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“I found something of yours,” Jason said, fingers drumming against the thick leather of his sleeve. He wasn’t talking to his captive, but she reacted anyway. He had her suspended upside-down from the ceiling, thoroughly bound from head-to-toe, and despite the general hopelessness of the situation she’d been doing her best to squirm free. At his words, she began to thrash harder, redoubling her efforts. Muffled words began to pour from behind the gag he’d slapped on her, and from what expression he could make out behind her mask and hood, he was guessing they weren’t polite ones.
Jason held up a finger.
“Hey, d’ya mind?” he asked. “I’m on the phone.”
“Hood, what did you do?”
Tim’s voice was staticky in his ear, but even through the distortion he sounded out-of-breath. Like he’d just gotten out of a fight, or was halfway through one. Barely able to spare the focus to remember to use his lungs.
“I resent that,” Jason said, but it was way too lighthearted for any of the bat-brood to take seriously. Not when they knew exactly what Jason sounded like at his most resentful. No, despite this unexpected sidebar, today had been a pretty good day, and Jason was feeling too fucking upbeat for the lack of trust to so much as sting. He'd pulled some shit in the past, after all. It made sense.
“Is that any way to talk to your partner in crime?” Jason continued. He leaned his weight back on his heels, then back up onto his toes again, shifting his balance back and forth.
There was a crackly sigh in his ear.
“Red,” Tim said, in the same way he always said Jason when he was particularly annoyed. “It is way too early for you to be using that line. We haven’t even agreed on a shared patrol yet.”
There was a pause, a sound like a bowling ball being dropped into a vat of tapioca pudding, and then Tim continued.
“Who do you have? It’s not our local sword enthusiast again, is it? I told him if he tried to pick another fight with you I’d–”
“Nah,” Jason said, before Tim could get any further into defending his honor from the demon-brat. “It’s your new sidekick. Dressed head-to-toe in purple, has a serious mouth on her? Ringing any bells?”
Said vigilante finally fell still, giving Jason a glare that would have been a lot more threatening if her thrashing hadn’t sent her gently spinning like a badly-hung party decoration. Jason wiggled his fingers at her as she slowly rotated to face the far wall.
“Wh– what did you go and start something with her for?” Tim asked, voice edging on incredulous. “Is this– Red, when you suggested I team up with her I didn’t realize you were jealous. Do I have to worry about you going after Superboy next?”
“When do you not have to worry about that?” Jason asked, bemused. “No, but seriously, she came outta nowhere when I was looping back from Cindy’s. Damn near took my head off with that first kick.”
“And you didn’t hear her coming? She must’ve been practicing.” Tim had the audacity to sound proud. Jason could appreciate the sentiment, but he would’ve appreciated it more if he hadn’t recently gotten an up-close and violent introduction to the soles of her boots. “I. . . guess we’ve never really talked about you, Red. She must not realize you’re. . .”
Tim trailed off, presumably trying to find the right words for what Jason was. Jason could imagine the struggle. Good guy was right out. Hero was laughable. Vigilante was accurate but didn’t do anything to pinpoint where Jason fell on the scale from Batman to serial killer with an agenda. Really, the only good word Jason could think of to encapsulate kind of a bastard but a bastard who’s with us was–
“Family,” Jason supplied. “Yeah, I figured. Why do you think I called you?”
There was a pause.
“You want me to talk to her,” Tim concluded. “And tell her to stop trying to hit you.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Jason confirmed. “She’s currently hanging from a rafter in the old Kinsey building and she looks like she’s trying to light my head on fire with sheer willpower.”
“And heaven help Gotham if she ever develops that ability,” Tim said. Something came over his end of the line that sounded suspiciously like a slide whistle, and Tim sighed. “Give me fifteen minutes, I’ll wrap things up here and head your way.”
“Say hi to Bats for me,” Jason said, and clicked off the frequency.
Tim’s friend had once again rotated to face Jason, and there was cold fury in her eyes. Probably. Her costume really did put its all into concealing her face, and Jason had been respectful by tying the gag over it, which meant she had to be giving him a hell of a dirty look for it to read so well. That, or Jason was too used to trying to decipher Batman’s expressions.
He approached her slowly, coming to a stop a few feet away. She tensed, arms searching for slack that wasn’t there in her bonds, and didn’t take her eyes off of him. Not even as she continued to spin. Jason reached out, putting a hand on her shoulder to steady her in the air, and this time he was absolutely sure which curse word came from behind the gag. She was obviously pissed at him.
Too obviously. It was a hastily slapped-on layer of paint over a poltergeist’s late-night scrawlings, a real-estate agent’s feeble attempt at wallpapering over an iron door covered in suspicious claw marks. This vigilante, underneath her showy hatred, was scared.
