Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Red Hood is a legacy of terror. 

It starts with a man in a mask and a vat of acid; it becomes the history of a man who has killed hundreds and will kill more, maniacal laughter, a purple-and-green eyesore - it becomes a bloodstain against Gotham’s already tarnished streets, another part of the disaster etched into the city’s very foundation. 

The Red Hood is fear. 

And citizens of Gotham are accustomed to fear, the hesitation in opening their curtains each morning; the citizens of Gotham wish for peace in the way that soldiers do. Fear is simple. Fear is inevitable. Fear is their history. 

It’s no surprise when there is another taste of fear using the name and the legacy. 

It’s no surprise that there is another villain roaming the streets, that the folks of Crime Alley have to watch their backs more than they used to. A sense of inevitability washes over Gotham’s docks at the notion that there is another Red Hood, a gang or a rookie or something, it doesn’t matter. There is always something to watch out for. There is always someone to fear.

Jason is going to be one of those people. 

He sees the fear, the filth that lives in the place he had to call home for so long - the only home he’d truly ever had - and it makes his blood boil. The same as when he was a kid - worse than when he was a kid. 

There is fear and filth and it’s all covered in the signature Gotham stench, both familiar and foreign all at once; it’s worse upon second glance. Grease and oil and blood stains every inch of concrete, locked doors and bracketed windows, never-ending violence. Girls working on the street too young for the profession, boys running errands for crime lords. Eating out of dumpsters just to have something to eat, torn clothing grabbed out of the trash cans near the wealthier end of the West side. 

All of it. 

Unsalvageable, all a graveyard still living, still walking, because there is fear laid even in the smallest blood vessel of the smallest rat. Fear of the other, fear of the villains, fear of the fucking Bat who will never do anything to take those scum down. 

Jason is a survivor of Crime Alley, in a way. The fact that he died doesn’t change the fact that he got out before he did. 

He doesn’t know if any of the other kids he’d run with had the same fate, but he doubts it. 

(There’s an undeveloped hill like a missing tooth in the middle of a busy block, facing the docks where they begin, the oil smell of the boats permeating even the soil. Everyone knows that’s where street kids get buried because none of them can afford a burial if they have parents or friends to give them one. It’s a mass grave to those who know - and simply land to be developed for the greedy and rich.) 

There’s blood lust in his veins, Jason knows. 

He knew that since he came back, had known that there are side effects to being revived; knew that the ends justify the means the moment he slit a throat for the first time. He knew how to save the filth. 

But this - 

He did not account for this. 

Jason freezes, knife held to the throat of a man that he could not care less about, thin and posh in his damn suit, handing out cards to street kids for a modeling industry that is certainly nothing more glamorous than a cargo ship to a different country.

The man is sweating, shaking really; Jason’s got him pinned against a brick wall of the alley he’d found the bastard in, gleaming silver knife creating a small incision against pale skin in the moonlight. 

“No,” repeats the trembling voice that had caused him to stop in the first place. “No, could you - I - I - I’m sorry.” 

It’s the first time anyone beyond the people trying to kill him has dared speak to Jason - then again, he doesn’t blame them with the helmet on. He must look like something inhuman - he might be something inhuman at this rate. 

Jason holds off longer; the man in front of him tries squeaking something out, but a harsher press of the blade keeps him quiet. 

“If you’re going to ask me to spare him,” Jason says, his voice coming out mechanical and impersonal. “I can’t grant your request, kid.” 

Between the moonlight and the shadows that give depth to an inky blackness this city thrives off, Jason can barely make out the kid’s details from his peripheral vision. 

Green-haired - not dyed recently. Fourteenish. Too skinny. Street kid. Something dark in his eyes that Jason recognizes. Blood on his lips, picked bloody and chapped. 

The kid’s lip trembles, but he holds his ground; he naturally sticks to the side of the alley, wary of Jason’s presence. 

“I hear you’re a crime lord, not a vigilante,” the kid says carefully, his voice cracking. His ribs are visible from the sides of the torn-up muscle tank he’s wearing. 

“I’m whatever I need to be for the night,” Jason answers simply. “Now, scram. You don’t want to see this.” 

This is taking too long.

“No, I -” the kid says viciously, before squeaking as he realizes that Jason has turned the majority of his attention on him. He steels himself before he speaks, biting his tongue with every word. “No, he - he took my sister. I think she’s dead. Somewhere. Maybe in the ocean. Or - or somewhere worse.” 

“I’m sorry about your sister.” Yet another reason these scum have to die, Jason thinks. Another reason this city continues to rot away, abductions in plain sight with a business card and a promise. 

The kid doesn’t let a single tear fall. 

He looks Jason straight in the eye - or the helmet’s eyes - and balls his hands into fists. “I want to do it. I want to kill him.” 

A street rat’s rage isn’t unfamiliar to Jason. This kid is nearly the same age as Jason was when he died. 

Naive, full of anger. Waiting to get through another day. Waiting for vengeance or closure or something of the sort. 

Perhaps it’s in bad taste that Jason obliges the kid’s request. Perhaps he should think about if the kid will regret this - but there is ruthlessness found in these streets, in the people raised by them, and that is not a request that a street rat makes lightly. 

Jason holds the man steady. He hands the knife to the kid. 

It’s quick. 

One minute there is a squirming scumbag underneath his hold, and the next there is a limp corpse that cannot hurt more kids.  

The kid holds the knife like it’s something divine, soaked in the blood of the damned who chose to be damned rather than born into it like the rest of Gotham’s citizens; he holds it in both hands. 

He isn’t scared. 

No - Jason knows that look.  

“What’s your name, kid?” Jason asks, letting go of the corpse and wiping his gloved hands on his combat pants; there’s nothing on them it’ll get off, but it’s a habit he hasn’t outgrown. (Surprising, since he’s outgrown everything else in his life, every one else in his life.) 

The kid simply stares until Jason takes the hunting knife back. It’s a horrible way to go, really - a jagged blade rather than a dagger, something meant to maim animals on backroads. Hunters are fond of them due to their effectiveness. Jason thinks it makes a rather gorey scene. (One that he deserved.) 

“I - uh -” Now that he doesn’t have vengeance in mind, it’s like the kid transforms into an entirely different person. Afraid of the man in the Red Hood - like a Gotham dweller should, with the instinct to run of a Crime Alley brat. Smart kid. Not smart enough to run away like he should, though. Eventually, he caves, realizing that he can’t outrun Jason when there’s nowhere to go. “Valen,” says the kid - Valen - sullenly. “My name is Valen.” 

“Alright Valen,” Jason hums, wiping the blood off the knife onto his pants before putting it back into its appropriate holster. It takes the place of his usual second pistol, as he intended for little show tonight. “Let’s get going.”

Valen’s eyes go wide. He’s skittish. He should be. Jason would grin for the effect, but it wouldn’t show through the helmet. He’s ready to run. 

“Where are we going, Mister, uh -” 

“Just call me Hood,” Jason says quickly. 

There’s little more he appreciates than someone getting avenged the way they deserve, and Valen is remarkably small for a fourteen-year-old. Too skinny, too short. 

Valen nods, rushing to keep up with Jason when he begins walking out of the alley. He sticks close, as though Jason is not a murderer and a crime lord who will do business with the worst just to see them squirm or gain power. 

(Valen doesn’t know any of that, though. All he knows is that Jason has a reputation and Jason let him kill the man who stole his sister, what is likely his entire life, away from him.) 

Still, there’s no relief found in Valen’s posture and the light way he walks. Uncertain whether he’s walking to his death for daring to speak to a crime lord like that. Uncertain whether he will have something left of his future or if he can die with revenge on his tongue like the sweetest ambrosia. 

Jason is getting too philosophical, and his silence is going to scare the kid. 

( No kid should live their life afraid.) 

(He wants to say something to assure the kid he’s going to be fine, but it sticks like glue to the inside of his throat. He has a reputation to uphold. That’s why he can’t talk.) 

It takes two blocks to stumble onto the location Jason had been leading them to, and he gestures vaguely at the worn-down sign, faded neon letters reading Open 24 Hours underneath an awning that hides the actual name of the retro diner. Half of the windows are boarded up to keep the draft and Gotham weather out, and the door has three visible locks on it from the inside. 

“Here,” Jason says, leading the kid to the door. “Get some food.” 

When he pushes the door open, Valen ducks under his arm quickly, through the door in a split second.  

He just… stands there, though, when Jason uses his free hand - the one not holding the door - to rummage through his pockets for the twenty-dollar bill he always keeps in there for patrol when he wants a snack. He takes the crumpled bill and holds it between gloved fingers out for the kid to take, and Valen eyes it warily. 

Don’t take anything unless you know what it costs. One of the first rules of Crime Alley, one of the rules you learn the hard way when you accidentally sell something you didn’t know was for sale. Jason knows the feeling well. 

“Take it,” Jason says simply. “Get yourself some food. First time’s on me, eh?” 

Valen takes the bill quickly after that, giving Jason no chance to take it back even if he wanted to.  

He turns on his heel, dirty face and all, before quietly speaking. “Hood,” Valen starts, sure of himself for the first time since demanding to kill a man of high caliber. “Are you what they say you are?” 

Jason contemplates this. “What do they say I am, Valen?” 

Valen is quiet for another moment. Then, “They say you’re here to protect us.” 

I’m here for revenge, Jason wants to say. I’m here because the Joker should’ve died with me. I’m here because this is what I have left. I’m here because I don’t know what else I’d do. 

I’m here because this is the only home I’ve belonged to. 

Jason shrugs, intentional lines of movement that don’t seem to reassure Valen at all. “I’m here to make sure this city doesn’t rot from the inside out. If that starts with saving you - that’s not too bad, eh?” 

The next time Jason stumbles across a street kid, it’s because he’s in the middle of a battle with the bodyguards of some shitty crime lord - up-and-comer - that were far more in number than Jason was expecting and he’s losing. 

It starts with a bullet to the shoulder. It slows him down but doesn’t stop him, he’s not going to die in some shitty mansion paid for by blood - and his right arm going numb is only half of his problem. 

The other half of the problem is that these damn bodyguards keep getting up after they’ve been given lethal headshots, so Jason is beginning to think there’s some genuine black magic going on. Fucking crime lords and magicians. Fuck them all. This whole place is going to hell with him.  

Jason curses to himself, biting his tongue to keep from saying worse things as the fourth bodyguard of the night gets back up despite his head being blown off, and he’s so off his balance that someone is able to touch his shoulder without him noticing and dammit he hasn’t even gotten his revenge - 

Green licks at the edges of his vision, but he refuses to give in to that. Yet. 

He turns on his heel, gun leveled at the head of whoever dared touch him and finger on the trigger - but it isn’t one of the decapitated fucks that greets him, but rather the scared face of a girl no older than seventeen. 

