Chapter Text
Breaking into the Titans Tower is so easy that Jason would be worried about their security measures, if he, like, cared about these people even a little bit. But he doesn’t, and therefore, he’s not going to notify anyone of this. He’s the Red Hood, not Mother Theresa. They can fix their own goddamn security.
He finds his replacement in the kitchen, playing with a bag of crushed ice and holding a soda can to his bruised cheek. Jason frowns. He’s been stalking Tim Drake and the rest of the Bats for several weeks now. He knows the new Robin has been banned from patrol because Bruce is scared of what Jason will do to him if he finds him out on the streets.
He's right to be scared.
The replacement pops an ice chip into his mouth and checks his phone, looking bored. For a few minutes, Jason watches him text people before he switches apps. Soon enough, the sound of a TikTok video fills the room. Tim laughs. Jason rolls his eyes.
Seriously, this is Bruce’s best choice for a new sidekick? This kid? Really, Bruce?
Well, Jason is going to teach them both a lesson. Tonight, Bruce will finally learn why he shouldn’t put little kids in costumes to fight his war, and-
A peppy pop song starts playing. It takes Jason a second of utter disgust to realise that it’s a ringtone.
Tim puts down the soda can, allowing Jason to see the darkened bruise on his cheek in all its glory, puts the phone on speaker and says, “Yeah?”
“Tim,” comes Dick’s voice from the other end of the line, and then, more suspicious: “Did you put me on speakerphone?”
“Yep.”
“Robin,” Dick corrects, sounding annoyed. Jason shakes his head at these two morons. “Are you alone?”
“Yep,” Tim repeats, completely unaware of any eavesdroppers, and Jason shakes his head again. He expected a little bit better. Not much, but a little.
Dick’s sigh echoes through the kitchen, and when he next speaks, he sounds wary and apologetic all at once. “I just wanted to check that you’re okay. You know Bruce didn’t mean it.”
Jason smiles to himself. Did Batman hurt Robin’s feelings? What, did he tell him to go to bed on time? Did he tell him that he can only have his second-favourite dessert after dinner? Did he get him the wrong iPhone? What could one overbearing billionaire dad possibly do to upset his millionaire-heir and ultra-privileged son?
“I know,” Tim says quietly. “He’s under a lot of stress.”
“Exactly,” Dick says, sounding relieved. “Just give him a couple of days to cool down, I’m sure he’ll call you to apologise soon.”
“I’m sure he will.” Tim isn’t even trying to make it sound believable, and Jason can’t blame him. He’s pretty sure Bruce has never apologised for anything in his life. In his experience, Bruce deals with problems the way he deals with anything else: he throws money at it until it goes away. One time, he missed movie night, and he gave Jason a new PS5 console. He didn’t get that Jason didn’t want gifts, he wanted to watch a movie with his dad.
At the other end of the line, Dick clears his throat. “I’ve gotta run, but I’ll text you. You being stuck in the tower for now doesn’t mean I want to miss out on my Tim-time.”
Tim laughs, but Dick has already hung up. Finally. Jason wants to confront his former brother, he does, but not like this. Tonight is all about the replacement. It’s all about Bruce.
“B give you a hard time?” he asks, stepping out from the shadows.
To his credit, Tim reacts fast. Jason dodges the soda can on reflex only.
“Red Hood,” Tim acknowledges. His voice is calm, but his eyes are darting around the room, looking for potential weapons. His bo staff is leaning against the wall nearest Jason; Jason snatches it up and spins it a few times. “What are you doing here?”
“Social call,” Jason says cheerfully. He knows that by now, Tim will have pressed the panic button tied into his suit. What Tim doesn’t know is that Jason took down the entire system before he arrived. Nobody is going to hear that call for help, and nobody is coming. Not before he’s done. “You didn’t answer my question.
What’d he do then? Forgot to pick you up from school?”
Tim snorts. “Something like that. What’s it to you?”
“I’ll tell you what it is to me,” Jason says. The pit is at the edge of his mind, waiting to take over. Soon, he promises himself. Soon. But not yet. He wants to have a little fun first.
He takes a step closer, noting with satisfaction that the replacement takes a step back, and one more, until his back hits the wall. Good. Jason’s got him right where he wants him.
He takes off his mask.
There’s a shocked gasp, a whispered “Jason?”, and the next moment, Tim is trying to move past him.
Jason catches him around the waist and throws him back against the wall. “Running already?” he says. “I’m disappointed.”
The replacement shakes his head. There’s a little trickle of blood down his face; he must have hit the back of his head just now. “Let me- I just need to get my phone.”
Jason clucks his tongue in disbelief. He knows from all his stalking that Tim Drake is only three years younger than him, but apparently, that’s enough of an age difference for the new Robin to be completely social media-obsessed in a way that Jason never understood. What’s he going to do, post about this on Instagram? Twitter about it?
