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After setting up the commlink and handing him his spare grapple gun, Jason followed Red Robin out of the deep freezer and into the equally metallic hallway. He couldn't help but frown a little, not particularly thrilled about the idea of having to follow the replacement of all people. Damn PTSD.
But then again, the same, nagging voice from before supplied in the back of his head, it's not too bad if it means you're still able to.
And yeah, okay, that was true, kind of. Although that just pushed one of the questions still burning his insides and frizzling his nerves back to the forefront: Why was he here? Jason still wasn't certain he wanted to know the answer, to think about all the implications it might entail and what those might do to him. He knew he was probably being knowingly obtuse and purposely ignorant; he, just like any other good little vigilante in this clusterfuck of a family, was really good at that.
He snapped back to the present when Red Robin snatched the back of a thug's collar and dragged him around the corner, hand covering his mouth to muffle the noises of surprise as he was rendered unconscious by two fingers digging into a pressure point. He cursed himself for zoning out like this, activating the thermal vision installed in his helmet, which his company must've already done. He had to get it together lest he wanted to subject himself to even more embarrassment.
There were a few more lone guards patrolling the hallways. His buddy from the deep freezer must've paid him an unsolicited visit, probably on account of that friend of his. But there were more than a dozen human shapes a bit further to the northwest, where one of the large shop floors were located, all of them armed.
Jason caught himself staring at Red Robin's back again as he followed the younger through the empty corridor, steps silent. He still hated it – both the situation and the fact that he had to be saved like some damsel in distress, especially since he had to let his replacement take the lead and just stand there and watch as he took the unaware thugs out, one after another. The rubber gloves were really not much more than a precaution, to avoid leaving fingerprints or DNA behind, even if Dent couldn't do much with either even if he obtained them; he was legally dead, for fuck's sake. And even if he wasn't, Bruce had made sure there were no records of any identifying or distinguishing features of the entire family accessible to anyone short of their own shitshow of a clan.
But the anger, despite the fact that he could feel it clawing at his skin, was shallow. He hadn't lied, before, with what he'd said. He didn't really... mind fighting alongside Red Robin. He forced himself not to, on account of… everything. But Jason's head was still a mess, even more so than usual, and just the simple idea that the replace – Red Robin – and Robin, too – would come to get him out of the jam he'd gotten himself into sent his mind reeling. Despite his outer calm, his brain was in pretty much the very same tizzy he had found himself in way too frequently over the past few weeks.
When they arrived at the door leading to the large factory hall, they had to pass through to reach the small room. Judging by its position, it had probably been used for breaks. Jason was torn out of his thoughts yet again – and this particular back and forth between reality and the Vegas show starring Frankenstein's monster that was currently his brain wasn't helping, either. At all.
Resisting the urge to take his helmet off to give himself a solid slap in order to finally snap out of this stupid funk, he gave Red Robin a nod before he could say or sign anything. The younger opened the door slowly, just enough for him to slip through the crack and Hood followed, closing it silently behind him again. At the same moment, he heard the almost inaudible zip of a grapple line being shot and when he turned around again, the younger was already heading upwards to the metal frameworks under the ceiling to take a look at the room. Hood copied his actions and a second later, they were crouching next to each other at the top of the room, cataloguing their enemies and the area they had to work with.
It wasn't much different from any other time they got to play predator like this, any one of them. Fifteen thugs patrolling the area at a leisurely stroll, occasionally in pairs chatting to each other. The movement of adjusting the frequency scanner in his comm device was familiar and it took only a few seconds until the static was replaced by the henchmen's conversations.
"– heard Robin is outside. Boss wants to make sure he doesn't get in, he's going to make a lot of money once he's sold Hood off to the highest bidder."
Jason's eyebrows shot up and the corner of his mouth curled up in a silent snarl. Two-Face was planning to auction him off? Judging the way Tim's lips pressed into a thin line next to him, he was listening in as well and he looked startlingly unhappy about their words. Thankfully, before it could send him reeling yet again, another of the guys below spoke up, catching his attention.
"No one's going to get past here", he said, sounding way too boisterous for Hood's tastes and he looked around to find the one speaking with such confidence.
"There", Red Robin whispered next to him, voice ringing double in his ears and through the comm. Jason looked at where he was pointing and spotted one of those really, really big guys that even dwarfed him standing in front of the small, enclosed room with large glass windows some kind of overseer or supervisor must've once been stationed in, carrying a minigun with enough firepower to tear through even his armour within seconds. He caught Red Robin grimacing slightly next to him before tilting his head as if to glance over.
"I could use your help with that one – where do they get these from, honestly – they're so annoying..."
"Got it", Jason replied, not making much of a fuss in this case even if the notion of having to sit this out while Tim did all the work was fairly disconcerting. But he could totally get behind the irritation with those guys – there was no way they weren't in some way or another bred and shipped in, with how ridiculously sturdy they were.
"I'll be quick", Red Robin said with one last look at him and something both cold and hot washed through Jason's insides. He swallowed thickly to force whatever wanted to come out down, willing his hand to be steady as he wrapped his fingers around the other's upper arm, preventing him from grappling over to another of the beams to start clearing out the hall. Jason pointed at the sniper standing on one of the railways of the upper area, scoping the room.