She’s scared out of her mind and has her hands up in surrender before Jason can even blink. There are black lines crisscrossing her arms, less like tattoos and more like - 

Before he can think too hard about it, she speaks quickly, her voice nearly drowned out by the shot that Jason fires to keep one of the other damn bodyguards down. 

“Don’t shoot, please! I - I surrender, I’m sorry, I - I - They made me do it!” she says, scared and afraid with blood splattered on the side of her face and her hair; it isn’t hers, but there is a tremor in her hands. 

She did this? This isn't black magic, then. This is a metahuman ability. 

Jason hates superpowers. 

He doesn’t lower the gun from her head. 

“You can’t - I can’t - I can’t take it back,” she says frantically. “Like - I can’t -” 

“Stop blabbering,” he snaps, and it seems to relieve some of the tension in her shoulders for some ungodly reason. “Give me one good reason you dying wouldn’t stop this.” 

Something in him aches at the fact that his first thought is to pull the trigger on the girl responsible for this - barely seventeen - but there is still green swirling through his system and a bullet lodged in his shoulder that he can’t help.  

The girl swallows. “I can’t stop them but I can - I can get us both out of here, please.” 

It’s the please that gets him, that lodges itself into the back of his throat and pierces through his ribs. 

(He doesn’t care about the monsters he’s laid waste to, the ones that begged and pleaded for mercy, but they had a choice in their actions. She could be lying, but Jason has a hunch like he always does and he doesn’t think she’s lying. She’s a kid. She can lie better than the rest but kids don’t show fear like that unless they’re truly afraid.) 

Jason has to turn back around to bury another bullet in another bodyguard already so torn apart his limbs are barely on, the recoil enough to send him back a few feet with the inability to brace himself. “Then do it,” he hisses, pain coming through his system in waves; impossible to determine the location of. (He doesn’t think he’s injured anywhere else. He thinks. Thinks? Yes, thinks. He thinks, for himself. No one else thinks for him.) 

One second Jason is hissing and cursing as he realizes his gun is out of ammo - the next he’s stumbling onto a familiar couch in a familiar warehouse that isn’t even close to a habitable place to live. 

The girl stands in front of him, heaving. 

With his heart still racing and bloodlust whispering - ringing, ringing, ringing in his ear - it’s hard to get a clear picture of her, but he gets the gist. Blonde hair, white skin, black marks up her arms, blood on her face, and soaking her blouse. Like she’d gotten plucked right out of a ’90s movie and brought to that mansion. Her chest is heaving with every breath, and without another word, she crashes to the floor in unconsciousness. 

Jason curses again. This day isn’t his day, nor his night, nor his life. 

Either way, he digs the bullet out of his shoulder - at least it’s partially numb, sterilizes it, and stitches it up with only the appropriate amount of curses, tossing his clothes and his armor into the laundry for a good rinse and wash. 

Beyond that, he takes the girl and props her up on the couch - or what he counts as a couch, something meant to seat two people that he sleeps on regularly. 

There isn’t much time to go apartment hunting when you’re a crime lord back from the dead; most of his cash goes to funding his various endeavors. And being a small-time crime boss doesn’t pay for much beyond overhead, which is why he needs to gain more territory and more influence in Crime Alley. 

All of those thoughts run through his head while he tries valiantly to make canned soup one-handed. He’d be ashamed of the food he’s eating, as he prefers to eat something homemade rather than scrounge around whatever can he can pop in a bowl in the microwave, but something such as cooking takes time that Jason doesn’t have when he has so much on his plate. 

He does pour and heat two cans, though. The girl will likely want to eat when she wakes, and he owes her a shred of gratitude for getting them both out of there even though she caused the whole necromanced bodyguards in the first place. 

Jason wants to know what a meta like her was doing in the mansion of a crime boss. He doubts it’s anything good, based on the frantic look in her eyes and the tattered clothes she wears. 

(The most likely option is one that Jason doesn’t particularly want to think about, but he has to confront ugly things often and this is no exception.) 

In the time it takes for him to heat the soup after patching himself up, the girl begins to stir as he makes his way to the armrest of the couch, choosing to rest there and put the second bowl on the wooden pallet stack turned table for the girl. 

He’s mostly just holding his bowl, waiting to determine whether she’s a true threat or not, to see if he can take his helmet off to eat it or if he’ll let it get cold for later. She can see him with a domino if she’s harmless - it’s not going to hurt anything. 

He keeps his guns in his thigh holsters, though his right shoulder will be useful if he needs to shoot. That’s why he keeps her to his left. 

Just because she chose to save him doesn’t mean she’s something good to deal with. Trust is something that Jason doesn’t have; especially for a girl causing his former predicament. 

When she actually, properly opens her eyes - she sits up quickly and with all the fear of a frightened animal, cornered into an animal by a predator. 

“You’re the Red Hood,” she says quickly, chest heaving with big breaths. “You’re the Red Hood,” she repeats, a mix of fear and awe lacing her voice that Jason doesn’t quite understand. 

“What’s it to you?” Jason asks, choosing to keep it casual rather than the anger that demands his attention, the anger that wants him to spit and ask her why she’d dare make his life harder. (Like it’s really his life to live, anyway, rather than some half-baked idea of revenge with no sense of redemption.) 

(This was always going to have him die at the end, like a bad movie. Or a horror movie - Jason would love to be the star of one of those. His life is horrific enough, thanks.) 

“You - I - I -” she stammers, before stopping entirely when she notices the bowl sitting in front of her, spoon lying next to it. 

“Eat,” Jason says simply. “You need your energy. It’s not poisoned. Chicken noodle, hope you’re not allergic.” 

Cautiously, she reaches out and grabs it. 

That alone tells Jason that she is not a threat. At least, not anymore. No one other than someone being held at gunpoint or a street kid would be willing to eat the point of someone who may or may not have kidnapped them, without asking what it was or where they got it, what the price is. 

This kid is Crime Alley, then. Or perhaps the Bowery. 

(Either way, it seems that she hasn’t been at home in a long time.) 

She speaks again without Jason’s prompting, holding the plastic bowl close to her and taking small, quick bites like she isn’t used to getting a normal portion of such food. “You - you were going after Deacon, right? He - he hired those bodyguards because he thought you would be.” 

Jason narrows his eyes. “Did he, now?” 

While she continues, Jason takes the opportunity to methodically undo the security on his helmet so it can unlatch; he is hungry after all. 

If she takes anything of note in the fact that he takes his helmet off and sets it to the side, she doesn’t say anything about it. “Yes, he - he hired them because there are… rumors, of someone like the Bats but not quite coming for territory.” 

“‘Bats but not quite?’” Jason repeats, humming thoughtfully. He’d be angry, but there is warm soup in his mouth and rage in his soul that he cannot quell. It will wait for him - he does not have to indulge it at the moment. 

And if he goes into a green-induced rage in front of a street rat - well, she isn’t going to come out of that alive, and that isn’t fair for her. The world isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean Jason has to abide by such a law. 

She nods. “They - they say the Red Hood is as much a friend as a crime lord. Like - like someone who - who… I don’t know much. I - I’m so sorry about the guards, you got hurt. I - I never wanted to use my ability like that.” 

“Why were you working for him?” Jason asks, filing all of the additional information away for later. The fact that Deacon was expecting him and hired an entourage just due to the paranoia makes part of him happier than it should; the fact that the citizens of Gotham seem to have a varied opinion of him in the Narrows is quite fascinating. 

For now, there is a girl who is hurting right in front of him, and it’s his job to protect her. After all, what use is he as a crime lord if he doesn’t protect his territory? 

(And he knows that most criminals in Gotham think of territory as land and property, but Jason grew up owning nothing to his name, not even a penny. This city is built upon its people; territory changes hands, and often, but people still have their loyalties. His plan for the Bats, to uproot this city from its rotten roots, will never work if the city does not trust him. 

He has a home, now. One that is broken and frayed and any dignity left in it when down the river decades ago, but it is his home and he can save him. He can redeem it. The people who need to die will die and there will be something like pride.) 

She takes another bite of soup before answering, and it never occurred to Jason that he might need her name. “I didn’t want to. I - I had to.” 

“Was it for the money?” 

She shakes her head. “He - he - he took me off the street. Or his subordinates did, I don’t know. But I woke up and he - he told me - he -” 

Her sobs come like Jason had expected, though she makes a valiant attempt at hiding the cracks in her voice before the dam breaks. It seems to be a familiar position to her, cradling her bowl to her while her chest heaves with sobs and her face screws up with her tears and her dismay. 

He doesn’t press. He doesn’t need to. 

There is green at the edge of Jason’s vision again and all he can think of is Deacon’s head on a stick displayed at the top of a fucking cathedral, a fitting place of rest for a man living in a den of sin. 

There is still a girl in front of him, though. She takes priority over Deacon. 

“It’s alright,” Jason says, trying to soothe yet being entirely unaccustomed to it. He’s needed his voice for nothing beyond intimidation and promises for a very, very long time. He supposes he can make one more promise if he needs to, though. “It’s alright, you don’t have to go back. You’re a meta, yeah? Does your ability have a name, and do you have a name?” 

The girl hiccups, clearly trying to keep from crying despite the fact that Jason has said nothing about the tears themselves. “I - I don’t… My name is, uh, it’s… Crow. Yeah, Crow. My ability is called Beyond Death.” 

Beyond Death, indeed. 

Jason says nothing about the fact that she lies about her name - or perhaps this is Crow’s way of reinventing herself. It’s a suitable name for a kid with the ability to keep the dead walking. Or perhaps not quite - but he isn’t going to ask her the specifics of it. It’s better that way. He’ll have less reason to give into the Lazarus whispers in his head about how dangerous it is to let superpowered, traumatized kids around this city. How they always end up being the villains, in the end. 

“It’s not safe in most places around here for metas,” Jason says simply. He pretends he doesn’t see the way her shoulders slump in relief at the lack of response to anything else. “You don’t have anywhere to go, huh.” 

It’s not a question because she’d already confirmed it when she told him that Deacon had taken her off the street.

Crow shakes her head. 

Jason sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose ( not like Bruce used to; he’s nothing like that fucking excuse for a man). “Alright. You fancy getting out of Gotham?” 

Anyone sane would take him up on the offer and already be out of the creaky, tin doors the warehouse has to offer. It isn’t even properly protected or secured; the closest the warehouse is to being a safehouse is the fact that Jason feels safe enough patching up his bullet wound here. And that’s because there’s no one who knows about this place. 

(He really does need to establish more safehouses. He supposes he can rob Deacon of most of his money before he kills the guy. That way it benefits both Jason’s crusade and the fact that said crusade cannot continue if Jason gets murdered in his sleep due to a lack of security.) 

Crow, however, is Gotham born and raised. That much is evident in the way she narrows her eyes at his blatant insinuation of leaving. Like anyone who wasn’t born in Gotham would take the opportunity to leave the shithole as soon as possible, leave the filth and the cruelty in favor of kindness. 

