indignation into a coolly blank facade. He suddenly looked a lot less like an annoying teenager and more like Robin. "Is this about yesterday morning?”
“YES, dumbass.” Jason resisted the urge to throw up his hands in exasperation. It would ruin the imposing stance he had going on. “Literally what else would this be about?”
Drake shrugged. “Sure, we can talk. Do you want to sit down, or…”
“I know about your uncle.”
The replacement stiffened almost imperceptibly for a moment before his bearing returned to normal. If Jason hadn’t been trained by the League’s body language expert, he might have missed the tell.
“What?” Drake’s face scrunched in guileless confusion. “What does my uncle have to do with anything?”
Damn, this kid was a good liar.
“Don’t play dumb with me.” Jason reached inside his jacket. The replacement tensed at the movement but relaxed when Jason merely pulled out a manila folder.
He threw the folder across the room, where it landed with a slap on the hardwood, slid, and came to a stop at Drake’s feet. Warily, Drake leaned down to pick it up.
Behind the helmet, Jason grinned.
The replacement read the contents of the folder in silence for a few minutes before looking up at Jason.
“You think Edward Drake, my uncle, is– what. Not real?” Drake’s every word dripped with baffled incredulity. “Like, you think I hallucinated him?”
“No.” Jason bit back a growl. Why couldn’t the pretender just react how he was supposed to and start panicking so Jason could do his villain monologue? “But I know you made him up. I know you forged the will. Forged a lot else, too, didn't you? And I know you plan to hire an actor to impersonate Edward Drake.”
Jason’s only question was: Why??? Why the actual fuck would the kid do something as batshit insane as faking an uncle when Bruce was right there with probable fucking adoption papers in hand??
Clearly, something more was going on. Maybe this was, like, a Bat training exercise? In identity fraud? Or maybe the kid was being blackmailed by a villain or something? And the villain was going to pretend to be Edward as part of a nefarious scheme? Was Drake being mind-controlled? None of these explanations really made sense, but Jason couldn’t come up with anything better.
As much as Jason was here to Uno Reverse the little cuckoo’s blackmail attempt, he was also here to get some fucking answers.
He crossed his arms. Drake was watching him with a nakedly calculating expression. Then his gaze kind of unfocused, and he stood stock still, hands still curled around the folder, for a while. After a two minutes of waiting for Drake to react, Jason was tempted to shoot the wall again, but he held off for now.
Just when the trance was getting creepy and Jason was about to throw a knife really-close-to-but-not-at his head, Drake nodded once to himself as if making a decision. His gaze left the middle distance and returned to Jason’s helmet.
“Do you want tea?” he asked.
“What?”
“Tea? To drink.” Drake’s expression was still slightly abstracted. “We have… chamomile, probably? Jasmine? I don’t really know. My stepmom bought a lot of it, and she’s not gonna drink any of it now—”
Right, Jason knew her from his research. Dana Drake-Winters was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Blüdhaven following her husband’s death.
“—and I’m not really a tea person, but I feel like this is the kind of conversation that works better with tea.”
“Uh.” Jason blinked several times in rapid succession. The last person to offer him tea had been Talia. The cardamom blend had been delicious, at least after he’d pointed out that the first cup Talia handed him was poisoned and she’d poured him a new one. It had been a test and not a murder attempt. Probably. Jason was pretty sure.
The replacement was still looking at him expectantly.
“No, I don’t want tea,” Jason said. “If you want to talk, replacement, then talk. I don’t have all day.”
“Right. OK.” Drake set aside the manila folder and clasped his hands together like he was preparing to give a mission report. “I have a mutually beneficial proposal for you. One. You pose as Edward Drake for three months, until my birthday, when I’ll be old enough to get legally emancipated.”
He wanted Jason to– What the fuck?
The kid continued, insensible of Jason’s bewilderment. “Two. If, during the arrangement, you agree to put a hard pause on whatever crime-blood-revenge plot it is you’ve got going on, then at the end of the three months I’ll help you with it. Not the crime-y parts, obviously, but I’ll cover for you and keep B and Dick out of your way.”
Jason felt like he’d missed a step going down the stairs. This had to be some sort of trap, right?
“And if I say no, pretender?”
“I know who you are. Jason," Drake said. "I know you’re the Red Hood. And, hypothetically, I could do a lot of damage with that information. If you impersonate my uncle, I’ll have strong incentive to guard your secrets, rather than expose them.”
God fucking dammit.
But Jason could work around the blackmail, if he really had to. He could threaten one of the kid's friends, or straight up kidnap him, or something. But... well, he would decide what to do about the blackmail after he got his questions answered.
"Why are you even doing this shit?" Jason asked.
“What do you mean?” The replacement looked distinctly nonplussed.
“Do you… Why are you so desperate not to live with him?” The silence stretched and a pit started to form in Jason’s stomach. As much as it pained him to dwell on, he could admit that Bruce had been a fairly decent parent. Had that changed? What if—
“It’s not like that. I don’t not want to live with B, but– It’s just complicated, ok?” he snapped, defensive.