"Take him out first", he breathed and thanked all the gods he'd ever heard of for the voice modulator in his helmet.
Red Robin was smart enough to understand what he was getting at. And Jason wasn’t quite sure whether his temporary partner in crime nodded just to humour him or because he appreciated the idea, but he didn’t hesitate to change the direction of his grapple to the small beam above the sniper.
Hood mimicked him and dropped down silently behind the sniper less than half a second later, hand reaching out to steady the rifle as to not alert the others by suddenly erratic movement of the target laser as Tim knocked the guy out cold with a quick nerve strike. Jason held onto the weapon as their owner was slowly lowered to the ground. The weight was familiar, even if he hadn’t held it in a long time, but Jason doubted it would take more than just a few seconds to get used to it again. He couldn’t see Red Robin’s eyes, but judging the way he looked at Hood just a moment longer than was strictly normal, he was sure something similar had to be running through his head as well.
Jason was about to get his hackles up, to defend himself from the accusations he just knew would be thrown at him – Bruce was a master at that, as he very well knew, and he couldn’t even begin to explain just how often he’d found himself on the receiving end of that patented glare that consisted of equal parts resentment and disappointment.
But then Red Robin just shook his head, the gesture ever so slight and barely noticeable, and offered him a very small smile that was riddled with a bit of something he wasn’t in the right mental space to figure out now.
“... Don’t use it unless absolutely necessary”, Tim said instead of reprimanding him, voice quiet with not just the desire to stay undetected, and grappled away, hiding in the shadows above and Jason’s breath not quite hitched in his throat.
That… was surprising, in an almost positive way was what he almost thought, but he pushed it aside in favour of leaning on the ledge, like the unconscious henchman behind him had just a minute earlier, and it didn’t take long until seeing the world through the crosshairs of a scope wasn’t strange anymore.
He was just in time to see Red Robin landing behind another thug, grabbing him from behind and muffling the noises of surprise with a firm hand across his mouth as he dragged the guy into the shadows. Just a few seconds later, only one of them emerged from the dark to crouch behind a corner, waiting for the oblivious man just a few steps away to get too close to treat him to the same fate.
Now that there weren’t any more immediate thoughts than observing the silent spectacle unfolding in front of him to occupy his brain, Jason found it difficult to keep those frazzling ideas intruding his mind at bay. It was just like before, like the last few weeks –
That day burst into the forefront of his thoughts. Of seeing it on TV, just like the rest of the world – Dick Grayson’s capture. His death.
He still wasn’t sure what exactly he’d felt, then – whether the maelstrom of hot and cold whipping through his gut and tearing at his skin from the inside had come from elation or horror. Probably a mixture of both.
Dick… had been a mixed bag for him for a long time. Even before his own death. Admiration for leaving such big shoes to fill behind, resentment for being too big. A desire to be allowed to ask the one casting the shadow for help to step beyond, bitterness at being too insufficient to do it with his own power. And the list goes on and on.
And Bruce hadn’t exactly been helping, either – neither of them. Jason knew, intellectually, that most of the blame for his rocky relationship with any of his brothers lay with the Batman himself. In the way he had never stopped comparing Jason to his predecessor, unknowingly feeding into both Jason’s rancour for the man he was supposed to replace as well as Dick’s own acrimony at being replaced.
(He wasn’t going to dwell on the almost hysterical hilarity of his own hypocrisy – not again. Not now.)
Jason shook his head; there was no point in lamenting his non-existent past with his ‘big brother’. Although that’s what he’d been – and wasn’t that ironic? That it was he who understood their bonds, always had, as much as he had despised them? That even at his worst, after his return to Gotham when the Pit’s influence still had him boiling with irrational rage at the world and everyone who’d ever wronged him, he’d always known what he’d been trying to commit wasn’t just murder but fratricide? A thought that still filled him with an incommensurable kind of bitterness at the best of times because even through the green haze turning each of his breaths into acid, he’d known.
And the ifs had always nagged at the edges of his subconscious, the quiet but too-loud-to-ignore question smouldering its way into his brain until it was an ever-present fire.
What if he’d fought against Bruce, made the man face his feelings instead of letting them fester until they turned into an oozing, rotting wound sapping not just B's own but everyone’s strength? He could admit it now, albeit begrudgingly and only to himself, that it hadn’t been Bruce and Dick or Bruce and Tim who’d kept the family together after his death and then his return; Dick and Tim had. The big brother who never was and the little brother who was his replacement.
It still left an ugly taste in his mouth but at this moment, while he was watching the pretender – the same guy he’d looked at for hours on end just a few weeks ago, the slow rise and fall of a battered chest while Tim himself was struggling his way out of unconsciousness – pressing a startled goon against a ledge as the blood flow to his brain was being interrupted before dropping down from the same ledge and disappearing into the floor grates unseen before the thug was even finished sinking to the ground. A few seconds later, Red Robin emerged from an air vent in the wall, grappling over to land on the braces, eyes already locked on his next target. Yeah, while he was watching him…
He could see it. What Dick must’ve seen, what Bruce had. Red Robin wasn’t as intimidating as Batman, didn’t quite merge with the darkness as the Bat himself did, and he lacked the innate grace and flourish Nightwing had very much embodied with each of his movements. The influence was still there, obvious in the way Red Robin returned to the braces above with an effortless flip, but Tim was quick, agile, efficient. Always with the next step in mind, unfaltering and neither late nor early.