Jason let out a breath. It crackled through his voice filter and fizzled in the air between them.
“I’m gonna take the gag off,” Jason said. “You can scream if you want, but no one’s gonna hear you in here. Let’s just talk, okay?”
The gag fell away under his fingers, and the vigilante sucked in a deep breath. Jason braced himself for an eardrum-bursting shriek, but instead the girl ground out–
“Fuck. You.”
“Relax,” Jason said, “I’m not gonna hurt you. I only tied you up because you kept trying to kick the shit outta me.”
“What, you can dish it out but you can’t take it?” she taunted. Jason raised an eyebrow.
“If I was dishing it out, you’d have at least one more bullet hole in you than you did at the start of the evening.”
“And that right there is your problem,” the vigilante sniffed, with an amount of faux-haughtiness that genuinely impressed Jason. It was hard to pull that off with all the blood rushing to your head, and he knew that from experience. “Always feeling the need to swing your toys around. Compensating for something?”
“Yeah, humanity’s lack of ability to shoot lead from their fingertips at deadly speeds. Is that what this was about? My penchant for firearms? Because multiple people have beat you to the brute force school of gun control and none of them have managed to kick sense into me yet.”
“It’s about a lot of things. You know you’re one of the most wanted men in the city, right?”
“Sure,” Jason agreed, with a not-insignificant note of pride managing to scrape through his voice filter intact, “But what’s that matter to you? I know your MO, and it ain’t beating up on other vigilantes. What, did you see me out for a walk and decide you needed some stress relief?”
“You’re not a vigilante,” she said curtly, “You’re just another man with a God complex and a gun.”
“The fuck do you think a vigilante is?” Jason asked.
Her remark didn’t hurt. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard something like that, and she wasn’t the worst person he’d ever heard it from. Batman especially had a fucking lexicon of insults for murderers, and he hadn’t been shy with them when Jason had first come back. Jason would say he had a thick skin by now, but honestly he was a bundle of neuroses and triggers that had more in common with a land mine than anything else. Purple girl was just lucky to have avoided setting anything off.
“I can’t believe you’re working with him,” the vigilante said, and Jason blinked. Tim hadn’t given any indication that his occasional battle-buddy was anything other than human, and her blows, while painful, had lacked an edge of unnatural strength. That meant the conversation she’d heard should have been one-sided, and Jason was pretty sure he hadn’t given any indication he had Robin on the line. He was pretty sure he hadn’t even indicated gender.
He must’ve hesitated too long, because Purple spoke again, this time with a self-satisfied edge to her voice.
“What, surprised I worked it out?”
“Confused,” Jason corrected, “How’d you know?”
“You weren’t exactly being subtle.”
“I wasn’t exactly trying to hide it. He’ll be here soon anyway, so what would the point be? I just don’t know how you figured it out from that.”
He watched the vigilante carefully, but if she was bluffing, it didn’t show. She certainly didn’t do anything obvious like shout aha! I now know you were speaking to a man! Thanks for confirming my hunch! It wouldn’t have taken a Hollywood star to fake someone out with that mask lending a helping hand, but Jason was still inclined to believe that Purple very much thought she’d figured out who he was talking to.
Huh.
“So. . . we’re cool?” Jason asked.
“What the fuck would give you that impression?” Her tone was incredulous, which Jason thought was unfair. Was it really so much to ask that she stop trying to kick his ass now that she knew that they were, however tangentially, on the same side?
Was this karma for all the times he’d tried to beat the shit out of the bats?
“The fact that you two’re teaming up? I mean, I know I got a shit reputation but his word’s gotta count for something.”
If anything, Purple’s tone grew more disbelieving.
“He told you we were teaming up?”
“You’re not?”
“No!” the maybe-not-actually-a-vigilante spluttered. She kept trying to move her body as she talked, in a way that indicated to Jason that she gestured with her hands a lot in normal conversation, and this time the movement was so emphatic it set her swinging again. “He wants me to turn over to his side even though I’ve made it more than clear at this point that I’m never gonna! But no, every time he sees me it’s all let me train you this and you’re wasting your talents that. He probably just told you I’m with him so you wouldn’t kill me, and that’s–”
She broke off. Paused.
“Ah,” she said. “Well. Fuck.”
“Relax,” Jason said. Again . “I told you already– I’m not gonna hurt you. Even if I am very, very confused right now. Can we take this from the top?”
The vigilante nodded slowly.
“But only if I get to ask questions too,” she added. “Fair’s fair.”
“And it would be fair to note that only one of us is tied up right now,” Jason rebutted, “But fine. Twenty questions it is.”
The vigilante’s head tilted, looking down at herself– up at herself?– and her bound limbs. Then she looked back at Jason.
“Rock-paper-scissors to see who goes first?” she asked. Jason snorted.
