Chapter Text
Sarah
No. Not him.
They were left staring at each other for one long moment. He’d taken that helmet off without so much as a beat of hesitation like he wanted her to be the only person who had ever looked upon his face.
Like she was the only person who could see him. Not just as The Knight.
As Jason Todd.
“I started as Red Hood. Fitting, given that the clown used to go by the same name. Then I took The Knight as a way to mock B because the old man deserves it,” Jason snarled, loosening his grip on her throat. “Why would he call himself The Dark Knight when he can’t even save the city he claims to love? It’s pathetic.”
She won’t respond to him. Sarah won’t do anything besides lay there at his complete and utter mercy, hands wrapped around his wrist and eyes screwed tightly shut.
Jason has never wanted to be the reason she was afraid of anything. Not then, not now, not ever.
She looks so willing to let him kill her. He could. He could snap her neck without even trying, and another problem would be gone.
Except she’s not a problem, is she? He’s her Icarus, a reason to fly too close to the sun. Jason Todd would’ve moved Heaven and Earth to insure the girl he loved got the best possible life. To be able to go to art school and get her degree. To be able to fall into the snow she so claimed to love, to live in her dream house, to get out and away from Gotham because all it ever did was kill.
She’s his one link to humanity. The only thing that may keep him human.
And there’s a deeper, lonelier, more innocent part of him that knows he needs that.
“I don’t know if that’s still you in there, Jason,” She said quietly, slowly opening her eyes to meet the stunning shade of emerald green across from her. “But I’m not going to fight you tonight. I know I’m a liability. A weakness. If you need to take care of it, then you go ahead and do that.”
Her hands fell.
His anger grew.
“Are you kidding me?!” It’s so much worse to hear his voice without the modulator because the pain is real now, a pain she can see and hear and belongs more to the boy who met a tragic end than the man impersonating the one who failed him. “You stayed with him after what he did to me! Replaced me, forgot me-“
If only he knew how many nights she spent cradling the fresh mound of dirt on his grave under the lone oak tree.
Sarah’s eyes softened as tears blurred her vision. She’s more than aware nothing she could say could quell the ache in his heart. Nothing she could even attempt to try to comfort him with would succeed in doing so.
“Jason,” And then she’s smiling - even though Sarah knows she needs to tell him that he’s wrong, that Bruce didn’t forget or replace him, that his whole preconceived assumption is wrong - as his grip loosens on her throat. “I love you.”
“Fight back! Don’t you dare give into it after all of this!”
His men are going to catch on soon enough. He’s running out of time.
Even after repeated hits to the chest, legs, stomach, and shoulders, Sarah simply takes it. He’s lost enough. Endured enough. She won’t fight him.
She can’t.
“I love you.” She whispers again, and Jason scrambles backward to scrub his hands over his face repeatedly as if that’ll stop the flow of tears threatening to fall. His mind cannot comprehend this. It can’t comprehend this idea of her continuing to love him even after all he’s done. Even after all he’s done to her.
Sarah can’t find the strength to stand up, so she doesn’t. Not even after the door shuts and The Knight is gone.
But then she’s laughing. Laughing and crying there on the dirty, grimy floor of the Arkham Knight’s hideout because he’s her Jason and he’s alive.
***
Bruce
After having retrieved the Nimbus cell, Bruce left the airship and flew back in the direction of the Batmobile to repair it.
The Joker was waiting for him on the edge of the building closest to it when he arrived.
“No turning back now, Bats! It’s time to face your fears!”
Bruce tapped the gauntlet and softened when Alfred’s face popped up. “Master Bruce,” He said gravely. “I hope you’re not planning what I think you’re planning. That would be reckless and irresponsible even by your standards.”
“It’s the only option, Alfred.”
“Sir, even if the gas doesn’t immediately incapacitate you, another dose could cause long-term psychological trauma.”
Bruce shook his head. “I have no choice.”
Extending his arms, The Batman fell from the side of the building and allowed the cape to carry him down and through the thick cloud of gas that had settled over the streets.
I need to remove the power core slowly, or the failsafe lock will kick in.
“This is it, Bats! Can you feel that delicious toxin burning through your veins, creeping into that demented mind of ours? I sure can. I’m getting stronger. More alive with every breath you take.”
Every person who attempted to come at him from behind fell unconscious to the streets differently than they had been before.
They were all wearing The Joker’s face.
“Sir, you’re running out of time!” Alfred exclaimed desperately. “Get out of there now!”
“Stay calm. Take deep slow breaths. All that effort must be tiring you out. Are you getting sleepy, Bats?”
