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The maniacal laughter that heralds the Wild Hunt echoes through the streets.
The Wild Hunt is a cacophony of nightmarish figures, led by a clown with hollow eyes and a sharp smile. Stephanie has always hidden away as it clamors through the streets on All Hallow’s Eve; they can steal you without ever laying a hand on you, through the green gas that fills the air around them. It rends you from your sensibilities, leaves you laughing and breathless and ultimately another mindless part of the Hunt.
Going outside while the Wild Hunt is near is tantamount to suicide, here Stephanie is, standing there, ready to fling open her door.
She’s fashioned herself an outfit -- dark purples and blacks, to hide in the shadows. A hood, to cover her golden hair, should any light shine her way. A scarf fashioned into a mask, to shield her from the gas that steals lives with a single breath.
Her own determination, adding steel to her spine and fire in her belly.
Going out to face the Wild Hunt is likely a death sentence, but Stephanie has faced down the grim reaper before. She’s not going to allow herself to die so easily, and she’s not going to allow the Joker to steal Jason away so easily, either.
*
Stephanie hadn’t meant to speak to him at all.
Gotham was a city of broken and abandoned things. The Wild Hunt had been the final nail in its coffin; any of its former glory had been stolen away by the roving bands. The official hunt only happened once a year, the full entourage of monsters and their unwilling thralls, but the monsters themselves found their way into the city, one by one, night after night. Nowhere was safe.
No one was unscathed.
Her father had joined the Wild Hunt years before, when she’d been too small to mourn his loss. He still returned to their home, masked and leering that artificial smile, and usually Stephanie can escape through a window, out an unguarded door, into the streets that were only safer by comparison. She’d become a solitary thing when her father had joined the hunt -- no one else wanted to associate with a girl who sometimes shared her home with one of the nightmares.
No one was willing to let her stay with them, to escape the nightmare, for fear of retaliation.
*
There were rumors that some tried to fight the Wild Hunt. That they didn’t fear the Joker’s toxic gas, or the sharp teeth of the Croc, or the intoxicating caress of the green goddess. It was a dark figure, rumor said, a hulking mass in the night, as somber and silent as the grave, in sharp contrast to the riot of color and shrieks that characterized the Hunt. About the symbol of a bat, starkly outlined against the night.
There were rumors about boys in bright colors who helped him, about girls who had saved people from the clutches of the Hunt, about people who risked themselves to ensure that others could get away.
Stephanie knew the rumors were true.
She’d seen the Bat with her own eyes as a child, had watched as he came from the darkness to knock her father to the ground, had taken him away. Had seen his Robin, and then, years later, another one in its place.
Had started haunting the streets herself on the quiet nights, hoping to see them again. Hoping to help someone herself, to undo some of the damage her father has done. She’s gone out five, six times, and caught a glimpse of the Bats, but so far has only succeeded in risking herself, not saving another.
*
She helps Dr. Thompkins out, as best she can. Learns how to stitch and bandage, to set bones and dole out precious medicines. She does more good there, probably, than in her burgeoning nighttime routine, but sometimes she thinks that the urge to roam the streets is in her blood. That the wild hunt is infecting her through her father, that she’s doomed anyway, so she might as well go out on her terms.
She’s cleaning up the clinic while Dr. Thompkins takes inventory of the supplies they still have left when he comes in, bloody and beaten and with a smile on his face.
“Jason,” Leslie says reprovingly, but he holds out a large bag for her before settling heavily into a plastic chair. Leslie spares a glance at Stephanie, then hands her the bag before looking over Jason, pushing off his leather jacket and pulling up his shirt. It bunches oddly, like it’s not made out of mere cotton, and Steph’s so distracted by the contents of the bag -- medicines! And the most highly-demanded antibiotics and other treatments that Leslie had just been worrying over during the inventory-- that she doesn’t realize how badly he’s injured at first.
“Stephanie,” Leslie says, interrupting the quiet inventory she’s been making of Jason’s supplies. “I’m going to need another set of hands here.”
That’s when Stephanie really looks at the injuries, and realizes that this Jason, whoever he is, shouldn’t have been able to walk into the clinic as casually as he did, much less carrying the heavy bag of supplies. There’s a particularly long and deep gash across his side, like he was sliced with a blade. “What can I do?”
“Lock the doors,” Leslie says briskly.