Gotham citizens don’t know what kindness is. You can take the kid out of Crime Alley, but you can’t take the Crime Alley out of the kid. The paranoia will stay. The nightmares and the food hoarding and the fear - it will stay, without reason. 

It’s simply easier to live with paranoia and be better for it than to have a nice cushy place to crash with things that make you damaged and pitied. 

She doesn’t respond verbally, though, which makes Jason bark out laughter that seems to surprise both of them. “Don’t wanna leave, huh? I can respect that. Like I said, not many places you can go with an ability like that.” 

If the notion that staying in Gotham is more dangerous for her than the alternatives sticks with Crow, she doesn’t mention it. That seems to be a running theme with her, and one that Jason can’t fault her for. 

She leans forward a bit. 

Jason gets to the part she was waiting for. “But I know somewhere you might be safe.” 

He doesn’t know why he’s telling her a place to stay, or why he hands her a stack of cash later - “Give half of this to Lia, tell her I said you could stay in 4B. Yeah, on the empty floor in that building. She’ll know why.” -  or why he even bothered to feed her, but he does. 

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t grill her about her ability and if it wore off on those bodyguards; doesn’t know why he didn’t put a bullet in her skull the moment he saw her in that mansion, clearly being the source of all his trouble. 

She’d just looked… scared. And young. It’s a shame to die scared and alone in a situation that you caused, that you should’ve prevented, that you never should’ve gotten yourself into - perhaps sympathy is why he didn’t kill her on the spot. 

He wonders if he’s worse off for it. 

After that, anything to do with Red Hood’s reputation outside of crime circles is entirely out of his control. 

Jason really, truly never set out to be something like a beacon of hope or justice or anything like that; he is well aware that he is the perversion of justice and peaceful rest and all that. As much as he’d like to carve a path, a bloody one that ends in his own way of going out, he knows that, he knows that he will never be to Gotham what the Bat is. 

And that’s fucking alright, because Jason never intended to be something as hopeless as that. 

(In fact, he’s always thought that Batman was more like a demon than a hero, even when he’d been Robin - that’s what Robin was for, anyway. Robin was magic. Robin made Batman human again. So on and so forth, the cheesy shit like that kids believe.) 

He does his job. 

He takes down Deacon and is better for it, with enough extra cash after the fact that he’s able to properly furnish an apartment, cheap as hell because of the neighborhood it’s in. It’s on the top floor, and while that isn’t ideal in terms of a normal escape route, it has access to the fire escape and it’s easy to jump onto the neighboring building. He doesn’t have any neighbors, as the building had been the victim of an Ivy attack years ago and still had some vines in the way. It’s the perfect place to set up, with an actual kitchen and an actual shower.

A shower almost makes Jason call the entire crusade off, just because of how fucking nice it feels against his battered skin. He’d almost forgotten how terrible this work was on his body. Almost. 

As it is, the established apartment makes it easier for him to sleep in the daylight hours and therefore makes him far more productive in his nightlife. 

It’s laughably easy how little time it takes to overturn Gotham’s underground scene. There are old crime families, and then there are the fucking idiots that have been running Gotham into the ground for short, quick bursts of time because all of the idiots keep getting killed before they can do even more lasting damage. Which would be fine, really, if they weren’t getting replaced by people even stupider. 

Before the month of November ends, Jason Todd has complete control over Crime Alley. It spills into the Bowery and parts of the Water District; there are sections here and there that he observes more closely than others and parts that he’s still grasping control of, like how Maroni and his ilk have their claws in the Diamond District further into the city and there’s truly nothing Jason can do about that now. 

(While he’s more than willing to overtake the newer crime bosses, old money and old families are a trickier deal. Upsetting the status quo by giving them all Maronis head on a stick wouldn’t guarantee him that territory; it would simply start a civil war. Politics are a patient thing, and Jason is more than willing to play the game for the long run.) 

It won’t be long until the Bat dares come after him. The investigation into him should have already started, based on the violent coup he’d succeeded in and the bodies he continues to drop of the subordinates who have trouble adjusting to new management. 

It won’t be long until the fireworks show of Jason’s fucking life comes to fruition. 

It’s a grand plan. It doesn’t require his reputation or the territory he’s acquired - it requires none of that. That doesn’t really matter, if this goes the way it should. 

And yet. And yet. 

Jason’s on a familiar patrol route - one that hasn’t been interrupted by pesky birds yet - but he catches something on the street below, standing outside a diner he recognizes. 

A dingy, 24-hour diner he had brought a kid-turned-killer into not a month ago, handing him a wad of cash and telling him to get something to eat. 

Squinting reveals there’s someone waving at him - no, beckoning him down - with green hair and a familiar expression. It’s freshly dyed green hair - nothing like the ratty, tangled mess of faded green Valen’s hair had been the last time they’d met. 

Out of curiosity, and the fact that there’s been little chatter throughout Gotham’s underground when they know the Red Hood is on the prowl, Jason doesn’t hesitate to make his way down to the ground. 

If he shows off a little to relish in the kid’s look of awe, that’s for him to know and him alone. 

“What are you doing out at this time of night?” he asks Valen, crossing his arms to appear more of an authoritative figure than he is. He is, after all, one of Gotham’s wanted villains right now. He’s going to celebrate when he cracks the Top 10 Most Wanted, actually. 

Valen seems somewhat intimidated by his show, but nothing like how he’d first looked when they met. Valen looks - he looks healthier now, actually. There is a light in his eyes that wasn’t there before, and his clothes are slightly less tattered. His hair is dyed and there’s a swollen, clearly new piercing on his nose. 

Valen speaks before Jason has a chance to continue onward, smiling slightly. “I hear what you’ve been doing. I just - uh, I just wanted to say thank you.” 

Beneath his helmet, Jason quirks a brow. Valen can’t see the motion nor the look of confusion, though, so Jason is forced to audibly reply. “Thank you for what? Giving you something for a meal doesn’t warrant a thank you.” 

You didn’t answer my question, either, Jason thinks, but he supposes there’s no use asking a street kid why they’re out on the street at night. The irony in it almost makes him want to laugh - he’s nearly out of touch, isn’t he? 

Valen shrugs, picking at his nails. “Can’t I want to say thank you to my local vigilante?” 

“I’m not a -” 

“You said you were whatever, when I asked,” Valen says quickly. He has an attitude for someone who was afraid of Jason earlier, but the boldness is honestly sort of endearing. This kid certainly doesn’t deserve the life he’s leading. (Jason thinks of Valen and the steel in his eyes and the kill he’d made; he thinks of Crow and the sad but determined eyes she’d given him.) “So I’m going with vigilante, because crime lords are usually - well.” 

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to. 

Crime lords are typically egotistical bastards who look to move money, drugs, weapons, and women on the notion that they are the Gods of the little worlds they’ve created, that they’re the newest genius, that they have the right to demand such things of people without first thinking about the humanity of it all. Jason wants to cut all their heads off and if that doesn’t suffice, their dicks will go too. 

“Vigilantes protect,” Valen continues carefully. 

“The Bat is a vigilante,” Jason points out, arms still crossed. It probably doesn’t look good, the Red Hood out taking a stroll in the middle of the street in front of some obscure diner talking to a kid. It’s probably the least suspicious thing this neighborhood has seen, though. The residents here know how to keep their mouths shut. 

“Yeah, but he doesn’t… come down here all the time. And he doesn’t do what you do,” Valen shrugs, looking sheepish. “I heard what you did with Crow. She, uh - we run in the same circles, and she went missing ‘round a month ago and no one could track her down. She was always real sweet. I was surprised when she came back alive, though.” 

“How is she?”  Jason can’t help but ask. He knows that the last time he saw her, she had an address to go to and the determination of a Gothamite in her bones, but so many of the people this city buried under filth have had that same determination. Motivation alone will not keep you alive - and nearly every death in this city is wrong place, wrong time. 

It’s nice to hear she’s alive. 

Valen smiles for the first time, really, losing any and all inhibitions he’d had talking to Jason as he starts speaking. “She’s doing really good, actually. The lady up near the Lobby buildin’ - Lia, I think - told her she could have that whole floor to herself if she could pay it up and you gave her enough for a month. She’s rounding up strays, now. Um, between the job-age kids there I think they can keep the place.”

Jason doesn’t know whether to be remarkably proud of the kindness Crow is apparently showing or concerned about the fact that he knows there is a singular apartment on that floor that is up to code and has entirely working facilities. He says none of this to Valen. 

“I’m proud’a her,” Jason says finally because it’s nice to be proud for once than worry. He can deal with that later. “Is that where you’re staying?” 

Valen nods. Then, “Um - the reason I flagged you down. Marissa said you usually come here ‘round now and Crow wanted me to ask if you wanted to visit, sometime. So - so she can show you what she’s done with the place and the kids there.” 

“Kids don’t usually want to see me.” Jason gestures to the intimidating helmet and the body armor, not to mention the sheer amount of weaponry on his person. It doesn’t scream family-friendly and that’s never been his goal, though Valen doesn’t seem deterred in the slightest. 

“These kids do. You’re the reason they’re alive.” 

Jason wants to ask about that. 

He wants a detailed explanation as to how his crusade - the way that it was designed to make things better - has somehow helped people that he hasn’t ever physically, tangibly met in any capacity. The butterfly effect, he knows, but Jason has never been one to believe in his own power for anything. 

Before he has the chance, Valen turns on his heel and he’s off. 

Jason spends the entire night thinking about it. 

The next day, Jason drops by Lia’s own apartment in the early hours of dawn and hands her money he’d acquired last night from a very legal operation that he’d busted out of the docks, and tells her in no uncertain terms that it is for ensuring that floor of that apartment block gets up to code. New plumbing, new electrical, new whatever. 

And it had better be up to the code before next month, or Jason is going to expect every cent back with the interest in relation to his wasted time, and probably her head. She’s a tired woman, one old enough to understand Jason’s emotional stance on the matter and that she’s going to listen whether she likes it or not. 

Doesn’t stop her from sounding irritated when Jason demands things of her, though.

Beyond just Lia, though, he makes his way to the famed apartment floor and he ends up having to tip-toe past ten different kids sleeping on the floor without blankets, to Crow. She is sleeping, too, in the same damn clothes he’d seen her in last time, but she does have a pillow. Underneath it, he leaves more cash and note instructing her to use the money to buy whatever the kids needed, and that Lia had the rest covered. 

It’s the closest Jason has come to feeling like someone who is capable of good in a very long time. He even sees Valen, sound asleep in what is supposed to be a bedroom closet. The kid looks remarkably comfortable, though, and Jason doesn’t want to wake him when sleep is so hard to grasp in a city that never shuts the fuck up. 

He leaves a little note about staying safe and out of the streets at odd hours and a little butterfly knife he’d picked up. Neon green, like the kid’s hair. He thinks it suits him, and you need a weapon in order to not get killed in streets like these. 