Bruce wrapped his hand around the end of the containment cell as he slowly pushed it back inside the Batmobile. The Joker was right about one thing, at least. Concentrating with the black dots dancing across the edges of his vision was getting much more difficult.
By the time he’d managed to slip into the driver’s seat of the Batmobile, sleep was threatening to take him under.
“Sir? Master Bruce, are you all right?”
Blinking away the dark spots from his vision, Bruce white-knuckled the wheel until the gas had been filtered out of the car and he could finally breathe a bit more easily.
“Give me a minute, Alfred,” Bruce murmured. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not looking too good, old boy! It won’t be long now before I’m behind the wheel. Just think of the fun we’ll have then! Brains, brawn, brutality, the full package! We’ll have Gotham at our mercy! And you know what the best part is? You’ll be there with me every step of the way, watching it all from the passenger seat. I don’t know about you… but I can hardly wait.
“You wanna know the beginning? I’ll tell you. It starts with you and me taking a stroll right on down to Panessa. Start with Robin, go to Nightwing… and then all your kids will be dead! And all at your hands!”
Bruce’s blood ran cold. He’d already ruined his children’s lives just by taking them in - even if his intentions had been good, he’d subjected them to this nightmare the day they took on the Wayne name - and raising them.
His babies had not deserved this. Not any of this.
The last thing he’d let happen today is the suffering of his children with Bruce’s hands.
He’d die before letting that happen.
***
Things moved at a quicker rate after that. Once the Cloudburst had been found and destroyed, The Arkham Knight fled for fear of retaliation and punishment for his failures. That had granted Poison Ivy the opportunity to help with clearing the remains of the toxin.
She’d given her life for Gotham in doing so.
Batman would never quite forget how gratifying it felt to watch the toxin dissipate below the Botanical gardens while he held Ivy’s body until she eventually was gone too. Had there been a body to bury, he would’ve taken the time to bury her. Batman owed her at least that.
Alfred had been the one to tell him that there was no lead on Scarecrow, but that the GCPD had been stuck trying to decrypt a transmission coming across a SWAT channel. That had led him back in the direction of the GCPD only to find out that the messages were coming from Gordon.
Gordon had found Scarecrow and intended to get revenge for what he’d committed against Barbara.
And then The Knight had shown up again with an excavator that could very easily crush the Batmobile without even having to try. Bruce would give him the credit that was due. The strategies The Knight was making to bring him to his knees were brilliantly executed, even if they were fueled by rage and rage usually made a man sloppy.
Were Bruce a lesser man, it would’ve worked.
“No way out! I did it, I cornered you and did what no one else could. All these years, all your enemies, but no one understands you as I do. Do you think Crane found Oracle and Phoenix on his own? I’m the one who told him about Barbara and Sarah! Me! I told you I knew everything about you, didn’t I? But don’t worry, Bruce. I kept some secrets to myself.”
That was what led him to this spot. Standing here with his son’s shockingly green eyes staring back at him down the barrel of a gun aimed at his father’s chest.
“Turn around.”
Batman turned around and tilted his head. ‘’Who are you?” He repeated. It was the same question he’d been asking himself all night.
“You have no idea, do you, Bruce?”
Jason Todd’s eyes were unmistakable. They’d been blue when he’d been Bruce’s newest adoption, the newest child to cradle close to his heart. Now they were a brilliant shade of green that seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place why.
“Jason?! But… you’re dead….”
All those years, those wasted tears at the foot of the grave under the lone oak…
“Let’s not fall out here, Bats… I may have told you a teeny, tiny little lie,” The Joker lamented, dramatically pressing a hand to his chest as he circled Jason. “But look at him! You did well. We did well. You should be proud!”
“What’s the matter?” Jason asked. “Lost for words? I expected more. She told me I’d get more.”
She?
“I saw the warehouse explode. I held your body. You were dead,” Bruce repeated. None of this made sense. He’d had a body, he’d buried that body and nearly himself alongside it.
“Don’t you dare lie to me!” Jason yelled, pressing closer as his aim waved due to the shake of his hand. “How long did you wait before replacing me? A month? A week? I trusted you… and you just left me to die! To die alone!”
“That’s not what happened.” Bruce snapped.
“You always told me, Bruce… focus on what I want to achieve and it’ll happen. I knew what that used to be. A wedding on a snow-covered mountainside with the girl I loved and getting as far away from Gotham and Robin as possible,” Jason lightly shook his head. “But that died with the broken bird in Ethiopia. Now? Now I just want you dead.”
Jason stumbled when Bruce directly slammed his head into his helmet, shorting out and effectively destroying the electronics. Bullets fired wildly into the open air as Batman swung high above his attacker to evade him.