Stephanie does, then sets the bag of supplies down carefully and hurries to the sink, washing her hands vigorously.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” Leslie chides Jason as she cleans the wound. Steph prepares the sutures, flinching a little as she watches Leslie pull a few scraps of Jason’s shirt out of the edges of the wound. Jason himself has his jaw clenched, but doesn’t make a sound.
“You needed the supplies,” Jason says, stubborn and steely.
“But you risked--”
“I know what I risk.”
Stephanie feels forgotten as she helps Leslie suture the wound, cleaning the blood away and listening to them bicker about the risks.
“Thank you,” Stephanie cuts in, because Leslie hasn’t yet. “The supplies are going to help a lot of people.”
Jason focuses on her for the first time, and smiles, even as Leslie is tying off the last of the stitches. “I know they were needed.”
Leslie lets out a hrmph. “Did your grand plan include a way to get out of here without being seen by him, or did it stop with glory and becoming a pincushion?”
She gestures for Stephanie to bandage the wound. Steph does, murmuring a soft, “Sorry,” when his abdominal muscles twitches as she smoothes the tape down.
“It’s okay,” he says, just as softly, and when she meets his eyes, they are a startling, strange green she’s never seen on a person before. They make him seem otherworldly, when she focuses purely on those eyes, instead of merely flesh and blood.
When she looks away, Leslie is giving her a disapproving look. “Keep it clean,” she tells Jason, “and don’t pop those stitches. Hard telling when you’ll manage to get out here again.”
Jason nods, though Stephanie knows Leslie well enough that she can tell that she doesn’t believe him.
“How long can you stay?” Leslie asks.
“Maybe another few minutes,” Jason replies.
Leslie nods. “Stephanie will get you something to eat and drink, and help you outside when it’s time. It’s probably best if I’m gone when you leave.”
Jason nods, and they watch as Leslie gathers her bag and leaves. Stephanie finds him a snack, and despite his wound Jason eats hungrily.
The few minutes pass quickly with few words but easy company as Stephanie puts away the supplies, and as Jason leaves he takes her hand in his own and says, “Don’t leave immediately, but when you do, go directly home. I’ll make sure you get there safely.”
That’s when she realizes that stitching Jason up took longer than she’d thought. Darkness has fallen. Only a fool wanders Gotham alone at night, especially just a few scant weeks out from the Wild Hunt. Stephanie has, but she’s not going to confess her deepest secret to this stranger, no matter how she enjoys his company.
Her hand feels cold when he lets it go.
She watches him go, disappearing down the street between one blink and another, and when she leaves the clinic herself, she feels as though she’s being watched her entire hurried way home.
For once, it doesn’t knot her stomach with fear.
*
When she asks Leslie about Jason, she’s met with stony silence.
*
She doesn’t go out that night, or the next. It’s not the thought of the wound she’d helped Leslie suture, or even the clear concern that Jason had had about her simply walking home.
It’s more than that -- there’s a tension in the air, palpable enough to send shivers down her spine. Something has happened.
She asks, and finds out that there’s been sightings of a new member of the Wild Hunt, and that he fought the Bat to a standstill, and escaped. That he hid his face behind a red helmet.
That the Bat had watched him go, and done nothing.
It curdles strangely in her stomach, the thought of a new member of the Hunt, and she was torn equally between the desire to go out and see and the knowledge that it was safer to not.
Stephanie Brown was a lot of things, but cautious wasn’t one of them.
*
Wearing a mask at night is a danger in and of itself.
The Wild Hunt’s envoys are ever-changing, and hiding one’s face is the easiest way to be mistaken for one. But if you were to be seen by a member of the Hunt and recognized -- a likely possibility for someone whose father was in its ranks -- it was far more dangerous to go out with your face unshielded.
She knows the alleys and hidden pathways of Gotham as well as anyone; she was born here, she grew up here, she was pulled through the darkest corners of it by the people who were meant to protect her.
She creeps along the likeliest spots. Spends a lot of time watching the movement of the city from ledges and rusted fire escapes.
Sees the flutter of a cape around a corner.
She follows, curious and determined. She crouches behind a gargoyle, careful to avoid the ragged stone where one wing has broken off, and watches. It’s the Bat, and he’s chasing after a figure in a red helmet.
“Red Hood,” she hears him yell. Then, another name, familiar. They clash, a riot of thrown punches and projectiles, and Stephanie ducks behind the gargoyle, thankful for its solid presence. She’s far enough away that she can only hear the yells clearly.