(Jason wants to make them safer. He thinks he can. But he has to take care of the bigger issues - the crime lords, the gang wars, the civil wars, the old money, and the new weapons - before he can take care of the run-of-the-mill filth. And he still has a Bat to play a sick joke on, and revenge to plan - and Jason can do all of that later because for now, he is the protector of a group of kids who deserve better than they have.) 

Lia gets the building up to code within the month timeline that Jason had given her. It’s around December 15th or so when the last of the renovations get finished, and there’s even furniture in most of the two-bedroom apartments - there are fourteen apartments per floor, and so theoretically enough space for twenty-eight kids without a single kid having to share a room. 

Most of them are still mostly bare, as street kids tight enough to stick together through even Crow’s disappearance tend to stay as close together as possible, but there’s room to expand. 

Maybe Jason’s a softy, but Valen’s voice keeps ringing through his head - You should visit sometime - and it’s nearly Christmas, and he brought gifts. 

If any of them want to know where he keeps getting the money, they don’t ask. 

It’s mostly practical things - razors and nifty clothes, toys and such for the younger ones, butterfly blades for the older ones, and some games or so. Things to keep them from getting in trouble, and more money with Crow’s name on it for food. 

He makes sure that their rent - if it can be considered that, off the books as it is and how Lia truthfully doesn’t have a say in the matter - is paid for the next two years and that the apartments now inhabited by the kids will not be rented to anyone else. He makes sure that Crime Alley is taken care of, he supposes, though he does leave before anyone can see that he left gifts. 

Winter in Gotham is cold and wet and dreary. It makes your fingertips numb and your eyelashes freeze, the very moisture on your eyeball reacting to the temperature and giving a nasty itch. Winter in Gotham makes Jason wish he had a winter version of his suit, better equipped for the weather and the slush. 

But he doesn’t, and he still has work to do, so it’s no surprise that Jason spends his holiday in a burning boat on the docks - it’s a surprise the fire is still burning with all the snow that’s floating down, but that’s likely the accelerant in it talking - spitting every curse in his vocabulary. 

He’d come here for an important flash drive containing the locations of Black Mask’s armory and armory shipment times, but he’d found himself ambushed. Bad information, then. 

The problem isn’t that he was ambushed, or that he doesn’t have the flash drive. He does have the flash drive, and his initial three attackers are dead. 

His problem is that the Gotham Harbor is saltwater, and far below freezing. The saltwater cannot freeze as the water does, and it creates an icy, patchy slush that is incredibly hard to swim through. His second problem is that the engine of the burning boat he’s on had a hatchet taken to it and is not turning on any time soon, and he’s currently floating further and further out to sea. 

It wouldn’t be too bad, save for the fact that the boat is still burning, Jason will get hypothermia if he swims if he doesn’t outright die, and his grapple gun wouldn’t reach that far and had been left at home since it was supposed to be a simple night. 

It’s a shitty way to spend Christmas, really. 

Not that Jason’s thinking too hard on it as his mind works as fast as it possibly can, thinking up more and more ways he can get himself out of this one - and most of them end in outright death, if not a slow and painful one. 

His third problem of the night is that while he hadn’t been injured by the initial ambush, the hatchet that took to the engine was an impulsive decision made by a dying man who Jason had shot and hadn’t had the time to shoot again while being attacked, and he’d, of course, taken the hatchet to Jason’s leg before he got a bullet between the eyes and tossed in the harbor for his troubles. 

So he’s bleeding, in a fire, in the fucking water. It’s a lovely combination of problems, really. 

The injury isn’t even that bad; it’d taken work to get through his combat pants, though it had hit directly underneath his knee on his shin bone. While it isn’t bleeding quickly, there’s certainly going to be a chunk taken out of both his skin and his shin bone. 

Lovely. All of it, fucking lovely. 

Jason almost doesn’t complain when a familiar sound makes itself known overhead, and he sees the blurred shape of the Batplane hovering above him. 

Almost. 

Plane means Batman, he thinks, and then the Pit hisses in his ear, green and bright and burning, you can take him out now. Then again, why would he even save you in the first place? 

Still, there’s a ladder lowered and Jason has to take it, cursing in what might be relief as gripping onto the ladder - as much as it requires his upper body strength - relieves all tension and pressure and weight pressed against his still-bleeding leg. 

The Batplane only gains enough altitude that Jason doesn’t eat it when he’s moved from the boat, and it only takes him to the dock. There’s an empty stretch of pavement close, and Jason is under no illusion that this won’t end in a fight. 

The only reason the damn Bats wouldn’t have him drown at sea - and he can see the burning wreckage in the distance, bright and fiery and orange. Too much of a sustained fire to remind him of an explosion, really. If you were seeing the boat drift out at this distance - like the Bat was - you wouldn’t even be able to tell it was a crime lord still alive in there. 

He steadies himself, well aware that he is in no condition to run - not with his leg like it is. His guns are a reassuring weight in his hands, twin pistols that he might consider his closest friends, as he watches the Batplane land steadily. 

It isn’t Batman who steps out of it, though. 

It might be melodramatic of Jason to wait around for the confrontation to go down, but he’d rather have a confrontation than a chase that he’d lose. And he can’t run the risk of the Bats tracking him down to his safehouse, either, so - 

Still, it’s jarring, he should be seeing the Bat - 

“Did Bludhaven reject you or something, Nightbright?” Jason asks with a sneer, his voice coming out modulated and yet still angry. 

(It seems everything he does lately is out of anger. He doesn’t know what he is without it. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that the only thing he has not done out of anger is give money to kids who don’t even know his name.) 

“Very creative,” Nightwing says flatly. His Escrima sticks are in hand, and Jason knows how dangerous those are even without having fought him since he’d come back. They’re held at his sides leisurely, though, not in a defensive stance. 

Not that it means much when you’ve been trained as a child soldier since the tender age of nine. Nightwing is more dangerous than Jason likes to give him credit for. 

“Why’d you help me, out there?” Jason asks, though he isn’t expecting a real answer as he holds one of his pistols up, pointed directly at Nightwing’s head. 

Nightwing hums. He seems unperturbed by the gun leveled in his direction. “Not everyone thinks villains need to die.” 

“And what use that is,” Jason spits. He takes a step closer, though the effort taken not to limp due to his injury is more than he’d like to admit. He wants to scream and yell about clowns and crowbars and justification and murder - he wants to hit and he wants to scream, and there is green in his vision that wants him to do the same, but the injury keeps him grounded. 

It’s probably a sign of masochism or something that Jason is filing that information away for later - that he remains in control when the Pit flares up and he’s injured.

“You’re not dead,” Nightwing says simply. “That’s the use of it. If I thought all villains needed to die, I would’ve left you there.” 

Sure, Dick. Always following the rules like a good golden child. 

(Jason isn’t willing to admit that the rage festering within his ribs - growing more and more with every second he spends here, here - is not entirely accurate. He isn’t willing to admit that perhaps anyone has grown, because it isn’t fair that they have been awarded the opportunity to grow and Jason wasn’t, because Jason was in a coffin.) 

“You didn’t know it was me,” Jason counters, and they both know it’s true. For very different reasons, of course - Jason has to keep himself from snickering at the sheer irony of the sentence. You didn’t know it was me. 

Jason Peter Todd is dead, somewhere, and the Red Hood reigns, and Nightwing, Batman - none of them - You don’t know it’s me. 

Rather than contemplate any of that, though, Jason continues. “Why aren’t you attacking?” 

Perhaps it’s because of the gun leveled at Nightwing’s head, but that’s an amateur's thought that Jason dismisses the moment it comes up. Nightwing wouldn’t be put down by something as simple as a bullet - Jason can have the best aim and reaction time in the world and he, still, would not be able to put a bullet in Nightwing’s head if he tried. 

Nightwing doesn’t quite smile, but it’s better than the sneer he wears across his face, more of a mask than the domino has ever been. He’s acting more like Bruce. 

Then, why are you in Gotham? 

Jason wants to ask - but he has no right to. He’s just a Rogue, after all, a crime lord that the Bat hasn’t come to put behind bars until the next month he escapes. He’s nothing of note to Nightwing - Nightwing, who operates out of Bludhaven - but he should be something of extreme note to the Bat, who keeps detailed tabs on Gotham’s ever-living underworld. 

Where is Batman? 

Should Jason have seen him by now? 

Before Jason’s able to contemplate it for too long, Nightwing answers, near-conversational. “I hear you have your thumb dipped in the crime scene,” Nightwing says, escrima sticks still gripped tight despite his nonchalant stance. “I want information.” 

Jason quirks a brow, though Nightwing can’t see it. “You think I’m dumb enough to make conversation with a Bat?”  

“Not a Bat.” 

“A Bird, then. Look the same to me.” 

Nightwing takes a step forward, and Jason’s finger twitches on the trigger of the gun. “I suppose they do. You need help with that leg, don’t you?” 

“Got plenty of help from you already.” 

“Then I suppose you owe me a favor.” 

Favor. Jason tenses at the simple word, let alone the connotations it carries - especially from Nightwing, not here, not now, this isn’t how his plan is supposed to go. 

His plan - his revenge - can still work, he supposes. Even if he owes Nightwing something - he’ll just have to put everything ahead of schedule, to ensure it goes according to plan before Nightwing has the chance to cash in that favor. 

“I suppose,” Jason agrees tensely. 

You should be asking me about the people on that boat, he thinks, the people I killed. That’s what Batman would be doing.

Nightwing is not Batman, though, and Nightwing should not be here. 

“Well,” Nightwing continues, cheerful now. “Off I am.” 

“Shouldn’t you at least pretend this is a fight?” 

Nightwing shakes his head, hair nearly obscuring the already hard-to-read expression on his face. “No. You might not be, but I’m above fighting an injured person - someone who might be able to help me, anyway.” 

Jason scoffs.  Help. yeah, right. “I’d never help you.” 

Nightwing turns on his heel - a sign of trust that he shouldn’t have, because Jason still has a gun aimed to kill. When he begins walking away, he says nothing of the bodies that Jason has dropped in the last twenty minutes or his injury. All he says is - “The kids in Crime Alley would disagree, Hood. I trust their word over yours.” 

The kids in Crime Alley would disagree. 

The kids in Crime Alley would disagree. 

The phrase rattles around Jason’s head, again and again and again. Crime Alley. Kids. Disagree. 

In the time that it takes him to limp home to his safehouse, he’s processed it a million times over and come up with no clear conclusion, no set reason that Nightwing would say that. 

Even as he treats his leg - which turns out to not be as bad as he’d feared, mangled skin though most of it doesn’t go below surface level. There’s an incision that cuts into the bone as he’d thought, but it seems like the man had barely been able to start skinning his shin, chunks of it missing - he can’t find answers to the rest of the questions he’d come up with. 

There’s an investigation, there. 

