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This mission had not gone the way he'd expected.
First of all, Jason had only been gathering intel on some presumably unaffiliated thugs trying their hands at an illegal drug business. He hadn't planned on interfering, not at all, only observation, especially since it was way past his regular patrol time and he’d actually gotten back out of bed for this stupid stint. Planning crimes at eight in the morning should be a crime in itself.
But everything had gone to shit when suddenly Two-Face and his men appeared and started a motherfucking razzia on those poor suckers. Apparently good ol’ Dent didn't appreciate people smuggling on what he considered his turf (which was already plenty ridiculous in itself. This was Red Hood territory, as everyone with half a brain cell should know. Ha, half a brain cell. Two-Face. Geddit? ) and had decided to stage the loudest and most chaotic intervention Jason had ever had the pleasure of attending.
Which still wasn't the moment everything had gone to shit. He'd actually sat on one of the metal braces underneath the ceiling, well out of view and fully intending for things to stay that way. He hadn't been equipped to deal with Two-Face right then because, you know, he hadn't intended to engage at all. But, of course, one of those trigger happy bastards had at one point started shooting randomly in all directions – including Jason's hiding place. So he had made a swan dive to the side, his helmet clanking against the metal loudly and alerting everyone in the room of not just his presence, but also his position.
And then the No-Names and Two-Face had apparently spontaneously struck up a truce and focussed all their fire on him. Jason had scurried along the braces, trying to get back to the broken roof light he'd entered through or, at least, out of sight. But one of those idiots below had seemingly known how to put that crippled brain cell of his to use and started throwing grenades at him. Poorly aimed, but the blast radius was large enough Jason had actually gotten somewhat worried. But he had seen a large ventilation shaft ahead and, although he had had no idea where it led, Jason had been sure he could either find a way out or at least hide and call in the cavalry.
Just as he had finished the thought, he heard a clink right behind him and barely had the time to mutter a curse and throw himself to the side before it went off. The next thing he had known was landing hard against the floor on his back, uninjured thanks to his protective armour, but still wheezing, the impact knocking all the air out of his lungs.
“GET HIM!”
And then those lowlifes had actually had the audacity to dogpile on him, burying him under their mass as if this was a fucking comedy movie. Even though Jason was sure he’d broken a few bones – not his own, of course – as he had struggled to free himself, it hadn’t taken long until he had simply run out of room to move, the weight keeping him nailed to the floor. And here he was now, fighting the rise of internal panic he was painfully familiar with, and had had enough of in both his first and – in particular – this lifetime, but this feeling of being crushed, unable to move because of a weight pressing down on him –
“Look what we got here”, a raspy, gravelly voice said, and Jason knew it belonged to Dent without having to see him through the haze engulfing his brain. The shouting from the pile of bodies on top of his own ceased and muted footsteps approached his position.
“Seems like we caught ourselves a much bigger fish. Take him away, boys!”
There was some shuffling and the dirt on top of him shifted, gave way, but Jason was still frozen, eyes wide underneath his helmet and sweating. When he felt hands grabbing at his arms and legs, pulling, Jason suddenly surged into action – not again.
A loud voice boomed over the sounds of moving soil and rain in his ears as he thrashed around, bones breaking between his fingers even though he saw nothing but earth and fiery green. Then there was a sharp pain at his neck, right where his armour ended and before his helmet began. All energy left his body, even if his mind whirled like a hurricane, repeating no no NO like a mantra and reminding him of what happened the last time he had stopped fighting back, recalling the picture of waking up in his own grave.
A different kind of haze spread through his mind and his thoughts turned sluggish, subduing the panic setting each of his nerves on fire and he became drowsy. Even though Jason had trouble keeping his eyes open, whichever drug they'd injected him with also cleared his mind of most of the blind fear and anger, and he realised he was royally screwed. I’m going to die. He knew he was panicking, even though he couldn’t actually feel it, much less do something against it, physically or mentally. It didn’t take more than a few seconds until everything faded to black.