Her head is spinning, because she’s put together the familiar name and figure itself -- the familiar leather jacket, that she’d folded carefully on a chair in Leslie’s clinic, his silhouette, and the way she can tell he’s guarding his side carefully.
It’s impossible.
A member of the Wild Hunt had risked himself to bring supplies to the clinic. She realizes that the wound she’d helped Leslie take care of had likely been caused by the Bat himself, and her stomach churns.
It’s impossible, and yet she knows it to be true.
The fight is continuing, and she peers around the gargoyle’s broken wing. There’s something strange about the fight; the flurry of movement that had her ducking continues, but they’re both still standing. If the Bat had injured Jason, he should know that a sharp jab in that side would incapacitate him.
And yet, the Bat doesn’t make the move. His mouth is moving, as though he’s trying to reason with Jason, but there’s no reasoning with the Wild Hunt. Everyone knows that. Stephanie knows that, because she’s seen its mad gleam in her father’s eyes.
The fight continues, endless, neither side willing to make the move to end it, when something else makes the decision for them.
An explosion rocks through the city, and plumes of purple smoke fill the air.
The Bat spares a final glance at Jason before launching himself off the building, swinging towards the screams and smoke. Jason stays, shoulders heaving, staring at the chaos. The helmet hides his expression, but his body language shows defeat.
Steph knows she shouldn’t, but she’s never been able to leave someone in crisis. She picks her way towards him, stands by his side.
He takes off his helmet, looks at her with those green, green eyes. “You saw that?”
“I don’t understand,” she says. “You’re in the Wild Hunt.”
She doesn’t mean to make it a question, but her voice lilts up at the end of the sentence anyway.
He looks away, then nods.
“But you’re---” good, she wants to say, but she barely knows him. She just knows he’s done at least one selfless act, and that alone sets him apart from the rest of the Hunt.
“I wasn’t always.” His voice is quiet, and he’s looking at the explosion again. The purple smoke hangs overhead. “I was Robin, once, before he happened.”
Stephanie, to her credit, doesn’t gasp, but the revelation feels earth-shattering all the same. Robin is the Bat’s, but she knows from his tone exactly who the he Jason had referred to was.
The Joker.
The leader of the Wild Hunt.
A few years ago, the Joker had led the Wild Hunt with extra glee, and the morning after there’d been dead birds crudely spray-painted on countless buildings. Simple drawings -- an upside down bird, X’s for eyes, outlined in green and yellow and red, the red splashed generously on each one.
One was graffiti’d on the wall of the building outside Stephanie’s window, and she’d stared at it every night for weeks until someone had painted over it.
“Did he--” Stephanie couldn’t think of a way to end the sentence.
“He murdered me,” Jason says. “Murdered me, and when some strange magic brought me back, brought me into the Hunt. I’ve been there since.”
He was far, far more sane than anyone who’d been in the Hunt for years had any right to be. Steph reached out, touched the back of his hand lightly. He stared down at the way her fingers rested on his before forcing his attention back on her. “Then we have to get you out of there.”
“I can’t leave,” Jason says, needlessly. Steph knows the Wild Hunt, knows the way it devours people, and wonders how he’s retained enough of himself to continue to try helping. “I’m part of it.”
“There has to be a way,” Stephanie says, stubborn.
*
There is.
It’s dangerous, and foolhardy, and she’s unlikely to survive it.
But if she does…
The Wild Hunt has caught Gotham in a net of fear, and if she manages to snag a hole in that net, if she shows the people in Gotham that the Wild Hunt can be taken down… It could be the spark of hope that takes down the entire Hunt.
*
The night the Wild Hunt rides, Stephanie dresses carefully. She puts on the outfit she’s been roaming the streets in -- sturdy boots and supple gloves; form-fitting bodysuit and swirling cloak, and most importantly of all the mask that shields her identity.
She could stay home, safe behind locked doors. She could leave Jason to his fate, leave the Wild Hunt to terrorize Gotham, leave everything as it is.
Stephanie can’t do that. She has to act, now that she knows what to do.
She moves through the streets, confident, knowing that it doesn’t matter if the Hunt sees her. It’s inevitable. She hears the Hunt before she sees it, wild, uncontrolled laughter that echoes down the streets.
She stands in the shadows, and as the Hunt passes, finds the Red Hood in its midst. She’s chosen her spot well; he’s near enough that when she leaps out, arms out, he doesn’t react until she has him in her grasp.