Jason knew Tim was smart. Scarily so, if even half of what he’d seen and Talia had told him was true and not just a flunk – enough brain cells to even outsmart Bruce himself, once the gap in experience wasn’t so glaring anymore. There was less power in his strikes than in Jason’s own or even Bruce’, but he made up for the lack in strength due to his smaller, leaner frame with precision. He knew exactly where to hit to inflict the greatest amount of damage. And –
"What the – Is that –"
Jason's head whipped around when he heard a startled, unfamiliar voice in his ear. One of the thugs was staring at the unconscious body of one of his colleagues, but he quickly recovered from his shock and alerted the others. Or what was left of them.
"Someone's down! Oh God, one of them is here – Where are the others?!"
"Shit."
Red Robin's whispered curse made Hood look back to where he'd last seen the younger and he was just in time to see him crouching in a corner behind one of the small stairs leading to the upper walkways as two henchmen hurried past, their pace hurried and alarmed.
"This can't be happening – they took half of us down and we didn't even notice?!", one of the mooks said, voice an octave higher from panic.
Jason inclined his head and kept pretending to be their sniping buddy on the lookout, giving the hall a thorough sweep for good measure. The guy was right, he could count seven unconscious bodies scattered around the east and south side of the room. He sought Red Robin out again and found him hiding behind the corner of the overseer's room, focussed on the guy slowly creeping closer, nervousness making the thug apprehensive and his steps careful.
Hood swept the perimeter. The other guys had taken off into other directions, a few still checking on their sleeping colleagues. The big guy was far away enough to not be a threat even if the poor sucker about to see stars managed to get a warning out before everything went dark for him.
The guy was only a few steps away, unaware of the surprise waiting for him lurking in the shadows and Jason looked back to Tim, the crosshairs following the line of his jaw before –
Jason's mouth suddenly ran dry and he stilled as his vision slowly shifted into hyperfocus. Time seemed to slow, possibly even come to a complete halt around him as his hands moved automatically to zoom closer to his target.
He had a free shot.
Perfect line of vision. No obstacles. No danger of his target making any sudden movements within the next few seconds.
He could kill his replacement right now. And no one but him would ever know.
Jason felt his heartbeat decelerate and all his previous frenzy, the hysteria and craze sown by his predecessor's demise and the idea of stepping up for his replacement's sake simply vanished, making place for an almost serene tranquillity that put his mind at such ease he could barely remember the last time he'd been in this state.
It wasn't in this life.
Red Robin, completely unaware of the danger he was currently in – stupid and naïve, Pretender – grabbed the goon once he was close enough, one hand covering his mouth and digging his fingers of the other into his carotid artery. The crosshairs in Hood's vision were aimed at Tim's own, right beneath his jaw where the reinforced armour padding of his suit ended.
Jason swallowed, eyes unblinking as his right index finger slowly, deliberately curled around the trigger.
"The fuck – GUYS, IT'S RED –"
The sound of a SIG 550-1 firing tore through the room like a thundercrack, the deafening bang reverberating off the walls and ripping startled shouts from its unaware occupants. Red Hood was already high up in the shadows above them when the rifle clattered to the ground, crouching on a brace and staring ahead, not even flinching when screams of pain erupted below.
Someone else landed on the beam right next to him.
"Don't mention it", he said before Red Robin could even open his mouth and he knew his voice was hoarse underneath his helmet, a tornado of thoughts and images of the man next to him lying on the ground instead of the mook's.
"... Tha –"
"Don't", Jason repeated his warning and his companion heeded his words. He could feel the long look Tim regarded him with before he just took off to resume his work.
The moment he was out of sight, Hood's shoulders slumped. Muting his comm, he all but ripped his helmet off his head and brushed a shaky hand through his hair, fingers gripping the strands tightly. A long, strained breath escaped from his lips as he closed eyes, pressing the heel of his palm against his forehead.
So close, he thought and the images, emerald licking at their edges, flashed in front of his mind once again, the vision of Red Robin, of his replacement lying dead on the ground, unconscious thug on top of him as his brain matter slowly slid off the walls in big clumps and chunky goo so vivid he could almost smell the blood laced with gunpowder.
His gaze shifted back into focus when something in the commotion below him changed. Jason watched, face impassive, as one of the goons dragged his screaming and sobbing friend out of the factory hall, pressing a cloth to his bleeding shoulder. The heavy doors fell shut, dampening the cries to a distant and low noise he could easily tune out.
"What the hell is happening here?!", one of the remaining henchmen shouted, high-pitched with fear and Jason observed the way he clutched his own rifle to his chest, head jerking right and left with every shadow that moved. Jason put his helmet back on after a last, steadying breath that didn't quite manage to force the images swirling in his mind away but lifted at least part of the haze that tinted them green, muting the colours and blurring the edges.
"– Hood! How the fuck did he get out?!"