When Jason woke up again, it was to a headache that made him ready to murder puppies. He blinked his way back to consciousness and tried to recall what happened even through the mud that was currently his brain. He’d been on a stake-out, then Dent, the little fucker, had shown up, they’d ganged up on him and… Jason scowled. He remembered the panic bordering on hysteria rising up in him and being injected with some kind of sedative. His last thought rang in his head, bouncing in his skull like a tennis ball. I’m going to die. Another surge of cold dread crept into his insides, but Jason forced himself to stay calm – he was not going to die here. Not because of Dent of all people. There was no way he’d let Mr District Attorney finish what the Joker started.
Rapidly shaking his head to regain his bearings, reminding himself to be methodical, to not let himself be consumed by the prickling sensation of muddy earth crawling along his skin, he began to survey his surroundings. The room was small and bare – cold metal walls, no windows. A small table between two chairs, one of which he was bound to. A heavy metallic door leading outside which was probably locked. A medium-sized air vent in the ceiling in the middle of the room. That was it. He let out a low groan and noticed he was still wearing his helmet when his own distorted voice reached his ears.
“Arseholes”, he mumbled and felt it necessary to shake the new wave of dread off. Focus. You’ve gotten out of worse situations.
Thankfully, repressing all feelings and emotions not mandatory to the situation at hand was one of the first things he’d picked up from Batman. So Jason took a quick moment to concentrate on his breathing and nothing else, using the short time of clarity it provided even through the panicked haze to put mentioned panic into a small box to lock it away, out of his immediate thoughts. Maybe – most definitely, looking at B – not a healthy habit, but at least in cases like these it was definitely the lesser bad. When he reopened his eyes, the world around him shifted into almost razor-sharp focus.
He breathed out. “Okay.”
When he tried to move, Red Hood realised not just his arms were restricted, but also his legs. Craning his neck, he looked at the bindings.
His wrists weren't just cuffed to each other, but also to the sides of the chair he was sitting on, same with his feet. He let out another curse – getting out of this wasn't going to be easy, especially since along with his gloves, gun straps, hoodie and leather jacket, they had taken most of his equipment away. He still wore his body armour, though, presumably because they couldn't find a way to get it off him, same with his helmet. Jason idly wondered how many of those scumbags were granted irreversible nerve damage thanks to the electric shock everyone unaware of how to disable the traps of his equipment before removing it was treated. His lips curled into a small smirk – hopefully a lot.
Shaking his head again, Jason tested the cuffs. They were tight, barely giving him room to move, which was decidedly not good, and that he couldn't even twist one hand without painfully disrupting the blood flow in the other was even worse. He wasn't quite sure why Dent hadn't killed him immediately, but he was quite sure it wasn't to treat him to some ice cream later, which meant he had to get out. God knows what this binary nut job was planning for him that made it indisputable he stayed alive but bound.
Just as he was thinking of a way to break his hands to get out, the door to the small room opened and one of Two-Face's henchmen entered. Jason eyed him. He looked vaguely familiar. Maybe the bastard who had pulled out the grenades? Jason was going to have fun with him… As soon as he got out of this, that is.
“The big, bad Red Hood… bound to a chair, defenceless”, the mook taunted as he walked around Jason, looking like the ugliest cat who'd gotten the cream ever.
“I don't know”, Hood started, shrugging his shoulders as much as his predicament allowed. “I like to think I'm more dangerous unconscious than you’ll ever be, pal. Just ask your little friends. Tell me, how many of your buddies are twitching in a corner right now?”
“You have a sharp mouth, Hood”, the guy said, quite pissed if the look on his face was anything to go by as he stood behind the table across from Jason, glowering. “But that's not going to help you now, is it? You're lucky you're still alive, bastard, but the boss has plans for you.”
