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Tim took sat down by a gargoyle and pulled out his phone, still watching Jason's apartment from several stories over. He checked the time, shrugged, and called Steph.
It was way too early, especially for her, but she'd understand. He had just patched up Jason, and then talked to him without getting attacked, and then walked out with a tentative shot at peace! She had been nagging about him being delusional, saying he wasn't working with a 'normal' or 'complete' understanding of how 'complex' stuff like this can be. She'd said stuff like "Jason could just evil now, boyfriend, shit happens sometimes" and "You have to consider maybe there's a good reason he didn't go home. Maybe he isn't part of the Family at all, and doesn't want to be either."
The sentiments made him want to scream in confusion, or maybe frustration. In that feeling of knowing your right, of just having to prove it, of being ready to do anything to do so.
It was a feeling he was far, far too familiar with, and one he didn't see himself leaving behind any time soon. Not when the rewards were this.
So he called Steph. Mostly to brag about being right, because that was what's important, but also to beg her to check in with Babs, see just how angry she was about Tim's...stunt. Even after all this time, he could rarely get a good read on the redhead, and Steph was pretty much always to solution to any difficulty dealing with her.
He wasn't surprised when Steph just barely picked up on the last ring. She was slow to answer a lot of the time, and especially so in the morning.
"S, ohmigod, you won't believe the night I just had." Tim enthused the moment the call went through. "I found the safehouse Hood's been using, and he came in with a bullet wound, and I was right he totally got the Lazurus treatment, and he was almost definately trained- and-or brainwashed, lets be real- by Talia herself, and I made him breakfast- well, it was like sunset but whatever- and he has really good taste in books! I read a lot while he was asleep." He told her, pausing to heave in a heavy breathe.
"Rivetting." A cold voice droned over the phone, and he could feel the chill of blood draining out of his face. "I'd love to hear all about it, Robin."
Tim had just spent the past 18 hours half-purposefully provoking a mass murderer only-kind-of in control of his violent impulses who held a personal vendetta against him. He rolled his eyes at that man's threats and laughed in his face more then once, and didn't feel a millionth of the terror that Barbara Gordon's drawl filled him with.
"Would you really?" He asks cautiously, more for lack of what to say then anything else. "I can be at the tower in-"
"Twelve minutes." Barbara demanded. Tim hummed, looking around his surroundings again. He was at least fifteen minutes away.
"Twelve minutes." He agrees anyway, because he'd much rather fight against the passage of time itself then a pissed off Oracle.
She hangs up without another word, but he would swear he could hear Steph laughing in the background when she does.
--
When Robin finally arrives at the WatchTower- an impressive twelve and a half minutes later- Barbara takes the time to slowly turn around in her chair to face him. She thinks, all things considered, she deserves to scare the kid a bit. Scare him half as much as he scared her.
Stephanie is watching from the rafters. Barbara thinks she might be recording, even though she'd been very clearly told just how serious this was. It didn't seem to matter to the blonde, though.
Her and Robin both, they were still just kids. Still thought themselves invincible, despite every last blood-soaked scrape of evidence.
"Sixty six days ago, The Red Hood broke into Titans tower, found you alone, and beat you within an inch of your life." She recounted, staring at him down the bridge of her nose. He nodded, entirely unplussed, and her hands tightened around each other from where they were folded together. "It is nothing short of a miracle that you're alive right now, let alone walking. You haven't been cleared for patrol. You had no one to call as back up besides Spoiler, who you had no reason not to assume was asleep. You didn't tell anyone what you were doing or where you were going." Robin opened his mouth a few times to say something, but wisely didn't interrupt her. At least he still had some common sense. "You weren't even in uniform. Did you even bring a weapon?"
A beat, before he realized that she was waiting for a response. "Two Batarangs. And a Grappling hook, if that counts." He offered, fidgeting from foot to foot.
"It doesn't." She sighed. "You went to Crime Alley with exactly two Batarangs and zero backup. This would be stupid enough on a normal day, much less one where you've been actively targeted by the serial killer that's currently top dog. A serial killer that you theorized had been exposed to the Lazarus Pit. And you all-but-gift-wrapped yourself for him. It's a stroke of unspeakable luck, and nothing else, that he was too injured to actually kill you this time. What in God's name compelled you to do any of this?"
"Well, you see, sixty six days ago, I found out that Jason Todd is alive." He started, having the gall to mimic her. His stance straightened, which had to be painful with his injuries, but she didn't say anything. He didn't even flinch and Barbara wondered, for not quite the first time, where he got his pain tolerance. "He's alive, and I had to do something about it, because none of you are."