The Red Hood snarled as he tossed aside one helmet in favor of another and took his place with his rifle on the nearest overhang.
The first time he’d thrown him off, Bruce had tried to draw him out of his head.
“Jason, I can help you!”
“There’s no helping me!”
The second time he’d thrown him, he did it again.
“Joker got to you, I know what it’s like!”
“DON’T PRETEND TO UNDERSTAND!”
And the third time, he’d spoken directly past Red Hood and to his son.
“Stand down, Robin!”
“Don’t call me that! That’s not who I am!”
Jason seems to know exactly where to press every single time he talks. While Bruce continues throughout the compound to evade the arc of his sniper rifle, his son sits tall on the overhangs scattered throughout the room and claws into what remains of his father’s heart.
“How long did you wait before replacing me? A day? A week? Sarah kept saying that wasn’t what you did, that you didn’t want another Robin. She’s never lied to me before but I’m not entirely inclined to believe her. She always did paint you out to be better than you ever were.”
Bruce has had a difficult time differentiating what was fake from what was real for the last several hours. The Joker lingering over his shoulder, always watching, always ready to give his input where he feels it’s necessary. The constant cycle of his daughter’s death replying on a loop every time he closes his eyes. The unnerving silence from his son, while he suffers through the open comms after his sister’s death, is delivered to him.
What might be the worst thing that’s happened so far is that the fist driving itself into Jason’s helmet is very, very real.
His son is very real.
“You-You did this to me,” Jason cried. “You left me to die in that abandoned warehouse with the promise of rescue and I instead ended up choking on my blood as I cried out for Batman. Not my father. Batman.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce pleaded. “But we can fix this. We can fix this together. It’s what she’d want.”
Jason’s aim wavers as the gun eventually clatters against the floor. He uses the opportunity of Bruce calling Alfred to sneak away into the dark.
The Red Hood helmet is left behind on the floor.
“Excuse me, sir, I must be mistaken. For a moment I thought you said you’d found Master Todd.”
Bruce nodded. “You heard right.”
“My God! Is he all right?”
“No… no, he isn’t.”
***
“We’re the same, Bruce. We’d do anything for our family.”
He’s pretty sure he stops breathing on the roof. It doesn’t matter that it’s freezing and raining harder than it has all night, it doesn’t matter that Scarecrow is there with the militiamen, it doesn’t matter that Jim’s betrayed him.
Nothing else matters and won’t matter now because that’s his daughter staring back at him.
His daughter in her tattered armor, dark hair clinging to her face and effectively hiding the bruises and cuts she’d obtained while in The Knight’s care. She’s barely putting any weight on her ankle and is hugging herself like she’s in pain and can’t cry out, but that is his little girl and she’s alive too.
He will fall to her knees and weep while begging for her forgiveness every day for the rest of his life.
Something akin to relief fills Sarah’s eyes as she and Barbara are forced to remain beside one another while looking out and over at Batman and Gordon. “Dad!”
“Barbara,” Jim murmured. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“No, no… Sarah took the brunt of that,” Barbara nudged her head towards the younger Grayson who had yet to say a single word but was still staring right at Bruce through the cowl. Just as she always had been able to. “What are you doing?!”
“Call in the transport,” Scarecrow demanded. “We’re leaving. And the baby bat is coming with me.” Batman rested the tips of his fingers against the waiting Batarang in his supply belt while Scarecrow held Barbara and Sarah just at the edge of the rooftop. “It’s time for the people of Gotham to see their savior for who he truly is. Just a man. Devoid of hope, betrayed by his friends, crippled by fear.’’
‘’Let her go!” Gordon yelled.
“You both still have a part to play.”
Sarah didn’t even have time to properly react before Batman hurled himself over the side of the building after being shot in the chest by the Commissioner. She knew better. Nothing brought him down.
Not like that anyway.
She and Barbara were both falling before either of them could stop it. Using what little mobility her body would give her, Sarah extended her arms and stiffened her body to send her careening toward Barbara.
What she got instead was a face full of kevlar and a dark cape enveloping them both before they could hit the ground.
Batman deposited both girls behind what remained of the brick wall. “Are you hurt?” When Sarah nodded, he grimaced and slowly leaned her into Barbara’s side to brush away her hair and examine her face. “We’ll take care of it soon. I promise.”
She nodded and closed her eyes.
“I thought Dad killed you!” Babs exclaimed.
Bruce reached down and removed the bullet from the right side of the Bat logo on his chest. “He knew what he was doing,” He replied. “You stay there and do not attempt to move. There’s another drone unit on approach.”
Sarah nodded and buried her face in her father’s chest.