“And what, pray tell, does he want with me? Stick me to his front entrance to electrocute trespassers?”
“Watch your words, Red Hood!”, the thug hissed, stepping closer and leaning over the table to stare at him threateningly through narrowed eyes. Jason was sure if it wasn't for the automatic air filtering system of his helmet, he would now be very nauseous – his new friend didn't look as if he paid a lot of attention to dental hygiene. He leaned back as much as his position would let him.
“We might not be allowed to kill you, but there're other things we can do. I know Bruno’s been itching to get some alone time with you, ever since you made his brother a cripple!”
“I have no idea who you're talking about”, Jason droned, bored. “If it helps, I wasn't making a special case there. Probably.”
The thug placed his palms on the table and got closer, his large nose almost touching the front of Jason's helmet. He'd have to disinfect it later.
“Let's see how much noise that big mouth of yours can make when we start cutting your fingers off one by one –”
And suddenly, there was a small bang and the thug's ugly mug was replaced by a much younger face framed by black hair and obscured by a black domino. Jason’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his hairline and he could feel his mouth actually falling open, chin hitting the inside of his helmet. That, he had not expected.
“Hey there”, Red Robin greeted with a small grin. He was perched on the goon's back, having smashed his face into the table by dropping down on him from the ventilation shaft above.
He said the first thing that came to mind, scrambling to get his thoughts back in order. “Nice entrance, Replacement.”
“Thanks, figured you'd like it.”
Jason watched as Tim jumped onto the ground, feet hitting the floor silently, and immediately walked around to pick the locks on his handcuffs. Red Hood turned his head as far as it would go to check what he was doing. Why on earth was he here? Coincidence? They hadn't heard a lot about Two-Face lately so that was unlikely. Had Tim come here on purpose?
A thought crept up in the back of his mind, its voice so quiet he could barely hear it over his own heartbeat. Maybe he came for you. He tried to ignore it – Yeah, right – but found this endeavour to be more difficult than one might have expected. Searching for any kind of distraction, he practically jumped as he saw the unconscious goon sliding off the table, leaving a trail of blood behind. That broken nose works wonders for his face.
“They tied you up good, didn't they”, Tim said from somewhere behind him, and Jason could move his right hand again. “Are you okay?”
“It's a step up from the mouldy ropes, I'll admit that much.” His hand was free and he didn't even need to say anything before another lockpick was placed in his palm. He immediately began working on the cuffs securing his legs in favour of answering the second query. He had honestly no idea what to say.
A few moments later, Jason was free. Rising to his feet, he stretched. His joints throbbed dully, courtesy of having been fixed in such an awkward position, and his limbs felt both like jelly and lead at the same time, no doubt an aftereffect of whatever sedative they'd injected him with. His entire back was aching from when he’d hit the floor, and he didn’t need to look to know it would be one gigantic bruise in a few hours. He grimaced, unseen underneath his helmet, turning to Tim when the younger spoke up.
"Let's get out of here. Robin is waiting outside to secure our way out; the place is crawling with patrolling guards. He must be planning something big with you."
"You would, too, if you were a deranged megalomaniac and got your hands on the Red Hood", Jason replied with a grimace, trying not to latch onto what that meant. Robin is here, too?
The voice was suddenly back, louder than before, making it more difficult to drown out. He couldn’t find the focus to put it into that little box in the corner. This was surreal. Play it smooth, play it smooth, don’t let him notice. Not getting your hopes up was the first step to avoid said hopes crushing you under their weight when they all came down like a house of cards.
He paused rolling his shoulders to snarl at his… not rescuer, he’s just here by chance. "I didn’t need your help. I had this under control.” He frowned and his voice took on a mildly threatening level, obvious despite the voice changer. "Don't tell me you placed that tracker on me even though I told you to fuck off."
Now it was Red Robin's turn to look at him and raise an unimpressed eyebrow while spraying some liquid out of a non-descript bottle onto the handcuffs. What’s he doing? “What’s that?”