“No. Explain it to me.” Jason set his hands on his hips. “An explanation is literally the only condition I’ve given you and you owe me it if I’m even going to think about going along with your scheme.”
“Urgh.” Drake shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket. “I don’t– It’s just– Ugh. It’s better this way. We don’t— Me and B don’t work like that. I don’t need another parent and Bruce doesn’t need another son.”
“But–” Jason couldn’t explain why he was protesting this. “But you’re Robin.”
Drake gave him a look. “Being Robin doesn’t mean I’m his kid.”
Of course it does, Jason almost said, but stopped himself. What did he care? Heck, what did he even know about the relationship between Bruce and his replacement? Sure, he’d thought he’d known, but the more he talked to Tim, the more apparent the flaws in Talia’s intel became.
Instead he said, “You’re still a kid, replacement.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, Tiny Tim. You’re like four feet tall.” The kid bristled in offense and Jason smirked. Then his face dropped into a scowl. “And fighting crime in scaly panties doesn’t make you a fucking adult.”
“Okay, one, it was a leotard, not panties, which you know. Two,” Drake gestured at his own legs smugly, “I obviously fixed that problem. And three.” Drake sobered. “I wasn’t really talking about Robin. I just meant I’ve been pretty independent for a long time. I don’t need Bruce trying to, like, give me a bedtime or something. Tim made a face. “Like he could even enforce it.”
What was that supposed to mean? “I’m pretty sure Alfred could.”
“I guess.” Drake looked dubious. “But he picks his battles. Whatever. My point here is that’s just not how Bruce and I work. The uncle contingency is the best and most efficient course of action and will save everyone a lot of– Awkwardness.”
“If you say so.” Jason frowned. “Ok, so, for whatever fucking reason you don't want to be adopted by Bruce. Why are you involving me? We barely even know each other, we’re sure as hell not friends, and you’re asking me to live in your house and help you commit identity fraud? Is it because I used to be–” Robin? hung unsaid, heavy in the air between them. Jason shook his head. “Because if it is—that kid is dead.”
Drake studied him, frowning. It felt like being on the wrong end of a magnifying glass.
After a moment, he said, “That’s not why. If I’m being honest, it’s mostly logistics. You’re in Gotham, you approximately fit the demographics, you already know about the night job,” Drake listed, ticking the points on his fingers. “You obviously won’t mind that it’s illegal, and you’re competent enough to pull off the deception." The kid offered him a small smile. “And, Jason? I get that you’re not the same person, but, you’re still a good person. I’m asking you because I know I can trust you.”
Jason’s chest felt strangely tight.
The replacement was almost certainly being manipulative, was probably just saying what Jason wanted to hear, but– You’re a good person.
I trust you.
Fuck.
Fuck it all to hell, Jason was going to end up agreeing to this convoluted maybe-a-trap fucked-up little custody scheme, wasn’t he?
”If,” Jason started. Tim's face lit up, apparently sensing Jason’s weakness like sharks scented blood. ”If I agree to this shit, you have to understand that I’m keeping the night job. I will put certain plans on pause, but I’m not going to cut back on the day-to-day Red Hood shit. And I’m sure as hell not going to change my methods. Capiche?”
To Jason's surprise, Tim merely grimaced. “I figured as much.”
Jason gave him an incredulous look. “You know I kill people, right? That duffel bag wasn’t full of party balloons.”
Tim sighed. “I know. But what am I supposed to do—arrest you? Even if I could, we both know you'd just escape.” He shook his head. “Me trying to stop you wouldn’t change a thing, except then we’d be enemies.”
Jason ran a hand through his hair. “Alright. Alright, then. I guess I’m doing this."
"Wait, really?"
"Against my better judgement."
“So you’ll be Edward Drake for the next three months?”
“I reserve my right to quit at any time, but YES, dipshit. Are you listening to a word I say?”
Slowly, Tim’s expression of consternation changed to one of demented glee. “Oh my God that was so much easier than I thought,” he whispered to himself. He looked at Jason. “Can you start Tuesday?”
“Uh. I have a gang meeting on Tuesday. Could we do Wednesday instead?”
Tim nodded eagerly. “Yeah, Wednesday works.”
“Great. And Tim?” Jason was using his Red Hood voice, all bladed edges and silky menace. “If this is meant to be some kind of trap, or ploy, or I find out Bruce is involved… they will never stop finding the body.”
Tim blanched, but otherwise kept a poker face. “Understood. See you later, Jason.” He turned towards the stairs, apparently content to leave the crime lord unsupervised in his living room, then paused and turned back. “Oh. Also. Tomorrow or Friday, we need to go over logistics. Get the story straight and all that. Don’t worry about it. I’ll come to you.”
Jason was left alone in the dark, wondering what the fuck just happened.