Why Nightwing would bother coming and saving him, why the Bat wasn’t there to give him a welcome party. 

The fire on the boat wasn’t something easily missed, burning red and bright and cutting through the light fog of the harbor. Something you could easily spot from the roof of most buildings, especially ones favored by the Bats and their ilk. 

Jason isn’t willing to accept the answer that Batman had seen the fire and sent Nightwing simply to send him and not worry about it, and he’s not willing to accept the answer that Batman was not patrolling tonight, having gone home. 

Batman doesn’t do that. 

(It was a point of tension between them when Jason was still alive; he couldn’t get Bruce to stay home save for the nights he was really sick, but Bruce wouldn’t let him patrol more than four nights a week, at best. Batman didn’t take days off, Bruce had said. Batman wasn’t allowed anything close to a familial relationship. Now, the frustration Jason had felt has evolved into full-blown resentment.) 

There’s something wrong. 

While Jason would love to stay up all night thinking about it, with his shin bandaged and exhaustion weighing heavy on his body, he has to sleep. There isn’t enough time to cook and there isn’t enough time to contemplate the philosophical side of his crusade, nor to investigate, but there is time to sleep. 

He doesn’t bother changing into proper pajamas, but rather sleeping in the under armor he always wears; lightweight fabric that doesn’t get too disgusting when he wears it once or twice without washing it, so long as he wasn’t particularly sweaty. 

Jason sleeps, and Jason dreams of a crowbar and fear. Like any other night, he supposes.  

Chapter Text

The investigation of Batman’s hands-off approach to the Red Hood begins at Crow’s apartment floor. 

The street kids have taken to calling it the Nest, and so Jason does as well; Lia is not there for him to say hi to on the ground floor, but Crow is found in the closest apartment to the staircase, as he’d expected. 

“Hey,” she says, balancing two grocery bags on her arms as she approaches the kitchen, seemingly unsurprised by Jason’s presence there. “What are you doing here?” 

Jason hums, leaning against the counter; he doesn’t want to interrogate her, as he knows she’s doing the best she can. 

He’s not stupid. He keeps tabs on her, even if he thinks it’s true that she doesn’t mean any harm; it's a habit to keep track of any meta in Gotham. Especially one with such a powerful ability - Beyond Death is an ability that Jason never wants to see her use again. 

Then again, that might be due to his own relationship with his old friend Death. 

“Came by to visit,” he says, though it’s not exactly, strictly true. “How was Christmas?” 

It’s only been a week or so since Christmas and since his graceful save from the harbor by Nightwing. He would’ve come by sooner, but his injury had demanded he stay home. At least long enough to walk properly and hide his injury, and it had taken a week or so for that. 

(That means he’s left Crime Alley alone for a week. A week. It’s unacceptable - and there’s only so much work he was able to do via sniper on Black Mask’s territory.)

Crow smiles, and there is a light in her eyes that wasn’t there when he first met her. Then again, when he first met her they were both on the verge of death and she had blood splattered against her cheekbones. “It was good. I was able to get everyone some new food and some clothes, and some toys for the younger ones. Valen got his hands on some make-up, and I hear he’s been teaching himself and some of the other kids how to use it.” 

Kids being kids - now, that is a concept that Jason is unfamiliar with, both through the lens of a boy who was born and raised in Crime Alley and through the lens of a boy taken in by the Bat and trained up to be a soldier. 

It’s nice to hear they got something he never had. He doesn’t know what he would have done had there been something like this when he was still young enough to need it - he probably would’ve dropped anything for the opportunity to stay here, with these people, after Catherine had died. 

Better late than never, he supposes. 

“Yeah?” he says, though it’s just filler in order for him to figure out what he actually wants to say. He doesn’t know what to say, really. It’s been a long time since he’s been running in these kinds of circles. 

Then again - he and Crow, they aren’t that different in age. He calls her kid and he treats her like some unfortunate victim of circumstance, but the fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to survive Crime Alley this long without doing something horrific. 

Crow is seventeen. Jason is nineteen. 

There’s a difference there in an astounding number of ways - Jason was Robin, Jason died, Jason was revived, Jason trained with the League of Assassins - but they both had to grow up too soon. 

He simply views her as a child because there is some part of his brain that doesn’t think he’s human enough anymore for things like his physical age to apply to him anymore. He’s either nineteen - been conscious and kicking for nineteen years - or twenty to twenty-one - physically around, dead or not. 

He continues eventually, as Crow never finds a reason to add unnecessary information to the conversation, friend or not. Smart kid. “I was thinking. How many kids have you got around here now?” 

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye while unloading grocery bags, and Jason would think it was suspicion in her eyes if he didn’t know better. But he knows better and he knows Gotham, and there is a deep-seated paranoia in her gaze that he can’t blame her for. 

(What kind of world are they living in? A teenager practically running an orphanage after getting saved from a crime lord, making conversation with a killer and a murderer because he’s the lesser of two evils?) 

At the end of the day, though, Crow trusts him enough to not hurt what she’s built here. He’s the one who funded it, after all, and that’s the extent she needs to trust him. “Thirty or so. Everyone’s getting furniture now, we’re working on all that sort of stuff. You don’t need to do anything for that.”  

“No - No, I know that,” Jason says quickly, waving off the notion. Giving enough for them to build something is generous - giving more than that often is pitying, and there’s nothing worse in this city than pity. Nothing emotional, anyway. “I was wondering how many of them knew how to read.” 

Crow is quiet. 

Jason keeps an attentive eye on her habitually as he waits for her to answer, but she takes her sweet time putting away the refrigerated groceries she’d bought at the corner store down the road. Nothing fancy, that’s for certain. 

(Nothing like Alfred’s cooking or - now isn’t the time for any of that.) 

Eventually, when she sees that he isn’t going to take the silence as an answer, she sighs. “I don’t know. One or five, maybe. Not a high percentage, there really isn’t a reason to learn.” 

“Sure there is.” 

“Because it’s a marketable skill?” For the first time in the span they’ve known each other, there’s something like bite in Crow’s voice. He’s almost proud of her. She’s no threat - ability or not - so Jason doesn’t rise to the bait. “We’re not here to get fixed up to be contributing members of society, you know. That’s bull. We’re here to make sure people can live.” 

“Reading isn’t… Reading isn’t just a marketable skill, Crow,” Jason says, rather fascinated by her answer before he comes to the glaring conclusion. 

Of course, she has strong thoughts on it. She can’t read, either.  

They say you can’t feel bad for certain things because you don’t know what you don’t know, but what you don’t know is infinitely worse if you know you don’t know it. Such is the case with reading: Gotham has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the states, and Jason knows why. 

It’s a marketable skill. 

It isn’t a life skill. It isn’t a necessity. It’s something that might help you get hired and maybe help get you hired somewhere that isn’t the Narrows, but that’s extremely unlikely. Being able to read is an expectation in most places, but Jason - 

He’s always been a fan of the classics. Since he was a kid and found himself at the library in Crime Alley that no one has had the heart to shut down despite all of the books being damaged in some way, incredibly underfunded as it is. It’s a form of escapism, for him. An introduction to philosophy and metaphor and better worlds. To trains of thought that your mother didn’t teach you while she was busy dosing up in the living room. 

It’s freedom. 

Crow nearly bares her teeth at him as she turns, clearly disagreeing, but she thinks better of it at the last second and neglects to do so; likely remembering who she’s dealing with. Jason can’t tell if that makes it better or worse. “Then what is it for? Because there are more things to worry about.” 

He could try to explain all that, but Jason knows that it won’t matter in the slightest to her. These things don’t when you don’t have the time to worry about things such as fantastical worlds - when you have bills to pay.  

(She doesn’t have many, considering Jason took care of rent and utilities, but there is still furniture to be bought and kids to be fed and clothes to be purchased, and Jason can only buy so much when he’s living out of a measly safehouse that is a step-up from his warehouse, but certainly not going for the highest market value.) 

“I’ll make you a deal, how about that?” he shrugs, rather than try and explain to her his thought process. 

That’s how Jason finds himself sitting crisscrossed on a patchy flower rug that has certainly seen better days on the floor of a living room that desperately needs to be mopped, with ten kids sitting around him with blank looks in their eyes and department store alphabet books in front of them. 

Jason’s never been the best teacher; gets frustrated and loses his temper too quickly, like when he’d tried to teach Bruce how to play a game on his 3DS, but he tries his best. He’s had some time to get better, though he can’t say his time has been spent learning how to teach. 

There’s a Narrows accent that these kids have, and so trying to get them to differentiate between certain sounds is difficult when they have a tendency to mash them together. Their R’s are drawn out more than they should be and so grasping the concept of syllables is difficult, but they aren’t far enough in the process to learn about syllables anyway. 

He takes his helmet off - of course he does, how else are they supposed to learn? - and the kids are quite fascinated by his face. They don’t ask about the scar going across his jaw and they don’t ask about his split lip, and he doesn’t ask about theirs. 

Most of them - adaptable as they are, adaptable as they have to be - pick it up quite quickly, and Jason tries to be as patient as possible. A couple of them need more one-on-one teaching, and so he quietly denotes that to himself. 

He’ll find time. 

Controlling his territory is important - but having territory doesn’t matter if there’s going to be no one down the line to appreciate it. 

There is one kid, though… 

When Jason enlists some of the older kids to help sound out kid’s books, Jason finds himself drifting over to a particular little girl with black hair, tied up in a nice braid, with eyes that he swears are familiar but she’s barely old enough to understand this whole reading thing anyway - at best, she’s three, and Crow just stuck here there to entertain her. 

Entertain her it did, and Jason finds himself in the gaze of an inquiring three-year-old as she plays with toy cars. “Hood,” she says, pointing at him with one of the cars. 

Jason nods. “Yeah, my name is Hood. Can you tell me what your name is?” 

It always astounds him how intelligent kids are, though he supposes it shouldn’t. Kids as young as two can talk in full sentences, after all, though those are typically the overachievers. Kids learn by observing, by watching, and in an environment like this, this girl is going to pick up all kinds of things. 

The girl nods, as though this was the correct response for Jason to have, and then points to herself. “I’m Lian. You were teaching the big kids things.” 

“Well, hi, Lian. I was teaching them how to read.” With kids - Jason has never been comfortable interacting with the younger ones. Not when he was a runt, and certainly not now - not when his hands are roughly the size of her skull and soaked in so much blood - not when the Pity still clings to him like a second skin and puts whispers in his ear of what he could do if he really wanted the Bat’s attention. 

“They should know how’ta do that.” 

Jason doesn’t know why he’s talking to this kid. He thinks it’s the trace of familiarity, but he doesn’t know what it’s from. If she is three, based on the rough guess he has, then he would’ve been sixteen when she was born. A year he would’ve been dead for, so there isn’t a chance that he’d met her before he’d died. 

It’s the eyes. 