"That's impossible –"
"I can't fucking reach the guys guarding him – Oh God –"
"He's going to kill us – I don't know why he missed Gabe but he won't miss us –"
"ENOUGH!", the big guy bellowed loud enough to cause Jason's earpiece to screech. The others shut up immediately.
"I called for back-up, they should be here in a few minutes", he continued and Hood threw a look at where he could see something red flash in the shadows. "You guys watch this entrance, I'll take the other. If it's really Red Hood, he needs to get through here to get to his equip, why do you sissies think he took Bill out first and we're all still breathing?"
Apparently, Dent's men really were as stupid as they looked because Jason could see the remaining four light up in agreement. He snorted in derision, disgusted by their naïveté. It was almost insulting how those fucktarts underestimated him.
He watched as they scattered, sneering, only peripherally noticing Tim follow the group of four by noiselessly scurrying along the narrow beams until he was directly on top of them. The picture of Red Robin lying among them shimmered back into existence but the edges were frayed and this time, he ruthless squashed it down, crushed it beneath a boulder and let it lie there to rot, because…
Because that wasn't why he was here. That wasn't why he'd –
His eyes widened when he heard a chorus of terrified screams and gunshots and the sound of a body hitting the ground hard. One of the screams abruptly died. Hood observed as Red Robin tore through the remaining three, movements as smooth as liquid silk, an almost hilarious contrast to the fumbling jerkiness that surrounded him. Another heavy thud and the next one was down, two more seconds and the third followed. The lone remaining guard was still screeching at an almost deafening volume and still hadn't quite managed to get his rifle pointed at his target.
Thwack.
And all that remained was silence.
By the time the minigunner arrived at the scene, panting from his mad run to his now quiet colleagues, Red Robin was already back in the frameworks and motioning Jason over, eyes locked onto their last target. He obliged, grappling over to the younger and crouching next to him, still mildly gobsmacked. He could only nod when Red pointed at the gunner.
"I don't care who you are!", the big guy below shouted, trying to sound brave but the slight tremble in his voice betrayed him. "Come out and face me like a man!"
Red Robin actually fucking sighed, loudly and dramatically, as he jumped off his perch. "As you wish".
The moment his staff collided with the guy's knees, causing him to stumble, took Jason as his cue and he dropped down as well, firmly planting both his feet in the guy's chest before flipping off him. The thug's strangled grunt was interrupted by a pained moan and when Hood turned around again, his gun was uselessly hanging at his side as he clutched his stomach. Hood kicked him hard in the back, bones crunching underneath the power amplified by the steel in the soles of his boots and the guy fell over. A solid slam with his staff to the side of his head and he remained still.
Red Robin collapsed his bo and stored it away somewhere at his back. "Let's get going. I don't want to know what the 'reinforcements' are going to look like."
He immediately headed towards the direction of the western exit, footfalls inaudible even as he avoided stepping onto any hands or other extremities on the floor. Hood followed him, head not just reeling but basically spinning backwards at this point.
This – all of this, that insane stunt on the four guys earlier, his strict business-attitude with the underlying sarcasm and sheer sass – the fact that he hadn't commented on Jason shooting the guy, if only in the shoulder, fucking respecting his wish not to talk at that moment – It was all so different from the picture Jason had painted of the pretender over the years.
He had no idea what it was, or what had done it – whether Tim had outgrown the meekness and his self-doubt or if life had forced him to leave them behind – or maybe they were still there but buried under the weight on his shoulders, by his promotion to only son left. The bitterness that returned with this thought was unwelcome and Jason pushed it aside in favour of…
Realisation hit him. Not like an avalanche but like a slow and steady drip of water that grew stronger, accumulating to a tsunami that almost swept him off his feet and he had to hide the stagger in his steps. Somewhere, deep inside, he'd know for a while – that the pretender, that Tim – that he truly wasn't like Bruce. That he didn't judge Jason like everyone else did. That there was more to him Batman's obedient little shadow.
And that… that was why Jason had gone. Why he’d swallowed everything that had threatened to spill over, why he’d forced it all down. Why, after hours of pacing, of fretting, of walking out of his safehouse only to come rushing back in minutes later, slamming the door shut and burying himself in whatever he could find, he had done it. Headed to San Francisco, marched his path into the med bay and stared even Superboy down when he’d dared to stand in his way. Because despite his best efforts to burrow his head into all kinds of excuses, illusions and fallacies, the truth had always been there, slowly clawing its way to the surface and constantly nipping at his heels.
That he was one of them. No matter who or what he was now, he'd been Robin, too. That he was the second and with Dick's death, the oldest. That there was still a family perhaps not waiting for him – not their head – but… And all he had to do was swallow his pride, the fucking Pit, and it would be in reach.
The first signs had been there much longer ago. That moment in jail, he still remembered it as if it had happened yesterday. His own surprise not just at Tim's actions but at the praise coming out of his own mouth. He wasn't sure whether it had actually been a lucid moment for him, but definitely not one tinted green and that had been enough to give him that final push that night on the rooftop.
He slipped after Red Robin through the door and locked it for good measure – if his temporary partner was to be believed, there were many more obstacles standing in their way and they really didn't need a dozen or even more armed mooks bursting through the entrance to shoot at their backs.