“Yeah, nice try. Guy who won the fight gets first dibs. Why’d you attack me?”
Her shoulders tensed, and when she spoke, the nervous humor had evaporated from her voice.
“I saw what you were doing,” she said. “I saw where you were.”
“What, Cindy’s?” Jason asked. Then the pieces clicked into place.
Well, some of them. He still had no idea what was up with Purple’s hero-or-villain status; his current guess was that they had a Catwoman situation on their hands. Teamed up with the good guys often enough to be considered an ally; stole enough shit to be in trouble the rest of the time. He wondered why Tim hadn’t mentioned any misdemeanors, or why anyone else hadn’t for that matter. All he’d heard was that she and Tim had a weird banter-buddies situation going on, and that she was good people. There was no way Purple was right, that Jason had been given a sanitized version of events to keep him from getting violent– he’d never use lethal force against someone this young, and his family knew that.
He hoped they knew that.
He hoped it was true.
Whatever. He’d figured out mystery number one, and that was what mattered. The second could wait thirty seconds.
“I get it,” Jason said, “You saw a guy whose brand is incredible violence coming out of a brothel. I can see why you made. . . certain leaps.”
Even if it made him feel sick that this kid had thought he was the kind of monster who would– well. There were several things he imagined she was thinking. No wonder she’d been fucking terrified when he tied her up; she’d thought she was next in line to get smacked around and. . .
Jason shook his head, and the image out of it.
“But you’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said firmly, “In several departments. Cindy’s an old friend– well, more like an aunt. I’ve known her long enough that when we first met, she didn’t have to reach up to ruffle my hair.”
Not that Cindy was aware that the scrawny, scrappy kid she’d once given baths and the occasional old t-shirt to was now the vigilante that swung by once a week to make sure no one was giving her or her girls shit. But Jason knew. She was older than he felt she should be, a record skip in Jason’s memory, because where Bruce and Dick and Alfred had stayed frozen in time while he was underground the rest of the world had kept moving. And looking at her was kind of painful, sometimes, when he could see her twenty-two-year-old face layered under the beginnings of crow’s feet and smile lines creased deep into her cheeks. When he’d first met her, twenty-two had seemed ancient. He’d thought he’d never live to be that old.
He’d been right.
“You expect me to believe that?” Purple asked, breaking him out of his thoughts. Jason swallowed hard, then forced out an easy laugh.
“Is that your question?”
“My question’s kinda useless if you won’t tell the truth,” she said, “But no, that’s not it. You let her ruffle your hair?”
This time, the laugh was genuine.
“Hey, let nothing. That lady doesn’t get more than two minutes into a conversation with someone before she’s pulling out a brush. You’d think the helmet’s a deterrent but I swear she took it as a challenge.”
“She’s seen you without your mask?” Purple asked, and then her shoulders tensed. Jason could feel it too, the uneasy knowledge that they’d just strayed sharply into no-no territory. She probably thought Jason would get protective over his identity, but Jason was a lot more worried about something else– if Purple really was some flavor of villain, he didn’t want her thinking she could shake Cindy down for a visual profile. Even if she’d sounded disgusted by the idea of Jason abusing women, there were any number of reasons she’d frame it differently in her mind if she was the one dishing out the hurt.
“Going a bit out of order here,” Jason said, voice forcibly even, “But if you wanted me to strip you could’ve just asked.”
He brought a hand to the base of his helmet and in a smooth, practiced motion lifted it off, tucking it into the crook of his elbow. If anything, Purple tensed even further at the beginning of the gesture, then froze. . . and finally, all the tension rushed out of her as she made sense of what had been hidden underneath the sleek, shiny red plating.
“You’re kidding me,” she said, voice flat but softened by relief. “You have a mask underneath your other mask?”
Jason shrugged idly, tapping his domino with the index finger of his free hand.
“Hey, it gets stuffy under there,” he said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears without the metallic edge. Naked. He didn’t do a lot of Red Hood talks without the red hood on. “Sometimes a guy wants a breather, y’know?”
“So you wear a mask,” she repeated, “Under your other mask. Have you seen a therapist? Because I think a therapist would have a field day with this.”
Jason snorted derisively, but there was a stubborn smile touching his lips. He could see why Tim liked this chick. Strong sense of morals, fashion design, and humor? Ignoring the seems-to-be-determined-to-be-a-villain thing, she was pretty cool.
If bad at twenty questions.
“You’ve asked me three things in a row now, Rousey. I’m starting to think you don’t know how this game works.”
Purple tilted her head slightly, mask creasing as she narrowed her eyes.
“You’re. . . not exactly what I was expecting,” she said tentatively. That got another laugh out of Jason, though this one was a little rougher around the edges.
“Yeah,” he said, “Family disappointment right here. Just ask my dad.”