Jason continues to make conversation with the kid, asking her easy questions that a three-year-old is capable of answering, and he flags down Valen when Valen comes walking by with some impressively bright - if remarkably messy -  eyeshadow on. 

He seems proud of himself. It’s nice to see him less and less like the kid on death’s door with revenge burned into his bones that he’d been when Jason met him. 

Valen comes over upon beckoning, offering Lian a kind smile and Jason an inquisitive look. “Hey, what’s up?” 

“First of all -” Jason gestures to the reading group, where Crow has taken over for another boy - Marissa - in reading a children’s book. “You missed out on the reading lesson and second of all - what do you know about Lian?” 

It’s unclear whether the confusion on Valen’s face is from the reading group occurring in the middle of the living room or Jason’s question, but he offers what he knows with a shrug. “Um, Lian’s new. Jet found ‘er wandering around near Mask’s territory and - well, you know what happens. She said she was lost and that her dad needed to find her, but when he tried to ask who her dad was, she got really cagey. I don’t know if she’s genuinely lost or kidnapped or what, but… There’s someone out there looking for her. Figured we’d keep her safe until then.” 

It’s just about then that Jason remembers there are people with kind intentions that exist in the world. 

He thinks it’s particularly sad it took Valen telling him a story about a girl who was most likely abandoned for him to realize that. 

There are a lot of things Jason needs to realize, but now isn’t the time for those. 

In the meantime, he thanks Valen for the information and plays with Lian. They end up with some strange version of Hot Wheels where going to the finish line of the imaginary track is actually how you lose, and you need to do whatever it takes to stay on the track, but plain Reverse isn’t an option and neither is parking. 

It nags at him. 

Jason doesn’t know where he recognizes her, or why there’s a familiarity, but there is. 

 It distracts him after he leaves, it distracts him in his safehouse, it distracts him when he changes the bandages on his shin, and when he goes back out for patrol. 

There aren’t any particular big fish he needs to fry tonight; general patrol and more surveillance on Maroni, on par for the course, but the thought keeps coming back, no matter what he does. 

He knows that girl. He doesn’t know how, he doesn’t know why, but he knows her. 

It might not even be her - it certainly isn’t, actually. But a family member wouldn’t be too far-fetched; having the same features as someone would be enough for Jason, raised as a detective taken out of the gutter, would be able to pinpoint. Or at least recognize it somewhere in his subconscious. 

It nags and nags and nags, and Jason can’t leave it alone. There’s something familiar and if Lian really does have a family looking for her, it’s Jason’s job to make sure she gets home. 

The fewer kids there are in Crime Alley, the better; it might be his childhood and it might be the closest thing he’s ever gotten to a home, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is filth steeped in every corner and the very air hurts to breathe sometimes, that everyone in Crime Alley is second-hand and there are needles on every corner, bloodstains in every alley. 

It isn’t the place for a child. Or anyone, really, but there’s only so much Jason can do. 

Just as he thinks it, as though summoned, he notices a tiny figure in a red-dotted dress sitting on a nearby rooftop. 

His first thought is a jumper, but the figure is far too small for that; closer inspection reveals the mystery of the hour. 

Jason approaches as quietly as you can jumping from rooftop to rooftop. 

The figure turns - and it’s Lian, of course it’s Lian, but she’s far from the Nest where she should be staying. 

Her eyes - bright, piercing green, far more human than Jason’s own - are filled with fear, and Jason realizes belatedly that the helmet must scare her when he approaches and she tumbles backward. 

Just onto the gravel, thankfully; he slows his approach, slowly undoing the mechanisms of his helmet in an effort to make her feel better. It feels good on his shin, too. 

The wind isn’t a problem to him, who’s wearing multiple layers, but it whips around Lian’s hair and she’s clearly shivering. She has no jacket to speak off and tattered socks, though no shoes. She could’ve stepped on a needle - perhaps Jason found her just in the nick of time. 

By the time he gets his helmet off, he’s standing right next to her. She still doesn’t say anything, eyeing him warily - more than a child should be capable of. 

It doesn’t look right, a toddler sitting on this rooftop, seemingly with patience. 

“Hi Lian,”  Jason says conversationally, pulling his jacket off. His leather jacket is heavy - for a reason -, but it’s warm, and that’s what she needs. He waits until she doesn’t flinch away from him to wrap it around her shoulders. “What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be sleeping.”  

Lian shrugs, though the motion isn’t particularly visible under the leather of his jacket. Her hair is neatly brushed, and her cheeks are a ruddy red like she’s been out here for a while. 

(He doesn’t want to know why she’s been out here for a while and no one noticed. No one in the Nest was able to find her if they even knew she wasn’t there, and none of the other assorted Bats and Birds found their way to her.) 

“It’s warmer inside,” Jason continues, kneeling down to appear less intimidating. It’s best to make sure she feels he’s safe. While typically Jason would laugh at the notion of him, of all people, being the safest option, it’s true for Lian at the moment. 

She’s got a family looking for her. It’s Jason’s job to find them. He files that away for later, though. 

“I know,” Lian says, sniffling. Sniffling not because of any tears, but rather because her nose is runny from the cold. She’s going to catch one if she doesn’t get inside soon, a combination of poor apparel for such weather and the overcast clouds that threaten a thunderstorm. 

Gotham’s storms have always been brutal; they have a tendency to center around the Clocktower and places like that, but the lightning always strikes somewhere - it’s something like a tradition - and those typically knock out power for Crime Alley for sometimes weeks at a time. It’s a pain, and it isn’t how the system should be, but Jason can’t change that.

“Why are you out here, then?” Jason asks softly. He doesn’t want to intimidate her - otherwise, he’ll have to drag her back inside kicking and screaming and he truly doesn’t want to do that for a myriad of reasons. 

Lian shrugs again. “My daddy told me that if I ever got lost, then I need to go up high so I can find him again. So he can find-ed me.” 

She’s remarkably eloquent for a toddler, but Jason doesn’t spend much time around them in the first place so he can’t say he has a good gauge as to how they speak.  

Jason hums. “Does your daddy have a name, Lian?” 

She looks at him like he’s the stupidest thing to walk the earth, which Jason doesn’t appreciate. “Um… he’s my daddy.” 

Helpful. Alright, then. “Well, why would he want you to wait on a roof if you got lost? Does he fly?” 

It’s a long shot and he knows that, but he genuinely can’t fathom another reason a toddler would be instructed to sit on the roof of the nearest tall building should she get lost or kidnapped. Jason doesn’t particularly want to think about this kid scaling a fire escape and the amount of time she’s avoided death simply in the last half-hour. 

Though it does look like she’s been sitting out here longer than that. 

She shakes her head, crossing her arms in an effort to hide further into the jacket; the cold is getting to her, then. “He doesn’t fly. You need wings to fly, and daddy doesn’t have those. No flyin’.” 

“What does he do, then?” 

She shrugs again, which is becoming a frustrating response for Jason’s patience. “He says-ed he’s a hero,” she says, her eyes going wide again. “Like - like Batman!” 

“A hero,” Jason murmurs, repeating her, her wide, piercing little emerald green eyes staring through him - 

Oh. Oh, that’s where he recognizes her from. 

It’s a long shot, but it’s certainly within the realm of possibility and Jason has always had bad enough luck that he might be right. 

“Lian,” he begins gently, opening his arms. “Is it alright if I pick you up? I think I can call your daddy for you, so you don’t have to wait in the cold.” 

She levels him with a suspicious expression, which is entirely warranted. Either way, enticed by the offer of getting back home or trust built with Jason’s jacket wrapped around her shoulders, she doesn’t hesitate to take him up on the offer and he picks her up with ease. 

His shin doesn’t appreciate the added weight, but he supposes things could be worse. He’s up and walking around after a dent being made in his bone by a hatchet. (He thinks that might have something to do with the Lazarus Pit, but Jason doesn’t want to think about that; especially not when he has something so small and fragile in his arms.) 

“Are we goin’ back to - to, um, sleep?” Lian asks quietly, hiding her face in the crook of his neck. Her breath is hot against the fabric there, but her skin is so very cold; she’s not faring well out here it seems. 

Jason hums. 

If she is who Jason thinks she is - then it isn’t safe for her to go back there, not when there’s not a single way in hell she just got ‘lost’ rather than kidnapped or something like that. He’s not endangering those kids. 

But he’s used to endangering himself, and the threat of a little girl being safe means more to him than most anything. (His revenge can wait, for a night, a singular night in the time it takes to clear this up; he still needs to figure out where the Bat is, he needs to know where Robin is, he needs to know why Nightwing is in town -) 

Jason doesn’t have any of his old phones or his contacts and doesn’t fancy breaking into the manor to see if the Bat even still has them. 

That being said, there are certain heroes and certain former heroes that are better about hiding their identity and contact information than others, and it only takes about five hours - long enough for the sun to begin peering over the horizon, filtering in through the closed blinds of Jason’s apartment while Lian sleeps in his bed, a room away - for him to find the number he’s looking for. 

Jason sighs, prepares a speech. 

Scraps the speech, picks up his phone. 

Dials the number, comes up with a different speech. 

Hits dial, scraps it again. 

The phone rings. It rings again, and again.

 On the fourth ring, someone answers the call. 

“How did you get this number?” they say, and for an embarrassing second, Jason can’t say anything. 

Roy fucking Harper, he wants to say, how are you still kicking it? 

(Last he’d checked, when he was alive, was when Roy was in the midst of his drug problem and his failing duties as a sidekick, among other things. He supposes he wouldn’t be surprised if Roy managed to knock someone up at seventeen. He’s always been two years older than Jason, after all.) 

Jason’s far more choked up than he should be, but a harsh bite to his tongue inspires both pain and his syllables to actually form. “You missing something, Harper?” 

Silence. 

Then, tensely - “I swear to God, if you hurt her, I’ll hunt you down and make sure you -” 

“Relax, relax,” Jason says leisurely. “I found her, I didn’t take her.” 

“Who are you?” Roy asks, his tone undercut by the tension thick on his tongue. 

“Someone who found your fucking kid, so you should be a bit more grateful.” Something feels wrong about taking on the near-joking tone, but there are too many thoughts whirring around Jason’s head for him to do anything else. 

Roy’s alive. Roy has a daughter. 

Jason was never close with Roy Harper, though they occasionally swapped cigarettes when their respective mentors weren’t watching; Roy was always Dick’s friend, and always looked at Jason like a kid and he hated that. Roy was someone who fell off the wagon long before Jason did, and Jason had always thought it was a shame, but sometimes those things are inevitable. 

Jason wonders, now, if it was inevitable for him to fall off or if it was inevitable for the two people that fell off - Jason and Roy - to come back to the so-called industry they were raised in. 

There were things he missed, while he was dead. Jason had always known that in a clinical way, but the knowledge that Roy fucking Harper has a three-year-old daughter - there are things that he doesn’t know about because he was dead, because he was in a foreign country training. 