"It's here", Red Robin said, "You were right."
Jason didn't know whether he should be fucking grateful for how neutral his voice sounded or infuriated. Instead, he settled for an unseen sideways glance and a non-commital shrug of his shoulders as he brushed past the younger into the small room to find what little of his gear he'd had on him this morning in a pile on the file cabinets lining the wall.
Shrugging his hoodie and the leather jacket on, drawing the signature red hood far down into his face, was a familiar and almost achingly welcome routine, opposed to the roller-coaster his life both inside and outside of his head had been in the last – God, had it really been only sixteen minutes since Red Robin had dropped out of that air vent? But, sadly, it offered reprieve for only a few seconds and he soon turned back to his companion, fastening the straps for his guns and a pair of spare magazines around his thighs. Shoving the rubber gloves deep into the pockets of his jacket, he pulled his own back on, the leather a much more welcome sensation than the latex.
The mild surprise he met made him avert his gaze and suppress the urge to shuffle on the spot.
"What?", he asked when Red Robin merely tilted his head and Hood didn't need to see his eyes to know he was looking at his equipment – or lack thereof. Jason grit his teeth to keep himself from getting defensive.
"Nothing", Tim replied, tone easy, and lifted his head to look up at where his eyes would be if not for the featureless helmet. "Just wondering… Don't you normally pack a lot more than that?"
Jason took a moment to ask himself if he really wanted to talk about this. He knew he wouldn't with Bruce – no chance in hell, thank you very much; he hated B getting on his case as much as the Bat himself did – but Tim had surprised him before. Maybe he would again.
He shrugged, grimacing at the dull throb the motion sent through his bruised back, tossed the other the borrowed grappling gun and put his own into place. "Wasn't planning on anything big", he offered, not quite knowing why he tried to sound light and cheerful when his voice modulator made sure it was cool and robotic anyway. "Just spying on some new guys in the drug business. Fuckface showing up wasn't part of the plan." The next part, he hadn't quite planned to say out loud. "What, you gonna harp on me for being 'underprepared' now?"
To his surprise – except not really, it's what you were hoping he would say – Tim merely shook his head and gave him crooked smile as he stored the grapple away at his back.
"No. You…" The smile was now hinging on bitterness. "You're a big boy. It's your choice."
Something inside of Jason just fell apart. It wasn't his heart – he wasn't that much of a sap – but it had been there nonetheless and it unleashed all those feelings of longing, of acceptance for who he was now – because he was neither crazy nor rabid; sure, he was still struggling with the aftereffects of the Pit, but it was receding and he knew its influence shrank each time he emerged victorious over the green poisoning his thoughts.
And at the same time, he felt like both laughing, just flinging his head back and letting the laughter bubble out of his chest, and crying until nothing was left at the same time. Because of-fucking-course it would be the pretender to finally say those words.
Yes, of course it's him, the voice in the back of his head supplied, irritatingly pleasant. You've always known he's the most sensible of them.
"That why you didn't say anything earlier?" The words rushed out of his mouth before he knew it; the desire to hear the answer, to hear confirmation for what all the clues were already telling him burning in his throat. And yet there was a part of him where panic rose because Tim didn't know. He didn't know that shooting the guy in the shoulder had been nothing but a knee-jerk reaction, that he'd been aiming at his own throat –
Tim looked at him, long and assessing. With each passing moment, Jason felt the urge to punch himself in the face growing, to curse at his momentary lapse in control and just storm out of here and leave the other behind, if only to escape his own horribly conflicted feelings about all this.
"You could've killed him. You didn't", Red finally said, voice soft but strained with something Hood couldn't decipher and oh God he doesn't know – you can never let him know if you truly want this to end differently from the other times. It wasn't the thinly veiled disappointment and hurt Bruce would've shown or the mixture of anger and self-loathing he'd seen on Dick's face before. "That's all that matters." He paused briefly as if he was struggling with something Jason couldn't see. "That should matter."
If he had to give this particular tone of voice a name, it would be something like… resignation. Defeat. And that caused a lot more questions than it answered.
Though this time, Jason kept his mouth firmly shut, swallowed everything down and away and moved past Tim to leave the room through the large entrance at the end of the small hall. He didn't need to look if Red Robin followed him, but he threw a glance back anyway, just in time to see him let out a long, silent breath before following suit, back straight.
Jason placed a hand on the door, ready to push it open, but something inside of him stirred and before he knew it, he looked down at his companion. He didn't let himself dwell on the tight lines around Tim's lips, not quite as smoothed over as he seemed to think they were. He wasn't sure why, but it soothed something in his insides – maybe it was the revelation that the replacement wasn't so perfect after all. That he was struggling with things, just like Jason himself had.
"C'mon", he said gruffly and pushed the door open, the cheerfulness in his voice only partially forced. "We still haven't shown them what happens when you mix Red with Red."
And as if that had been the magic spell necessary to alleviate whatever weight Tim had found himself fighting against, a smirk stretched across his lips and he stepped forth, amusement leaking into his expression when the goons waiting at the front spotted them.