The Joker’s leering smile will haunt her dreams, but he stays back when she says the words that the Oracle had slipped to her: “By your own rules, King of the Hunt, if I can hold onto him throughout the Hunt’s fury, he’s mine.”
Jason stops struggling against her, and she has the sense that he’s staring at her through the helmet. A second later and he’s unlatching it, dropping the helmet to the side as he whispers, “Leave, while you can.”
“We both are,” Stephanie says stubbornly, and tightens her embrace, tucks her face against his chest. The Wild Hunt teems around them, a constantly-moving maelstrom of color and screeches, and the Joker himself laughs and laughs, saying, “You heard the girl. Let loose your fury, my Wild Hunters!”
The rules are simple: if she lets go of him before dawn, she joins the Wild Hunt. If she holds on, then he’s free.
It sounds like an easy task. It isn’t. The very first member of the Hunt to approach is the Scarecrow, the lumpy burlap mask shifting into a smile as he takes a handful of powder from a small sack and blows it in her direction.
For a long moment, nothing happens, and Stephanie thinks that she’s avoided whatever torture he’d devised. Then she blinks, and the world shifts around her. The colors change-- even darker and somehow simultaneously sharper than before, as if the shadows all have bladed edges -- and suddenly she doesn’t have her arms wrapped around Jason, but a nightmare made flesh. Sharp claws and sharper teeth, body twisted and skin grey and clammy, it’s like something out of the darkest corners of her mind, and she wants to recoil.
But she doesn’t.
She squeezes her eyes shut and tucks her head closer against his chest, keeping her arms tight around him. She can feel the steady beating of his heart, faster than before but still slower than the beating she can feel thudding in her own ears. The image of the monster continues to dance behind her eyelids, but Stephanie holds firm.
A touch on the back of her neck, and her eyes pop open again. Jason’s whispering encouraging things -- he knows the price he’ll pay if she fails, the price they’ll both pay -- and before her is the green goddess herself. Through her drugged eyes, Stephanie sees her as a beautiful flower surrounded by thorns and brambles and poison ivy.
When she looks at Jason again, he’s covered in that same treacherous greenery -- she can feel the thorns pricking into her skin, can see the scratches and blood welling up through the holes in the fabric of her outfit. Can feel the tingle on her skin that tells her that she’ll soon be covered in weeping sores, in rashes that she’ll never find relief from.
His mouth is moving, and she can’t make out the words, but she keeps holding on, even through the pain. Standing very, very still helps -- the thorns no longer scratch her.
It feels like she stands there for a lifetime, skin protesting a thousand tiny intrusions, then the green goddess is gone.
It goes on like that -- a man with two faces, one brutally handsome, one grotesque leers while her arms are wrapped around a huge ever-flipping coin, feeling as though she’s flipping with it, the world spinning dizzily around her while her stomach churns. She nearly lets go, just for relief from the constant whirling, but there are lives in the balance, and that’s worth more than her own temporary physical comfort.
A woman dressed as a harlequin, and Jason’s a snarling hyena, snapping at her and drooling on her while she clutches tight. It’s so real she can smell the wet fur, can feel the teeth biting into her flesh, and still she doesn’t let go.
A man so frozen he looks to be made of ice, and Jason’s suddenly living ice as well, so cold that her fingers go numb, then tingle with pain, and it burns. A snarling crocodile-man, and it’s like she’s in a sewer, the smell overpowering, while she holds on to a scaley version of Jason with too many sharp teeth.
A well-dressed man whose face is a black skull with bloodshot eyes, leering and laughing and making cruel comments as Jason seems to shift again to resemble him, words spilling around her about all the terrible things he’d do to her, about all the torture he would inflict on her, while visions of her own death flash behind her eyes.
It goes on and on, each member of the Hunt taking their turn and turning Jason into a thing of nightmares. Steph wonders, hours in, what Jason is seeing, if he knows what’s haunting her, but she’s so lost in it that she can’t ask, can only keep her arms tight around him and try to listen for the steady beating of his heart to ground her.
Her father appears near the end, garish orange like a beacon in the darkness, drawing her full attention for the first time in hours. It’s the first time she nearly lets go-- not because she’s afraid of what Jason might become, but from the urge to punch the smile off her father’s face.
He recognizes her almost immediately, and when Jason transforms, this time it’s into her father himself, while memories flash between them, all the terrible moments that have made Stephanie who she is.