“Tweet about it,” Tim corrects, flinching back when Jason stares at him. “No, I- you’re back! Batman needs to know immediately.”
Jason barks out a laugh, because he can’t not. “What, so he can beat me up?”
Tim flinches again, this time almost imperceptibly. He’s touching his bruised cheek again. “He wouldn’t,” he says. “Not you.”
“I think a duffel bag filled with heads is enough to shoot down anyone’s goodwill,” Jason counters. “And if it isn’t, I think knocking around his new favourite toy will definitely be enough to ruffle his feathers.”
“Bats don’t have feathers.”
“Smart,” Jason says as he hits the replacement in the face with his bo staff. “Smart and annoying. But don’t worry. You won’t be able to say another word when I’m done with you.”
Tim wipes away the blood and says, a sense of urgency creeping into his voice: “Call him. He won’t be mad at you. I promise.”
“What makes you so sure of that?” Jason asks, curious despite himself. The pit roars again, more insistently this time, but he’s still not ready. He’s waited so long for this, what’s one more minute of idle chitchat?
The replacement shrugs. “He’s already blown off steam today being pissed at me, and he never gets angry twice on the same day. There’s a clear pattern. I’ve got a file on it.”
A file, Jason thinks.
“A file,” Jason repeats flatly.
Tim nods, all eager now. It’s like he’s forgotten that he’s being held at gun point. Wait. Is he being held at gun point? Jason considers this, then pulls out his gun and points it at him. Excellent.
“I’ve kept track of his moods, and I’ve made a list of his most frequent triggers and the reactions they elicit,” Tim explains with the happiness and excitement of a child presenting their art project. “He doesn’t like it when I contradict him, or when I talk about my personal life too much, or when I mention Dick or- well. Or you.” Tim pales. “Mentioning you is always bad,” he mutters.
So Bruce is still fucked in the head, good to know that hasn’t changed since his death. Jason remembers that Bruce would always get weird at even the slightest mention of his parents. He’d withdraw for hours, sometimes days.
He lazily uncocks the gun and asks, “So what are the reactions? He still do that weird silent treatment thing?”
Tim is suddenly very interested in the floor beneath his feet. “Sometimes,” he mutters. “But mostly he, you know.”
“Enlighten me,” Jason says with a sharp grin. This kid thinks he knows Bruce better than Jason? Maybe he does. Maybe Bruce has improved his parenting skills by now. Maybe-
“Mostly he just hits me.”
And just like that, the pit is there, flowing through his veins with murderous rage.
Jason knows his eyes are glowing green, knows that now looks nothing like the last Robin and everything like a deranged murderer who filled a duffel bag with severed heads, but none of that matters, because he needs to shake the replacement until he tells him the truth.
Tim is well-trained and strong, of course he is in this line of work, but he’s nothing against Jason’s 200 pounds of pure muscle and pit-induced rage. Jason takes him by the shoulders and shakes him, noting absently that if he applied just a little force, he could break the kid’s arms like twigs.
“Stop lying,” he snarls, “just stop – fucking – lying.”
“I’m not,” Tim gasps, “I swear-“
“You’re manipulating me. But the victim routine doesn’t work here. I know Batman doesn’t hit kids.”
Tim tries and fails to extricate himself from Jason’s grip, but he does manage to kick Jason in the nuts. For a second, Jason’s vision is filled with pain, before the pit takes over and all he sees is green. “He doesn’t hit kids,” Tim agrees easily, voice higher than usual in his panic. “He doesn’t- it’s not- it’s training.”
“Training,” Jason says, and feels the pit fade a little.
Tim nods.
“So this-“- Jason gestures to his bruised cheek- “-was a training accident?”
Tim hesitates. “Kind of,” he says. “I mean, I guess you could call it an accident that I told him I disagreed with him? I wasn’t going to, but I really think he’s wrong about this one!”
“So you contradicted him,” Jason says, “and then Bruce, what, forgot to pull his punch during training?” That would make sense, he thinks. Accidents like this happen all the time. Bruce should know better, yes, but he’s not perfect by any means. If he was already pissed, it’s easy to imagine him being more demanding than usual during a sparring session.
Except Tim hesitates again, and suddenly, Jason doesn’t think he wants to hear his next words.
“It wasn’t during training per se,” Tim ventures. “We were just in the Cave, and I guess he really needed to teach me a lesson? So I guess it’s kind of like training.” And then, while Jason processes the implications of that statement, Tim kicks him in the nuts again, jumps over the kitchen counter and is off down the hallway like a shot.
Jason stays behind and takes a moment to just breathe. What the fuck, he thinks hysterically. What the fuck.