"Robin says he locked about 20 of them in a garage at the other side of the compound. He's luring another nine away and will meet us once he's done", Red Robin informed him, sounding oddly pleased and that was something Hood was actually curious about. Last he'd heard, the demon brat was trying for Tim's throat just as much as he himself had.
Instead of asking, however, Red Hood cracked his knuckles and watched as the henchmen began to yell, shouting empty threats and petty insults at their heads. The fight began the moment the first of them – which was stupid, not brave, honestly – took a swing at him.
Jason grabbed the fist flying at his head and redirected it to the side before kicking the guy in the face. Rather than seeing Red Robin join the action, he felt the swish of his wings at his back as the younger leapt forward, slamming his knee into a thug's gut and dropping him to the floor before digging his elbow deep into another's side when he dared to come too close.
It didn't take long for either of them to get into a rhythm – but it also didn't take much longer than that to realise that their rhythms didn't quite match.
Jason jumped over Tim's staff when it came into his direction in a low, wide arc, sweeping a few goons to his left off their feet.
"Goddamnit – sorry", Tim apologised right after over the comm and Hood's vision flickered over to his companion.
"'s fine", he grunted in reply, pistol-whipping some poor unfortunate soul hard enough he dropped to the floor like a rock. Honestly, he couldn't even tell which of them was out of tune – whether it was Tim who forgot an ally was nearby or if Jason just kept underestimating the space he should give Red Robin when he had his bo out – but it certainly made for a surreal experience to basically be skipping rope in the middle of a brawl.
And limbo, too, he thought a moment later and leaned back into a bridge, ignoring his protesting back muscles, when the staff was aiming for his chest this time. He found himself looking at another particularly hideous specimen upside-down and completed the back-flip, knocking the guy on his ass and rose into a standing position. He caught the pipe swinging at his ribs from the back and pulled at it, simultaneously slamming his head back and into the face of the stumbling thug, nose breaking with the impact. The guy went down with a muffled scream.
"Oh, sod off –"
The muttered curse made Jason throw a distracted look at where he'd last seen Red Robin and found him facing off against a guy with what looked like a decommissioned riot shield. He watched as Tim made another frustrated noise before knocking his staff hard into the lower right side of the shield, unbalancing him and –
CLANG
Red Hood couldn't stop the laugh that was startled out of him when Tim simply grabbed the guy's shield and just whacked him over the head with it, dropping him like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Nice", he said out loud and Red flashed him a quick grin.
And suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, their previous little mishaps just vanished. Tim's staff still occasionally entered his space but now it was timed just right, going below when he jumped and going above when he ducked as if they were dancing a planned choreography.
Whenever Jason kicked a henchman back, not hard enough to knock him out but sending him flying out of his space regardless, Red Robin was suddenly there, bringing his staff down in a vertical arc and flinging the guy onto the ground with a powerful slam. It was almost fun like this, didn't quite feel as much of a job, a duty to himself and the town he'd grown up in.
He missed using his guns as more than just glorified batons, but he wasn't going to risk accidentally shooting Tim in the head – not after the scene in the factory hall where he'd given a pass on the best chance he'd ever had. Maybe not an entirely conscious decision, but a decision nonetheless.
And although there were still plenty parts of him doing some pretty damn impressive gymnastics while trying to deal with the entire situation, he was going to stick with it.
"Incoming!"
Hood turned almost on autopilot when the heads-up reached his ears and saw Red Robin falling backwards, pulling a thug with him and rolling with the momentum to catapult the poor guy across the few paces between them. Jason smirked and smashed his elbow into the thug's abdomen as he flew past.
The goons cry was cut short and his bulging eyes rolled back, unconscious before he even hit the ground. Chuckling quietly to himself, he countered two other mooks' pitiful attempts to attack him from behind by ramming the butts of his guns into their guts, right beneath their solar plexi, and they stumbled back, faces ashen and wheezing. Using one of his semis as a handle, he kicked them both away before ducking under the baseball bat swinging at his back, twisted, and crashed the steel-reinforced heel of his boot into the guy's knee. It gave way with a disgusting crack, barely audible over the yells and screams around him, and the sucker was left writhing on the floor, clutching at his leg.
Jason had a brief moment to breath and he used it to survey the area; over half of Two-Face' men were down, either unconscious or sobbing on the floor, too injured to pose any kind of threat. He spared a moment to check up on Red Robin, too – he wasn't worried about the bird boy, he could handle lowlives like these just fine. Hell, he would've been even more pissed if B had replaced him with someone who couldn't.
He spotted Tim with one hand at his comm, the other re-extending his bo staff, causing both ends to slam into a pair of goons who'd foolishly tried to overwhelm him by coming at him from two sides at once. Jason rolled his eyes and huffed, barely glancing at the guy trying to kick him in the groin and just grabbed the man's leg, pushed it aside and planted his the sole of his own foot in his face. Honestly, why didn't these guys ever learn?
"Robin coming in in three, two, one…"
There was a crash behind him and a few startled yelps that ended abruptly after a couple loud bangs. Seconds later, a mostly black and yellow blur interspersed with red and green bolted past him and barrelled straight into the fray.