There are things Jason doesn’t know, that he’s too far disconnected from to even know about them. He doesn’t like that. 

“Where are you?” Roy asks instead this time, but the wary note in his voice never leaves. 

“Relax, she’s fine,” Jason reiterates. “Meet me in Robinson Park, in Gotham, tomorrow at 5.” 

“Today, noon, Robinson Park,” Roy counters. 

He must’ve been close to tracking her down already, then, if he’s that close to Gotham. Jason remembers that Roy had always called Gotham a cesspool that people shouldn’t even bother with anymore, though he’d knocked it off with the comments once Jason had given him the cold shoulder. 

“It’s a deal,” Jason agrees simply and hangs up. 

Well, that’s one way to spend his day, though he doesn’t know how smart it is to go out in full Red Hood gear in broad daylight. 

Robinson Park is a remarkably big area, and one of the most well-maintained parks in Gotham; a combination of it being the most attractive park already and because, if it’s well-maintained, Poison Ivy is in a better mood. 

No one wants a raging eco-terrorist around. Regular plant activist is enough for Jason, thanks, without the need to chop his head off with garden shears for stepping on a flower.

(Not that he steps on the flowers. That would be rude. That might just be an old habit from when he was Robin and the many Arkham breaks.) 

It’s overcast, as per usual, and Jason goes to lean against an old oak tree near the old public pool. The funding that goes into Robinson Park’s foliage doesn’t go to a decrepit part of the park like that, hidden away by the intentionally overgrown brush. It was open, barely, when Jason was a kid. 

He remembers his mom - Catherine, he reminds himself - took him there once or twice when she was sober enough to do so. He’d learned to swim. 

Now, it’s an interesting mess of bone-dry plastic and cement, and an interesting assortment of mildew and mold growing in the pale bottom of the base pool, having no drain-off for the thunderstorms that rock the city even throughout December. 

At least it isn’t a snowstorm. Snow storms make everything more difficult. 

“We’re gonna meet daddy?” Lian asks, clinging to one of the straps on his combat pants next to Jason; he’d nearly forgotten she was there with him, an extreme oversight caused by his introspection. 

He needs to get better about that. A habit he hasn’t kicked since he was Robin, apparently. 

She glances at the abandoned pool and her eyes immediately light up, which was the first sign of trouble that Jason should’ve looked into. 

 “We are,” Jason says, gently patting her head. Her hair is done in a neat braid, as it needed to be brushed out badly once she’d gotten it tangled from sleep and he isn’t going to return her to her rightful guardian in any worse condition than she has to. He also picked up some new clothes for her, and she seems rather happy with her little plaid shirt and jeans, and the puffy red jacket she wears. 

“Why isn’t he here yet?” Lian asks, brushing off his hand with an annoyed look on her face. 

Jason purses his lips, though he tries to hide it when he remembers that he isn’t wearing his helmet. 

He decided to forgo the heavy armor and the helmet in the broad daylight, though the domino mask, the leather jacket, and the combat pants remain. He doesn’t have his dual pistols on him, though he has one gun tucked in his waistband and a couple of daggers. 

He’d prefer to have only knives and such, but Roy is a long-range fighter as an archer and while Jason doesn’t think this meeting will go wrong, he doesn’t want to risk it. Especially since it’s Roy fucking Harper. 

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, but by the time he says it, Lian’s already lost interest in waiting in the shadows with him and takes off to investigate the old pool structure. 

It’s just some slides, only about a story or two up with flaking paint. Typically in the midst of fall and spring, it gets mucky and slippery, but Jason figures it’s alright; the air is cold enough at the moment to freeze off anything like water or fingers. 

Er - ice is slick. Shit. 

“Hey!” Jason shouts up when he watches her begin to scale the stairs, immediately abandoning his perch on the oak tree to follow after her. “Careful, you’re going to fall.” 

Lian doesn’t pay him any mind; he doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that she isn’t afraid of him in the slightest. She would probably be afraid of him if he still had the helmet on, but no - he had to be subtle for once. 

Jason rushes after her, which takes more effort than he’d like to admit as she’s a fat little bugger. (Probably why she isn’t in some crate being trafficked somewhere - Jason is under no illusion that she just wandered her.) 

He gets to the second flight of stairs just as Lian slips; her boots aren’t meant for the icy surface of the abandoned metal, and she falls backward as her toe slips on the next step - Jason’s only three steps below her, thank God, because she falls directly into his arms. 

The wind is knocked out of her and it’s clear she anticipated actually falling, because Jason has to haul her back onto her feet with a heaving sigh that he shouldn’t have given the amount of effort it didn’t take. “Jesus, kid,” he murmurs, putting her right back where she should be. “You need to be more careful, didn’t you hear me?” 

“But… slide,” Lian says, gesturing at the next landing point, only five steps up. The slides themselves are in working order beyond the general disarray of abandoned things - there are probably new kinds of plant species in there, after all. 

Jason shakes his head, walking up to the landing - slowly - with her, and pointing toward the pool and the moss. “If you go down the slides, you’ll go down there. And it’ll be icky and gross because of the muck, and it’ll break your tailbone because of the speed. It’s supposed to be filled with water.” 

“Well… why isn’t it?” Lian asks, pouting with her arms crossed. It’s unclear whether she’s annoyed at Jason for his explanation or the public pool for daring to exist while not up to code. 

“One - no one uses it anymore,” Jason hums, “and two, it’s winter. If you have a pool of water in the winter, it’ll freeze the top so you think it’s safe to go skating. And then you’ll try to skate, and fall, and die of hypothermia.” 

“... Oh.” Lian seems less inclined to actually go down the death of a slide, but not less intrigued by its general composition and the state of wear on it, evidenced in the way she crouches down and begins to pick at the already-peeling paint. 

Her hands have to be cold, pink from the frost that melts under her fingernails as she pries up the paint from the metal.  

“Where are your gloves?” Jason asks, more to himself than the child that isn’t paying attention. 

Lian never answers him, because both of their attention is drawn toward the ground and that has revealed himself. 

Roy looks different than he used to. Less because age has done a number on him, and more because he doesn’t have that same spark in his eyes that Jason remembers - flaming, bright; light in the dark despite it all. 

While Jason’s caught staring at everything he’s missed these last few years, Lian has no such hesitations for any such reasons - she glances at Jason to see why he’s staring, follows his gaze, and then she immediately takes off, down the stairs she just tripped on. 

“Daddy!” Lian shouts at the top of her lungs, nothing other than joy saturating her every word. 

She doesn’t slip on the way down, thankfully, and Roy does some interesting combination of staring at her with adoration and relief in his eyes and keeping a suspicious look on Jason. 

When she comes rushing toward him, though, Roy sweeps Lian up into his arms. He looks quite silly like that, Lian held to his hip and his bow in the other hand. Useless, with only one hand available to him, but he points it at Jason anyway. 

Jason, still standing on the landing of the slide, only leans over the rickety railing and smiles. Half-smug, half… he doesn’t know. Doesn’t need to know, at the moment. “Told you I found her.” 

“Who are you?” Roy asks, accusation hot in his tone but quelled by the fact that his daughter doesn’t have any visible injuries. 

Lian answers before Jason has a chance to, pointing wildly with her quick little fingers. “That’s Hood!” she exclaims, a beaming smile still on her face due to her father being there. “He help-ed me find you!” 

“Did he?” Roy asks, briefly turning his attention to Lian while keeping an eye on Jason, who doesn’t bother trying to move. “How did you get all the way to Gotham, anyway?” 

That’s the first thing that crushes Lian’s smile - and the first time she’s been asked such a thing. Crow certainly never asked it at the Nest, not when everyone has so much baggage and she’s just a toddler, and Jason hadn’t wanted to ask. 

Knew he would just see green if he did, and he needed to get Lian back to Roy in one piece. 

Lian clams up, burying her face in Roy’s shoulder. “I - I don’ wanna talk ‘bout it.” 

“Lian,” Roy murmurs, “We’ll talk about it when we get home, okay? How do you know, uh, Hood?”  

Lian doesn’t bother looking up from her perch. “He help-ed me, I told you.” 

“She was found wandering around Gotham,” Jason fills in helpfully. He’s still getting a suspicious look, but hey, it’s better than an arrow to the ribs he supposes. “Picked up by some good kids around here. Found ‘er when I visited ‘em.”

“And you got my number how?” 

Jason smiles. It’s something between bitter and nostalgic - not that Roy needs to know that.   “You’re not hard to track down, Harper.” 

If Roy is surprised about Jason knowing his secret identity, he doesn’t show it. Doesn’t need to, because it was already apparent when Jason called about Lian. 

In Roy’s head, Jason’s been classified as a high-level threat regardless of whether he’s been helpful or not. Roy is already thinking of thirteen different ways Jason could be trying to return Lian to him for ulterior motives. 

(Jason almost wishes Roy would treat him like an outright threat, like Nightwing hadn’t, like the Bat continues not to do. It’s not in Bruce’s nature to ignore, and certainly not in Batman’s nature to allow a crime lord just Jason to go unchecked with murders on his tongue like a sonnet for this fucking long.) 

“I suppose I should’ve seen that coming,” Roy says. He’d definitely seen it coming. “Do I get the honor of knowing who you are, Red Hood?” 

“So you’ve heard of me, then?” 

“You’re the one running criminals out of Gotham’s underbelly as of late,” Roy says, almost amicably despite the visual tension lining his body. “Mind me if it’s hard to believe you just found her.” 

“I did,” Jason hums, a wicking grin overtaking his features. “You think I’d give her back to you in one piece if I didn’t?” 

Lian doesn’t seem intimidated in the slightest by all of the superhero and villain jargon. She emerges from Roy’s neck, looks at Jason, the bow in Roy’s hands, and frowns. “No, daddy. I said friend. And friends don’t shoot friends.” 

“Where did you hear that?” Roy laughs. It’s undercut with emotion, but Lian doesn’t need to know that. Shouldn’t know that. 

(It’s nice to know that, even if she has the usual childhood worries - such as getting kidnapped and pimped out, drugs and the like, so on and so forth - she has a father who will fight to protect her. Jason hadn’t ever imagined Roy as a parent, but he imagines that’s how he’d be. Fiercely protective. He wonders if Roy quit his drug habit for her, too - he looks healthier than Jason last saw him, and not even in the way everyone looks better once they leave their teens. No, there’s a healthiness to his skin and his appearance that wasn’t there before.) 

Lian shrugs. “I dunno. Can you not shoot-ed him with your bow?” 

“I can’t put it back if I’m holding you, baby.” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Lian loses interest after that, playing with a string attached to the shoulder of Roy’s costume. Fascinating idea, coming to pick up your civilian daughter in your hero suit. 

Then again, Jason is so used to suits and heroes and villains that it would’ve startled him more if Roy was in civvies - he hadn’t even noticed it when Roy had shown up. 