Barbara raised an eyebrow at the claim. "I assure you that we are all working very hard on the Red Hood case, considering that he almost murdered Robin in a league sanctioned base."
Tim made a frustrated noise. "He had guns. I didn't have back-up. If he wanted me dead I would be, so he obviously didn't."
"Your lungs were nearly punctured." She recounts. "You had a concussion that could have put you in a coma. No matter what his intentions may or may not have been, he almost killed you. And, even if he didn't, he did beat you and leave a horrifying scene."
"He was trying to make a statement." Tim shrugged. "He was angry. Angry about being replaced, angry about B not killing his son's killer, angry about not being remembered. He was, quite justifiably, angry. You shouldn't be hunting him through his own city. He's Jason. He's family." Tim stresses, starting to look upset for all the wrong reasons.
"You're family, Tim!" She says, raising her voice without even realizing it. She takes half a breathe to calm herself before continuing. "You're family, and The Red Hood hurt you. Jason died, and Jason was grieved, and even if he is back and not a clone or a trick or anything, he hurt you. Family doesn't hurt family."
Tim scrunched up his nose. "Family doesn't give up on family. Even if Hood's my family, he doesn't know I'm his yet. It's like poisoning the groom before a wedding you disprove of; they aren't family yet so it's fair game. Once we get Jason back, we can work things out ourselves. Besides, it's an attack on me, so it's my grudge to hold, and I forgive him. I don't hold his actions against him, and you guys don't get to decide stuff like that for me."
"He's a threat to your safety. And to the family's safety, and possibly all of Gotham. He can't be given a free pass, or someone will get hurt."
"I'm not saying give him a free pass!" Tim says, though a twitch in his expression implies that he may have been saying just that. "But families love each other, and love is unconditional."
Barbara took another slow breathe and made peace with the fact that she is absolutely not at all qualified for this conversation. Her portrait of family is cracked. It's a mother that she loves the memory of and a father that she loves in the stolen moments between both of their busy lives and a terrible person of a brother that she doesn't think she ever loved in the first place.
It's also the assorted traumatized misfits that she spends all of her time with. The boy that taught her to fly and to fall and to catch and be caught, the man who kept her as safe as she let him, the elder that watched over them all. The girls that she's picked up and surrounded herself with.
The teenage boy with potential that was taken before his time, and the teenage boy before her that's a little too eager to follow in his footprints, for better and for worse.
Family is something messy, full of love and resentment and confusion in equal, headache inducing measures. It's complicated, and it's real, in a way that she couldn't hope to explain to Tim. Not as he is now, eyes shining, no idea of family beyond television, occasional visits to distant relatives, and even more occasional visits from his parents. He's too idealistic, thinking in black-and-white terms for a matter that very much is not, saying the word unconditional like anyone could ever actual live up to it, and Barbara doesn't know whether or not she should do anything about it, much less how to.
"Tim." She said carefully, "There is no situation where any of us are comfortable treating the Red Hood as one of our own. He doesn't deserve trust just because he's wearing the face of a dead boy- if anything, he deserves very careful watch."
"But he doesn't deserve Blackgate, or Arkham, or whatever you're all planning. Not if it could be Jason. We need to know first, and work from there, right?" He asks, just as careful. Barbara feels a little bit like she's being tricked, but doesn't know quite how yet. She nods anyway.
"I suppose....I could see myself agreeing with that." She admitted reluctantly. Part of her, a far too big part really, was more then happy to just pack the man up and ship him out to be someone else's problem, but....they needed to know how much he knew, how much he'd share and- and they had to know just who the guy was.
"So establishing a working relationship with him could only do good things! Information gathering on his mostly-unknown operations, possibly even influence over those plans, trust that'll foster open dialogue eventually. Can you honestly tell me that you have a better idea?" He demanded.
She closed her eyes and thought the propisition over, trying to poke holes in it. There were a few, of course; the risk of the Red Hood manipulating them for information the same way they were trying to do, or simply never getting through the way they were hoping to. But, in comparison to their current plan of 'wait for him to slip up and hope for the best'.....
Well. It wasn't really a question.
"What, exactly, is this plan?" She asked, not quite as reluctant as she wished.
Tim's eyes lit up like he had won some sort of lottery. Barbara managed not to scowl openly, but it was a near thing.
"Jason still wants what's best for Gotham. He's just more....homicidal about it. But you have to have caught on to the trend by now; He's ruthless, but he has rules, has reason for what he does. Rapists, abusers, anyone who poses any sort of harm to children....he seems to hold similar values to himself pre-death, just more extremist. If you weren't still hung up on the Titans Tower thing, you already would have at least tried to reach out to him. Your control issues are as bad as mine, the entire situation must itch at you."