It awoke something odd in Jason once more. After the previous weeks, whatever it was that was going on between him and Red Robin – or rather him and Tim – he really hadn't expected to also affect him and the demon brat. Especially since Damian had been dead when Jason made that fateful trip to San Francisco. Which meant that either the other two were suddenly all buddy-buddy and Robin was doing Tim a favour by helping out or…
Or something inside of Damian had changed, too, altered by Dick's death, that might potentially make the youngest in this dysfunctional goatscrew of a family a little bit less of a pain in the arse.
If he wasn't in the middle of a brawl, he might've laughed. Really, the irony that it apparently took golden boy Dick Grayson's demise for them to finally start coming together. That all the parts he'd been fighting so hard to finally work in tandem would only start doing so once the heart was gone.
But then again, Dick hadn't been doing too great a job lately, either, if even half of what Tim had told him that night on the roof was to be believed.
Jason shook his head to rid himself of these thoughts.
He could panic and frizzle and have all the meltdowns he wanted later. Not in front of those two and he'd fucking fought them off the entire time, not completely successfully, but well enough to not raise any suspicions and he wasn't going to lose that battle now. Not when the fight was finally dying down, only a few more goons left that were quickly being dispatched.
Hood began to make his way over to the other two, nonchalantly backhanding the last goon in his vicinity who soundlessly dropped to the ground when the gun collided with his temple. Stowing his semis in their holsters, he zip-tied the unconscious and moaning men around him before turning to the other two, arriving just as they finished with their own charges.
Before anyone could say anything, though, strode Robin over to stand right in front of him, puffed out his chest and stared up at him with a defiant scowl. Jason blinked and tilted his head. If the brat reached higher than somewhere around his elbows he might have made for an intimidating view. But as it was, he had more of a puffed-up baby squirrel than anything remotely dangerous.
"I am not scared of you", Damian declared and Jason tilted his head in the other direction, his left eyebrow arching up in mild confusion.
"Great. Y'want a smiley face for that or what?"
Robin scrunched up his nose and furrowed his brows hard enough it was visible despite domino. Then he whipped around to glare at Red Robin who looked particularly nonchalant at the moment.
"You tricked me!", Damian accused, stalking a few steps into Red's direction, and Jason was sure he could see the corners of Tim's mouth twitching. He glanced between the two of them, more than a little baffled, not sure whether he wanted to know or not.
"Your despicable –"
"Thanks for helping out", Red Robin interrupted and although there was a bit of a strain to his voice, it sounded surprisingly sincere and not quite as constipated as Jason would've figured.
Robin's mouth snapped shut and he grit his teeth, Hood could see the muscles in his jaw pulsing. Then –
"I did not do it for you."
And, in true spirit of the Bat, he whipped out his grapple and took off. …Okay?
The tension – almost tangible but not as threatening, dangerous as he'd expected – he'd felt during this brief exchange vaporised, and Tim dropped his shoulders before dragging his hand across his face and through his hair. Jason wasn't sure if he should ask – wanted to, actually, and he was even less certain whether he'd even receive an answer, but Red Robin graced him with a small, humourless smile that hinged on… wistful?
"We… reached an understanding, of sorts", he offered and waved Jason over, indicating that he should follow. "C'mon, I'll give you a ride."
"Bike or car?"
"Bike."
Jason grimaced but trailed after the younger regardless. He was in no way thrilled about the prospect of people seeing the Red Hood riding bitch with Red Robin, but now that the adrenaline was disappearing from his veins, both the exhaustion and his bruised back were catching up to him.
Red Robin led them to a small, hidden corner near the borders of the compound. He heard banging and yelling from the structure to the side and figured that was the garage Robin must've locked some of Two-Face' men in.
"An 'understanding'?" Jason didn't really know why he was asking – or maybe he did know but didn't want to think about it. Why he opened his mouth anyway was anyone's guess.
Red's face did something weird, somewhere between a grimace, a rueful grin and a defeated smile, but he answered as he deactivated his bike's camouflage.
"I – reminded him that he's not the only one who... misses Nightwing."
Ah, Jason thought, pieces falling into place around the sudden squeeze in his chest as he mounted the red motorbike behind Tim. That… explains a lot. "And just now?"
He felt the huffed laugh leaving Red Robin's rib cage rather than saw it. "Told him I'd snitch on him. Guess he took me seriously and expected you to attack him", he said, a bit lighter than before, and the engine rumbled to life beneath them.
Jason looped his arms around Tim's middle, eyebrows climbing high up to hide somewhere around his hairline. "Snitch what?", he asked dryly. Their comms were still on so hopefully, he could get some answers to the barrage of questions still assaulting his brain despite the noise. That he was mostly hidden from view thanks to Red's wings flaring out at his sides once they took off was at least a little consolation.
He felt the vibrations of suppressed laughter ripple through Red Robin's chest. "That he called you part hippopotamus when you didn't fit through the vent."
Jason… wasn't sure whether he should feel insulted or be amused. He knew his build more than just rivalled Bruce' – shit, he packed more muscle than the Bat despite being an inch shorter – but hippos…
Were actually kind of cool. Pretty chill but fucking dangerous when provoked. So he just snorted. "You're an asshole."
"Perks of being the middle child."