For some reason that had her freezing up again, like that had been just the wrong thing to say. Which, fucking frankly, was very on-brand for Jason.
“Dad,” Purple muttered, half under her breath, before taking a deep breath and raising her voice.
“Mister Hood,” she said, lifting her chin in an upside-down approximation of squaring off. The faux-haughtiness was back, and just as strong, but there was an edge of something else underneath. “If you may permit me to speak out of turn one last time, I would like to enquire as to the business relationship between you and–”
There was a woosh. The kind of woosh Jason was intimately familiar with after years upon years of piggybacks, of last-minute rescues, of getting caught with his hand in a jar of Alfred’s cookies. He turned, and there was Tim, combing his hair out of his face with one hand and tucking his grappling hook back into his belt with the other. It wasn’t the best time for it, but Jason took a moment to note that this version of the Robin costume really did suit him. It was. . . nice to be able to think that without jealousy curling around the edges of his rib cage.
“Robin!” Purple cried cheerfully, which did not match up with her earlier distaste even slightly. “Good timing! Mind getting me down from here? Red Hood called in Cluemaster and I’d rather not be in piñata mode when he shows up.”
“I what?” Jason asked.
“He what?” Tim echoed. He looked at Jason, brows arching, and Jason made a scandalized sound.
“The fuck is that look for? Of course I didn’t! I barely know who that asshole is!”
“I didn’t say you did,” Tim said, “But what exactly gave her that idea? Did you not explain the situation to her?”
“She said she’d figured it out!” Jason protested, waving a hand at Purple, who was somehow managing to look just as bewildered as they were.
“You– you didn’t call him?” she asked. “That’s not. . . who you were calling?”
“What the hell would I be calling him for?” Jason asked. He hooked a thumb in Tim’s direction. “I was calling this idiot.”
“Oh my God,” Purple said, voice taking on a slightly winded edge, “This explains so much.”
Jason stared at her. “You thought I was working with Cluemaster. Fuck, I feel insulted.”
“Imagine how I felt!” Purple replied, wriggling hard enough to swing herself back and forth through the air. “I thought you thought I was his sidekick.”
“Why would that be where your brain went? Why was that your first guess of who I called?”
“I was supposed to guess Robin?” she countered. “Did you miss the part where you’re one of the most wanted men in the city?”
Tim coughed quietly.
“Technically,” he said, “Batman and I are also criminals. Nightwing, too. Most vigilantes are. What we’re doing isn’t exactly. . . legal.”
Purple turned her head to look at Tim.
“Robin,” she asked, “Why the fuck does the Red Hood have your number?”
“We’re dating,” Jason said without hesitation, and expected the punch Tim buried in his shoulder. It stung that inhuman-strength kind of sting, and Jason grinned as he rubbed at his arm.
“He’s with us,” Tim said. “Me, Batman, Nightwing. . . he’s with us.”
“He shoots people,” Purple said, and Jason laughed.
“Told you I was the family disappointment.”
“You’re not–” Tim broke off with a frustrated growl, then a sigh. “Look. It’s complicated. But he’s one of the good guys, I promise.”
Jason swallowed something bitter, turning away from Tim. Fuck. He’d been having such a good night, too. Why did the replacement have to go and say something like that? He stepped forward, brusquely circling around Purple’s dangling form and finding the knots at her ankles. He reached up, working his fingers into the rope.
“Don’t kick me when you get down from here,” he said.
“No promises.”
“Babybiiird.” Jason put on a whine, tilting his head to the side and pouting at Tim. “Your girlfriend’s bullying me!”
“Good,” Tim said, folding his arms as he leaned back against a bare support beam, “It’s about time someone did.”
Jason made quick work of the knots, and as the rope started to come loose he braced a hand against Purple’s upper back, shifting her center of gravity so she flipped in the air and her legs came down first. Her boots landed heavily against the floorboards and she stumbled slightly, lifting a hand to her head.
“Eurgh,” she said, “Dizzy. Did you have to hang me upside-down?”
“Did you have to try to kick me in the head?” Jason asked.
“Touché.”
Purple, her balance now somewhat regained, backed a few careful steps away from Jason. As if to offset that cautious distancing she planted her hands on her hips, tilting her head up and down as she gave him an exaggerated once-over. Then she nodded to herself.
“Yeah,” she said, with an air of finality, “I can see why Robin would tap that.”
Tim spluttered, indignant, but Jason laughed.
“Okay,” he said, “Rocky start, but I think we’re gonna get along. Provided you’re in a real forgiving mood about something.”
Purple tensed, fingers digging into her sides. Her tone was all forced cheer when she responded.
“Oh? And what’s that, Hoodie?”
Jason gave her a wry smile.
“I’ve completely fucking forgotten what your name is.”