"Get to the point, Robin." She urged, kind of hating that, again, he wasn't wrong. She hadn't been thinking about it for a reason.
The Red Hood was dangerous, and she simply couldn't afford to dwell on what ifs. Couldn't afford to admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, there was still a starry eyed teenager under all of the green and red whispering Being Robin gives me magic!
A boy they had, however unknowingly, failed again.
"He's been severely misinformed about...probably just about anything. He was thrown in a Pit and fed lies by Talia for god-knows-how-long. We're going to collect as much proof as we can about just how impactful his death was on the entire community, especially us Bats, because he's convinced that we didn't give two shits. We give him valid information with multiple sources and video evidence until he is incapable of denying the truth of the matter. Then you're going to send it all to him and offer a partnership of some kind, with minimal manipulation." Tim explained, nodding along to his own plan like he was double checking its validity in real time. "He told me I have three days to get the evidence and stuff, so we should try to do it in at least half the time, to prove we're legit. He...Seemed really level-headed and reasonable, as long as he wasn't too angry. So we absolutely can not involve B or 'Wing until Jason gives us the go-ahead. At this stage his trust is entirely essential and twice as fragile."
"And if he's too unstable to work with? Or just luring you into a false sense of security?" Barbara challenged, though her mind was already plotting out how they'd get this done in 30 hours at most. It really was their best option, but that didn't mean she'd let him ignore the glaring risk. "I'll only do this if you admit that there's a chance that Hood doesn't get a happy ending. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped."
An outright venomous expression devoured Tim's composure, concerning enough that Barbara got chills, but refused to break eye contact. Refused to budge, not on this.
Not on the safety- possibly the life- of another Robin, because of misplaced and abused trust.
"Fine." Tim grunts, folding his arms defensively. "It is technically possible that this isn't exactly Jason. If the situation is entirely hopeless, I'll...pull back from the case."
That wasn't exactly what she wanted to hear, but it was about what she expected. No matter what she or B or even Dick told the kid, he was still Robin, and Robin was still Gotham's ray of hope. It's shot at redemption or proof of mercy or attempt at optimism, or whatever. She couldn't very well expect him to just give up on someone. He was young, and he was allowed to be naïve.
She could see it in his eyes; if she didn't help, he'd try to do it alone. Or....probably with Steph's help, which might be even worse, because the two of them together brought out both the best and worst of them. If they were going to do it anyway, it'd be best to be there for them, just in case.
A safety net. Isn't that how they all worked, anyway? A group of bastards too stubborn and self destructive and optimistic for their own good, trying their best to keep each other alive?
"Fine." She agreed, with a single sharp nod. "Get back home and go to sleep- and I swear to God if you do anything else, I'll tell B you went out as Robin while he wasn't even on planet."
He nodded rapidly. "Yeah, yes ma'am." He tilted his head. "If I get something quick to eat first, can you tell Alfred that I was chilling with you and Steph and just forgot to tell him?"
"Sure." She conceded, "But only if you sneak me something tasty when you come tomorrow to work on this."
"Should I call in sick?" He asked.
"No." She sighed. "You miss enough school. Send me whatever you've got before school starts, and keep in contact whenever possible. With you pointing me in the right direction instead of me just starting from scratch, this should be pretty easy."
Tim nodded and took a step back. "Sounds awesome. See you after school, O!" he gave her a two finger salute, then tilted his head up curiously. "You coming with, Spoiler?" He asked.
She giggled and put her phone away, swinging down to stand beside him and smacking him lightly on the head. "How long did you know I was there?"
"The whole time?" He shrugged, looking confused by the answer. Stephanie shook her head fondly and waved as she dragged Tim out of the tower.
Barbara finally let herself sag back into her chair, massaging the bridge of her nose with two fingers. Slowly, the sound of Stephanie and Tim laughing and teasing each other faded, until the only thing she could hear was the ticking of the clock and the low buzz of machinery.
They were kids. Too smart and reckless and kind for their own good, and she can't even blame them, because she remembered being just the same.
She arguably still was, despite everything.
Silently, she gave Bruce a little slack for being such an unbearable asshole and realized, for maybe the first time, that maybe he wasn't entirely wrong about everything he ever said to her. Perhaps, occasionally, she overestimated herself and just got lucky, and it wasn't entirely unfair of him to be upset on at least a few occasions. Probably. Maybe. She'd never say it to his face, obviously, but....
God. To hell with the Joker, these brilliant dumbass kids were going to be the death of her. And she couldn't even be mad about it.