And just like that, without any warning, Jason received the next suckerpunch to his emotional groin and had to reflexively tighten his hold on Red Robin lest he wanted to fall off. Who apparently even noticed – shitshitSHIT – if the way his elbow jerked at the same time, causing them to swerve slightly, was any indication.
But he couldn't really bring himself to care about that, not more than just peripherally, anyway, because the weight those six words held were taking away his ability to breathe.
He thinks – we're – is he saying – he was rambling internally and probably a little cross-eyed at this point, but… He – he already considers –
He's saying we're… three.
And boy. Boy, that was – not what he'd expected to hear today. Truth be told, he hadn't been sure what to think of… anything, at this point. Their talk on the rooftop – the confessions, most of them Tim's, and Jason's own reactions, brought forth by that terrible, emotional side of him that had gotten him killed, once upon a time, which he just couldn't turn the fuck off, his understanding – they were all very real and oh-so-fresh memories but he hadn't really dared to think, much less hope because he didn't – he did not, damnit – think that it would actually – do something. Anything. Not without a lot more work he didn't even know he was willing – or even capable of – putting in.
And then the motherfucking replacement just dropped lines and all their related sentiments like that as if he was talking about the goddamn weather. Maybe he'd pegged Red Robin wrong after all and he knew exactly what kind of psychological torture to put Hood through; maybe payback for all those murder attempts? Yeah, that –
"Where do you want me to drop you off?"
His brain ground to a screeching halt when the question sounded in his ears, the words' meaning registering a few seconds later than normally. But then it dived straight back into overdrive because that means Red knew Dent got me but doesn't know where I live?! And on which fucking earth in which godforsaken universe did that make sense?
He gave Tim the next best address in the Bowery that came to mind and was only a few minutes from his most frequented safehouse, which therefore also counted as his kind of shitty home. He only received a hum in response and Red Robin took a sharp turn into a pretty empty backstreet. It didn't take long to figure out that he was taking a slightly longer, but much more obscured route. Which reminded Jason that he had no fucking clue how late it was, but judging the way the sun almost managed to be visible through the dense smog, it had to be somewhere around noon.
The rest of the drive was spent in silence, Hood still trying to process the last hour. Which turned out to be a not particularly successful endeavour, but the wheels and gears in his head were turning and shifting at nigh unprecedented speeds and slowly, a few pieces seemed to settle into place, one after another. Nowhere near enough to make a whole picture, but… it was a start.
For what, he did not know. There was still too much lingering, too much green in his head and between them to make any predictions. But it was enough that once they arrived at their destination, Jason felt almost something akin to calm when he loosened his grip and dismounted the bike. Instead of just leaving, however, he hesitated for just a moment before repeating the question from earlier, this time with a bit more conscious thought, because even though he was nearly scared to hear the answer, he wanted – he needed to know, if only to settle the raging rave party blasting in his head just a little.
"Why were you there?"
Red Robin stilled for a second before offering a small half-smile.
"I've been looking into Dent for a while now. He's been, ah… very quiet, lately", he began to explain, and Jason crossed his arms in front of his chest, waiting for more because every idiot could see that wasn't even half the story. Not even Fuckface was stupid enough to walk the streets and hand out pamphlets about his newest acquisition and the motherfucking auction.
"And this morning, he was suddenly all over the place. Nothing specific, but I figured something big must've happened. So, I went digging, and... well. Heard of some wannabes boasting about how they helped taking 'Helmetman' –" What the fuck. "– out and came to the conclusion the incidents were connected."
He ended his explanation with a shrug, shifting on his seat on the motorcycle. His smile was still skewed and layered with things Jason really didn't feel like deciphering right now. But his words – his words, their meaning –
Because that explanation meant that Tim hadn't just stumbled into him on accident; an idea he'd almost dismissed right away because they were way past their bedtime but one he'd clung to nonetheless, if only to avoid having to deal with… this. With the knowledge that Red Robin – that the pretender had actually come for him, looked for him with the intention to bust him out. And done that and kicked arse and taken names, while at it.
"And Robin?"
The smile took on a strained edge, not dissimilar to his expression prior their departure. "Is… a work in progress."
"... Alright", Jason said after a moment of silence to let the answers sink and fought the urge to flee with every last one of his freaking atoms. "Thanks, I guess. I'll… see you around."
Tim waved him off, but the motion was somewhat jerky and Hood noticed the way the fingers of his other hand, still wrapped tightly around the handles of his bike, flexed minutely. Red opened his mouth, paused, closed it, and opened it again.
"... Take care."
And then, with a speed that might almost impress The Flash at least a little, he started his motorcycle and zoomed off, leaving Jason standing in an empty alley amongst piles of trash and filth. He stared after Red Robin, his own mental carnival briefly pushed aside at the display.
He… He's been just as freaked out about this as you.
"Jesus H. fucking Roosevelt Christ."
Jason wasn't sure what to do with this revelation. And so he just laughed. Laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, at Bird Boy and himself – because of course it would be them, in all their Bat-issued, emotionally stunted, neurotic, paranoid glory – and Two-Face raging in his hideout. He started heading towards his flat a moment later, still snickering to himself, and really looked forward to dropping dead into his bed and just conking out for at least the next 15 hours.