"Sure you did. And I didn’t. Can we talk about the details later? I’d rather we get out of here."
Red Hood stared long and hard at his unperturbed saviour before reluctantly agreeing. He was dying to know why the younger was here, even if he wasn’t sure he actually wanted to know the answer, regardless of what it would be. Mindless of the whirlwind of thrashing, confusing and conflicting thoughts in Jason’s head, Red Robin stepped over the unconscious thug after zip-tying him with a few, practised movements, and climbed onto the tabletop, ignoring the puddle of blood, disappearing back into the ventilation shaft he'd come from. Jason looked after him and, for a moment, nothing happened.
"... Do you want to stay here? Did you like being tied to a chair, is that what you meant by I had this under control?"
Tim poked his head back through the opening of the air vent and looked at him upside down, clearly disbelieving. Jason rolled his eyes even if he knew the younger couldn't see it, grasping at every opportunity to make it look as if he wasn’t having a minor crisis on the inside. He gestured at the ventilation shaft.
"I don't fit through there, smartarse. It's barely wide enough for your non-existent shoulders."
Red Hood was sure if this was a comedy movie, this would be the record scratch moment. He watched, almost a little amused, when Tim briefly retreated back out of sight, mumbling something inaudible and flipped down onto the ground next to Jason again, looking mildly embarrassed.
"That… was an oversight on my part", he admitted awkwardly, prompting Jason to snort and cross his arms in front of his chest. Before he could sort through the back and forth in his head for another comment, Red Robin was already typing away at the computer in his gauntlet, staring intently at the holographic screen hovering a few centimetres above.
"This used to be a butchery, we're in the previous storage area. There's another access point in the west of the building – we can get out from there, too, but there’s a good chance we’ll encounter some resistance on the way. From my calculations, there should be around eighty thugs in total in the building, with another twenty, patrolling the outside. Judging Dent’s previous activities and shipments either certainly or highly probably related to him, about half of them should be armed.”
He tapped the comm in his ear. “Robin. Switching to plan D. Hood is uninjured, but he doesn’t fit through the vent.” There was a brief pause. Then, Red Robin’s lips twitched into a hint of a smirk. “I’m going to tell him you said that.” He didn’t wait for another reply before closing the comm line and turning back to Red Hood. “You ready?”
Jason needed a small moment to realise he was being spoken to, both from the lingering fog in his brain as well as actually being a little dumbfounded. Scratch that, he was positively floored.
He’d never seen Red Robin in action like this. Of course, he’d known Red Robin was a planner, calculating, always eyeing all the possibilities and ready to adapt at a moment’s notice, but actually seeing it happen was certainly… something. Jason could feel a familiar, albeit in recent times seldom, felt anger rising up in him – the same anger laced with jealousy that had led to their encounters in the tower and later in a cave beneath Gotham – but to his own surprise, he was also suppressing it, shoving it back into the dark corners of his mind. It was still a mystery why this was happening, at least to him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least pretend to have a clue and go along with it.
“Always. Plan D? How many plans did you have?”
Red Robin shrugged as he moved to pick the lock of the door leading out of what Jason now guessed was a, thankfully unpowered, deep freezer. He could see traces on the walls where the cooling system must have been back when this facility had still been in use.
“Fourteen. But most of them were only precautionary in case your condition was… undesirable.”
Jason raised an eyebrow at the tight tone in Tim’s voice. It was enough for him to figure what kind of undesirable conditions the younger was talking about and he wasn't quite sure what to think of the fact that he seemed so unhappy about the idea. They had only recently stopped fighting. Instead, making an effort to… get along.
Once the lock was open, Red Robin moved to the side before continuing. “Plan D is basically getting you out of here in case you were too injured to be moved through the ventilation shaft but that can easily be adjusted. Different equation, same result.”
“Math allegories? Really?”