The replacement must be lying. There’s no other explanation. He tried to get Jason’s sympathy, or it was an attempt to distract him enough so he could get away, or he was playing for time for a rescue that won’t come. Maybe he just thinks this sort of thing is funny. There’s the bruise, yes, but he’s a vigilante. It’s from patrol, maybe, or a training session, or, hell, what if he just walked into a wall? Kids are clumsy, right?
Any one of these explanations seems more plausible than what he told Jason.
Suddenly, there’s that annoying pop song again – somebody is calling Tim’s phone, forgotten on the counter.
Feeling like he’s moving through fog, Jason answers it.
He doesn’t say anything, just holds it up to his ear, and soon enough, Dick’s anxious voice filters through. “Robin? The video link to the cameras in the tower is down, are you okay?” And, when Jason still doesn’t say anything, he says, more hesitatingly: “Is this your doing? If you’re mad at B, I get it, I do, but you can’t just go missing.”
Jason hangs up.
His hands are shaking, he thinks absently. They’re shaking enough that, oh, hey, he’s dropped the phone. Replacement isn’t going to be happy, but he can fucking deal. He’s from Bristol, he can just buy a new one. He can buy ten new ones. Bruce will replace it without even blinking.
Then again, it seems that Bruce doesn’t do a lot of predictable things anymore.
Okay. He has to get a grip. First things first: get out of the tower, get out of San Francisco, return to Gotham and then – what? Get Bruce to kill the Joker. That’s the plan, right? That’s why he’s doing this. He came here to beat up the kid who dared take his place, and now he’s going to set up an elaborate scheme at the end of which Bruce will have to choose which of them gets to kill the Joker. Jason has thought it all out. He’s spent months coming up with this, he’s not going to abandon it now.
Finally, the pit whispers. Finally he can get his revenge. He can-
There’s someone behind him.
Jason whirls around, pointing his gun at- oh. At the replacement. Tim. Tim, who-
Is also pointing a gun at him?
“I’m taking you to the Cave,” Tim says calmly.
Jason’s lip curls up in a sneer. “What would Daddybats say if he saw you like this?”
“Nothing, because he won’t find out about it.” Tim’s voice is even and his grip on the gun is steady, but his eyes are betraying him. Jason knows what someone who’s ready to shoot looks like, and this isn’t it. It’s an empty threat, nothing more. Still, though. The kid’s got balls.
Luckily, Jason is ready to shoot, and so he does, firing a bullet just inches away from the kid’s head. “You want to try threatening me again?” he asks mildly.
Tim shoots him.
Jason goes down, clutching his thigh and yelling, “What the hell, are you crazy?”
“B needs you,” Tim says, dodging the next shot with ease as he approaches. “You haven’t seen him since your death. You haven’t seen what he’s like now. I’m trying, I really am, but it’s not enough. I don’t think anyone but you will ever be enough.”
“You’re insane,” Jason realises. His thigh still hurts like a motherfucker, but the pit is already healing it, and in an hour he won’t be able to feel it anymore.
He doesn’t have an hour. The kid is already on him now, ripping the gun from his hands and throwing it away, and then he takes Jason’s arm and puts it around his neck, steadying him. “Is this okay?” Tim asks, all helpful now. “Can you walk like this?”
“You shot me,” Jason says.
Tim shrugs. “It was worth it.”
They make their awkward way down the hallway, Jason leaning on Tim’s significantly shorter frame, Tim doing his best to support Jason’s weight, not talking, Tim because he’s too busy being smug and Jason because he’s too busy coming up with a plan. He knows Tim is taking him to the Zeta-Tubes, same way Jason arrived.
Except Tim will be taking him to the Cave, whereas Jason rewired the Zetas to recognise one of his safehouses as one of their pre-programmed destinations. It took him like, a whole week full of programming manuals from that used bookstore three blocks over and, when that failed, a begrudging afternoon with Youtube, but he’s managed it in the end. He’s here now, isn’t he?
So all he has to do now is get Tim to take him to his safehouse instead.
Jason allows Tim to walk them both along for a few more metres before suddenly slumping, allowing his body to become a dead weight. Tim struggles to hold him up, but fails, his voice panicked when he says, “Jason? Jason, what’s wrong?”
Jason waits until they’re both at the ground before straddling Tim, pinning the kid beneath him. “Sorry, kid,” he says. “I’m taking my leave now. Good shot, though.” He raises a fist. But then, right before he can punch the replacement into oblivion or, in other words, well-deserved unconsciousness, he sees it.
Tim, eyes glued to Jason’s raised fist, flinches back.
Jason lowers his hand and curses. He takes Tim by the shoulders and knocks him against the ground instead, forceful enough that Tim faints immediately. He’s bleeding again, and he’ll have a concussion when he wakes up.
Jason is already down by the Zeta-Tubes when he hesitates. He thinks of the flinch, of Tim’s bruised cheek. Of the phone call.
He curses again.
When he arrives at his safe house a few minutes later, he isn’t alone.