She hadn’t even thought about her earrings until one of them caught on Batman’s cape. They’d been a gift from Dick for her twenty-fifth birthday the year before, and it had taken Tim less than three minutes one night on a patrol gone wrong to realize they had trackers in them.
She lightly squeezed both earrings together and smiled. That should be enough assurance to her brothers of her well-being.
Once the unit was destroyed and Bruce took Barbara to the Batmobile, he turned back around and returned for his daughter. “Dad,” She called softly, shame filling her features as she motioned to her ankle. “I… uh.. can’t walk. I think it’s either fractured or broken.”
Bruce nodded and bent down to collect her. “You took all the heat for Barbara, didn’t you?” He asked, to which she nodded. “It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re safe. Your brothers…”
“Thought I was dead too?”
“Dick hasn’t spoken to me since I told him.”
Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. “Cause that was smart,’’ She retorted. “I will only give you credit for actually telling him and Tim instead of keeping it a secret. That’s a big step for you.”
Bruce snorted and shook his head, turning to move back to the driver’s seat in the car. He stopped short when a hand snapped outward to wrap around his wrist. His little girl was staring up at him through those wide blue eyes, silently pleading for him to give her the one thing he so rarely gave to anyone else.
“Sarah.” He said softly. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
And then Batman removed his cowl just long enough to brush away hair from the crown of her forehead and lay a kiss thereupon.
***
PHOENIX: FOUND
PHOENIX: FOUND
PHOENIX: FOUND
Dick nearly fell off the edge of the rooftop he’d been canvasing when the message displayed on his domino. He paused and peered closely at the map of Gotham on his display as a little P began moving in the direction of the GCPD and then stayed there.
Mustering all the courage he could, he called Bruce.
“B?”
“Dick,” Bruce breathed. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“I’m only calling because I think Sarah’s faulty tracker came back online,” He interjected quickly. “It just reappeared.”
“It’s a long story, but… Sarah and Babs are both alive,” Bruce said. “Come to the GCPD and I’ll explain everything. I promise.”
Dick didn’t even hesitate in turning back around and sprinting across the rooftop to begin grappling back across the city to the GCPD. When he eventually landed from a perfect flip onto the roof, he found himself staring at the back of a woman’s dark head where she sat leaning against the railing between two officers.
It took everything in him not to tackle her on the spot when that woman turned around and revealed his little sister’s face. “Jenkins, Roberts,” She called over her shoulder. “Go down and get yourselves fresh coffee. I’d like a private moment alone with Nightwing.”
Dick removed his domino and simply watched her as the two cops disappeared over his shoulder. Her face was mottled with deep purple bruises and cuts that seemed to have been treated given the bandages across her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were soft as ever, her smile gentle and wide as she motioned him forward.
“Sarah?”
She nodded once, then twice, and then Sarah Grayson-Wayne was nearly swept off her feet by the force of Dick Grayson-Wayne’s bone-crushing hug. It was fortunate that the light haze of rain hid their tears.
“I’m home, Big Wing,” She whispered in his ear, frantic fingers scrambling for purchase in his suit as he buried his face in her shoulder. If she noticed the tremble of his hands or the cry that bubbled in the back of his throat when he felt her heart steady beneath his palm - she was real and here and not dead in some safe house room in a pool of her own blood - Sarah didn’t show it. “I came home.”
“You… you’re really here,” He murmured. Dick pulled away and glanced down at the splint around her ankle, following the tattered fabric of her armor up to her face and mess of black hair. “Real or not real?”
He’d been so close to throwing himself off the roof and flying again - no one to catch him, no grapple to keep him safe, nothing - when Bruce had told him his little sister was dead. Dead on some floor, left to be forgotten about while Gotham burned.
But this was real. She was real, just like she’d always been.
Sarah tipped her head into the palm that rested on her cheek and nodded. “I am as real as it gets,” She mused, laughing as Dick’s cheeks turned scarlet at the realization of what he’d asked. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Phoenix, come in.”
Their sweet reunion was short-lived as Sarah tapped her ear and turned to look back out over Gotham.
“Go ahead, Oracle.”
“Scarecrow is launching a full-scale attack on GCPD. Can either you or Nightwing help him? How’s your ankle?”
The medic downstairs combined with some of the equipment from the Batmobile had stabilized her ankle well enough that, with quite a lot of concentration, she could maneuver without the use of showy gymnastics.
Dick would never have survived a broken ankle.
“We can both help him, O. We’ll take the roof. B can take the roads.” Sarah grinned and slipped the new domino Bruce had given her downstairs on before reaching behind her to tie her hair back and away from her face. “You ready to lose your rights to the front seat of the Batmobile?”
“Not before you lose your rights as the favorite kid!”