It’s harder to hold on tight to him than it was to any of the nightmare creatures, and Stephanie’s shaking with relief when her father disappears and the next member of the Hunt takes his place.
Everything is calm, and quiet, and for a moment she thinks that it’s over, she’s made it to dawn, then she realizes that the Hunt has gone silent.
The Joker stands before them, smiling widely. She can feel Jason’s revulsion, can feel as he starts to shake. She keeps her hands twisted in his coat, wondering what horror Jason will turn into now, and--
Suddenly it’s like he’s much smaller, and when she looks at him, he’s Robin. Curly hair, yellow cape, little green boots, bare legs. Her hands are twisted into the cape, now, though seconds ago she was gripping his leather jacket. Only his body is battered, his face bloodied, one leg is angled oddly, and she thinks queasily that she can see a pale shard of bone sticking through.
He collapses heavily against her, and it’s everything she can do to support his weight. She’s battered herself from the night, from exhaustion and the phantom pain of all the wounds she’s suffered, and she has to brace herself to keep upright. She can no longer hear the steady beat of his heart, and Jason’s eyes are no longer afraid -- they’re cloudy and blank.
The Joker’s laughter echoes through her mind, and she’s not sure if it’s out loud or if she’s in a memory. Things are hazy -- she tries to focus on the physical, on the strain of her muscles, on the shakiness of her legs, but everything is hazy, and around her memories are cropping up.
They aren’t her memories, and it’s simple enough to see whose they are. Robin dying, Robin suffering, the Joker’s joy, the Joker’s triumph. She wants to let go, to allow the corpse in her arms to fall to the ground while she comforts the dying boy she sees all around her, but that would be folly.
So she watches Jason die a dozen times, a half-hundred times, and keeps her arms around the cold, still boy the entire time. Laughter echoes around them, and the Joker’s endless commentary, and all Stephanie can do is hold tight and watch it all unfold.
It’s relentless and awful, in a way nothing else has been -- it’s real. All these things happened, and Stephanie is bearing witness to the past, instead of being haunted by nightmares.
But the only way to have a future is to bear the past, and so she does.
Finally, finally, when her legs have given out and she’s sitting on the cold concrete, arms still clutched around Jason’s lifeless body, she feels it. The slightest twitch, the barest of movement. Jason.
She tears her eyes away from his murder and its jeering audience to focus on his face. The eyes are no longer cloudy, the skin no longer that ghastly gray.
She looks up, and the Joker himself is snarling, screaming even more vile hateful things at her, but it feels distant now. He’s losing his power over her, because the sun is breaking over the horizon, and the sky is getting brighter by the minute.
All Hallow’s Eve is past; it’s a new day and Stephanie never let go. Not once.
She laughs and when Jason shifts in her arms -- suddenly himself again, wearing the remains of his Red Hood outfit, no longer in the outfit he’d died in -- she presses a joyful kiss to his mouth, a kiss that tastes like tears.
She doesn’t let go until the Hunt is gone, and Jason presses his forehead against hers. “You did it,” he said, his voice cracked and broken. He’s lived through horrors himself tonight.
“You’re free,” she says. She doesn’t recognize her own voice; it’s as broken as Jason’s is. She doesn’t remember screaming, but must have. “We’re free.”
He laughs, a low, rusty sound, and rests his hand on her cheek. “The Wild Hunt didn’t terrorize Gotham last night.”
It’s the first she’s thought of it; she was so focused on saving one person, she hadn’t thought about what that meant for everyone else.
She finally, finally let go of Jason, her arms feeling limp and empty at her sides. She half-expects him to vanish once she’s no longer grounding him, but he’s still there, solid and real.
She stands, shakily -- her body aches, but nothing feels like it needs medical attention -- and offers Jason a hand. He takes it, standing on legs that seem as wobbly as her own. “Do you have a place to be?”
He pauses, looks up -- Steph sees a shadow where one shouldn’t be, then it’s gone -- and shakes his head. “Not right now. Soon, but…”
“Come with me,” she says. They’re bound now, she and Jason, after going through a nightmare together. She can’t bear the thought of watching him walk away.
Another hesitation, then he nods. “I’d like that.”
He holds on to her hand like a lifeline, one that she’s grateful to give. He’s a solid reminder that the nightmare has passed, that she’s safe, that she defeated the Wild Hunt.
That the feeling of hope rising in her chest is real.
She doesn’t let go of it.