Even though he was certain that Tim was rolling his eyes beneath his domino, his facial expression gave absolutely nothing away and thus Jason wasn’t sure whether he should feel insulted for being ignored or not. But another thought occurred to him the moment Red Robin’s gloved hand went for one of the many pockets of his suit.
“We need to find my equipment. I’m not leaving without it.”
He saw Red Robin’s head moving, shifting just a little to look at him but, of course, Jason couldn’t tell what he was actually thinking, not with the lenses of his mask obscuring his eyes. Naturally, that was probably even worse for everyone talking to him so not even Jason could find it in himself to inwardly rave about the injustice of it all. After all, seeing his eyes would be the best tell to determine what exactly Red Robin was thinking about this rescue mission – if he was annoyed, he considered it a duty. If he was neutral, it was a necessity. If he was agreeable, it was… something else Jason didn’t really want to think about even if he couldn’t keep himself from doing exactly that.
It suggested that Tim had come to save him because he wanted to – and okay, the replacement wasn’t all bad. Jason had sent himself into a frenzy more than once over those past couple weeks since he’d heard of Di – Red Robin lying injured in the Titan’s Tower. When a very basic, almost feral feeling had overtaken him, made him stay with the runt. Made him seek him out again. Made him listen, all the while trying honestly and goddamn hard to stay unbiased, to try and see his successor, not his replacement, to see him for who he was instead of what he meant and stood for. And damn if the Pretender hadn’t shown to be quite different from the picture Jason had painted of him over the years. He hated admitting it, but there were more similarities between them than he’d ever expected.
Noticing that he was getting caught up in his own head again – something Red Robin was definitely familiar with, albeit for entirely different reasons – Jason mentally shook his head and returned his attention to his saviour. He hadn’t received an answer yet…
But then again, the fact that Tim was studying what looked like a 3D model of a building he knew to be an abandoned slaughterhouse on the southern outskirts of town, there was his answer. He forced himself to take a close look at it as well instead of getting lost in what it suggested, even if he had half a mind to just bail and high-tail it out of here, back into his own territory and comfort zone.
“We’re here”, Red Robin said, zooming into the building and one of the small rooms in the southeast of the building turned red. “According to my intel, the upper stories aren’t used, so it has to be somewhere on ground level.”
Before he could launch into another monologue of weighing all the chances, possibilities and whatnot, Jason raised a hand to shush him. He looked at the model for a moment. As much as the rest of his dearest, ever-shrinking, dysfunctional family liked to tell themselves differently in order to sleep at night, he knew the way guys like the one bleeding on the floor next to them thought. After a brief moment of consideration, he pointed at a small room next to one of the large halls.
“There.”
Red Robin studied both the holograph as well as Jason for a moment and the latter was already halfway up in arms at the indignity, preparing for yet another fight with a Bat about his methods, his morals, his values, and he narrowed his eyes underneath his helmet. But then Tim merely nodded, offered a light-hearted “Good hunch” and started rummaging through one of the many pockets of his suit before chucking something white and flabby at Jason.
Rubber gloves.
“Can’t have you leaving fingerprints all over the place, can we?”, Red Robin asked with a hint of a smirk in both his voice as well as on his lips. His own hand was resting on the handle, ready to lead them through the large building and back out. Where Robin was waiting for them.
Something rose inside of Jason, something he couldn’t quite name and it made him wary, put him on edge. But it also caused that voice in his head to gain strength, to become loud enough he almost found himself believing it, if only for a moment. He couldn’t stop the half-grin, half-smirk from spreading on his lips, despite all thankful no one could see it, and pulled the rubber gloves on.
“Well then”, he began, his tone promising unholy retribution on the fuckers who’d dared to tie the Red Hood to a chair. He finished putting on the second glove with a loud snap. “Let’s show these arseholes what happens when Red and Red team up, shall we?”
Red Robin grinned back.