“I think I know who did it, too,” Jason says airily, gesturing toward the sky. “Took your girl. You know, I found myself on a boat last week -” 

Roy makes for pleasant conversation after that. 

Somehow, they end up in a motel that has seen better days, like everything in Gotham has. Hell, even the new construction has that chic, just-haunted Gotham special to it, so the descriptor means nothing at this point. 

Still, Jason goes out of his way to avoid touching the grimy, dingy green walls when they enter and stands with his arms crossed while Lian crawls across the singular queen bed to grab the Nintendo 3DS conveniently waiting there for her. 

“Talk,” Roy says simply. He doesn’t try to stand over Jason or intimidate him since they both know that ship has sailed now. 

It’s easy to trust him, and Jason finds - 

Well, sitting in a motel room, in one of the chairs that really needs a good clean, with Roy standing across from him - a paragon of what he could’ve been, had he not died, how he could’ve taken that road, of the past, of someone who used to know him - it’s lonely. 

Jason finds loneliness. 

Loneliness has been his God since he was a child, since he was sitting alone in the kitchen trying to make something edible while his mom drooled in the living room, since he hid under his bed when Willis came home, since he stole the tires of the Batmobile, since he was in a warehouse. 

Loneliness is his God and Jason swore he wouldn’t pray anymore. Not to any higher power, not to anything when all divinity has granted him was a tombstone. 

It’s that realization and that realization alone - sweaty palms, elevated heart rate, widened eyes behind a domino mask - that Jason bases his decision on, something that could alter his mission should it go wrong. 

Jason hums, not allowing any of his discoveries to show on his face. “Well, the weather’s lovely today, don’t you think?” 

Roy glances over at Lian before he speaks next, entirely disregarding Jason’s sarcasm. “Why did you help her? If you did, that is. Why go through the trouble of tracking me down?” 

Because kids deserve a home and a family they love. 

Because it’s my fault I didn’t take out that trafficking ring before Christmas. My fault she’s in Gotham. 

Because you’re a friend. 

All of the answers are on the tip of his tongue, but Jason can’t bring himself to say any of them - doesn’t know how he would phrase any of them, anyway. Simple words have never been his forte; always wanting metaphor, to twist the truth into something grotesque and dramatic to mimic the flare of emotions he has about it. 

Jason was born in a den of sin and separation from it is beyond him; the truth burns like acid, and not the fucking drug kind so common around here.

Because she deserves to go home. 

“Figured you’d tear up the damn city looking for her,” Jason shrugs, and it isn’t the truth, of course it isn’t. He’s never been like Batman, in that way - he’s territorial, but he doesn’t know why Batman never lets any metas into the city. 

He’s wary of them, yes. Knows the damage they can cause and how metas usually end up becoming the villains, but that isn’t the fault of their abilities. People without powers become villains, too - look at the Joker, or even Jason ( killer, killer, not villain, killer), or the Riddler, or every fucking corporate CEO bleeding Gotham dry like vampires.  

Roy isn’t a meta, anyway. That’s just the rumor that goes around Star City. 

(Jason had always been fascinated by urban legends before his death. Batman had plenty of them - everyone thought he was a legend, anyway, until Robin came along - but Star City had different types of urban legends. They never questioned the existence of masked archers - they questioned the accuracy of their aim, of their intentions. They questioned how you could be human and do what they did, and Jason always found that more interesting than the macabre that is Gotham’s lore and history with the Bat.) 

“I would’ve,” Roy says resolutely, and there is something knowing in his gaze behind that domino mask as he looks intently at Jason, and Jason does not like it. 

He hasn’t been analyzed like that since he came out of the Lazarus Pit, and it was by Talia al Ghul - that same look hadn’t been present even with Nightwing. 

It takes a second to place it, Jason is so unused to it at this point. 

The glimmer hiding behind secret identities and masks - the look in Roy’s eyes - 

It is recognition. 

“You’re supposed to be dead,” says Roy simply. 

“How the hell would you know who I am?” Jason spits and part of him wants to back himself into a corner like a snarling, cornered animal; like the same strays he saves. The other part of him wants to scream it with his whole chest - I’m Jason Todd, I’m the Red Hood, and I’m alive. 

He doesn’t scream it. He’s afraid someone would hear him if he did. 

Roy cocks his head to the side, giving Jason another once-over before he makes eye contact again. “Criminals don’t go out of their way to find the rogue kid of a damned hero. Criminals don’t talk the way you do.” 

“Cut the shit, Roy,” Jason scoffs, crossing his arms. “Being a criminal doesn’t mean I’m some dead friend of yours. And I am a criminal, to be clear.” 

“So am I,” Roy says. “You want to know what really gave it away?” 

Jason can’t help it. His curiosity is piqued. “What?” 

“The jacket and the hood,” Roy answers simply. “No one sane goes around rebranding the Joker’s old legacy without apt reason. No one sane decides to take the same route as the big bad Bat and become their fear unless they’ve been taught that. And -” 

Roy gestures to Jason’s jacket, the brown leather resting comfortably against his arms. “There’s only one person I know who would ever put a brown leather jacket on a vigilante costume, and he’s been dead for a long time.” 

“That logic is rather fallible.” 

“Is it, Jason?” Roy asks earnestly. 

Jason doesn’t answer. It’s not because of the lump in his throat. 

He takes Roy back to his safe house, and only there does he take off his domino mask - the motel wasn't safe like Jason knew this place was. Plus, it has a kitchen, and the motel had a moldy coffee maker. He'd always known Roy's standards were low, but that place was appalling. 

There’s something like awe in Roy’s eyes when he does so, and Lian plays on the floor with some coloring books Jason had borrowed from Crow for her. They stand in the kitchen, away from the child, and Roy looks like he has to stop himself from reaching out to touch Jason’s face. 

“You were dead,” he says, quietly; in the silence of the kitchen, it’s like a scream. Jason’s heartbeat is loud, and quick, quicker than it ever is when he’s out in the field, and his safehouse is safe, but - 

He is not used to being recognized. 

Jason Todd, underneath the Red Hood mask, is not supposed to be alive anymore. That kid stayed dead in his coffin, and it is because of Jason’s selfishness that he keeps the name at all. 

Even in his head, he clings to the idea of being alive; of being Jason, even if that isn’t true anymore. 

Roy doesn’t share the sentiment, it seems, fingers twitching at his sides when he doesn’t reach up to ensure that it is flesh and bone across Jason’s cheek. 

“I was,” Jason replies, an answer to the question that wasn’t asked outright. You were dead, not faking it, not off the grid, you were dead. 

And he was. The coffin he woke up in agrees. 

“How’d you come back?” Roy murmurs, but he drops the question immediately. “No, I - I don’t want to know. I’m going to guess it has something to do with the Lazarus Pit.” 

“Did the green eyes give it away?” Jason asks sarcastically, arms crossed because that position is safe. He doesn’t need to protect himself from Roy, but perhaps it isn’t protection he’s after. “I knew I recognized Lian. You have a kid, huh?” 

“Yeah. Learned I was expecting not too long after you - ah, after you passed,” Roy hums, glancing over to the girl. She’s content with her coloring books and crayons, clinging onto the red crayon as she scribbles and ignoring the other colors. “She’s been gone for a couple of weeks now.” 

“And you tracked her all the way to Gotham?” Business. That’s an easier topic. Jason doesn’t know if he can talk about being dead to anyone other than his mirror - there’s been no one to hear his monologues, after all. 

It’s almost lonely. 

(The monologues are meant for one person and one person only. The one that still hasn’t shown his face to Jason - the one who no one has seen for days.) 

“Yeah. I don’t even think it was personal,” Roy says; when he says it, he looks at anything other than Jason and his daughter. Shame. He’s ashamed. “She’d been missing since a daycare event at the aquarium.”

“No ransom? They demanded nothing in return?” 

“No. They transported her all the way to Gotham, so I can’t imagine it was anything other than - well, you know.” Roy is averse to saying it out loud with the traumatized kid next to them, which is understandable. Trafficking. 

There’s this notion that trafficking is vile to the people in it, that it abuses them greatly, and it does. But traffickers have to wrap their victims in false promises and kindness; you don’t sell damaged cattle. Usually, the violence is more apparent in labor trafficking, but Lian is far too young for that. 

It’s certainly more nefarious. Thinking about what could’ve happened to that girl makes Jason see green, though, makes him dig his nails into his arms in an effort to keep control. 

Lian likely didn’t know what was going on beyond being away from her father. If Jason had to guess, based on her lack of bruises, they told her that they were picking her up as friends of Roy. They brought her to Gotham to ensure no one would look at the missing kid report and recognize her, and were going to ship her out - like livestock - near the ports. 

Somewhere between arriving in Gotham and the docks, Lian escaped. Jason doesn’t want to know how. 

“I’ll look into it,” Jason answers eventually, getting his temper under control - the Lazarus Pit wraps around his ribcage and constricts, waits for him to give in, give in, give in to me - 

Jason does not. 

If Roy sees him struggle, he doesn’t mention it. “Thank you.” 

He stands around, though, and Jason realizes that perhaps Roy doesn’t want to leave just yet. He can’t imagine there’s a missus at home waiting for him - not only had Roy never been a family man, but he’d also always had shitty taste in women. 

That was probably because the women Roy hooked up with, as far as Jason remembers, were all stand-ins for the sexuality crisis Roy was having at the time. That’s neither here nor there, though. 

As it is, once Jason thinks it’s safe to remove his arms from their crossed position, without the hiss of green in his ear, Jason does so and goes to the fridge. “If you’re going to stay, then I’m going to make an early dinner. Does Lian have any allergies?” 

“No, but she hates any and all condiments save for ranch.” 

Jason snorts. Ranch is a terrible poison to pick. “Good thing stew doesn’t involve condiments including ranch.”

“Aw, are you going to cook for us?” Roy says, smiling for the first time. Jason doesn’t think that smile has changed; Jason has changed, and Roy has changed, and time had moved on, but Roy’s smile stays the same. It’s grounding. “Knew you were a softie, Jay.” 

Jason scoffs, and they leave the sentimental talk at that. 

It’s been a while since he’s had the effort to cook anything properly, but Jason has all the ingredients for a beef stew and he might as well use them. He remembers Alfred’s recipe by heart, anyway, given that it was Alfred’s go-to feel-better dinner and the butler made it whenever Bruce or Jason was injured. 

Jason begins directing Roy around the kitchen, and while it isn’t the same as combat - isn’t the same as falling into step with bat-a-rangs and arrows - it has the same feeling to it, twisting and turning in tandem in an effort to avoid getting in the way. 

There are still knives involved, which helps the effect. 

Either way, brushing against Roy’s side as he reaches into the fridge for carrots to cut for later - it does take about three and a half hours including prep time, of course - feels like breaking out of something like loneliness. 

Not that Jason is willing to call it that. 

(Perhaps he’s simply relieved Roy doesn’t want to ask what he’s doing here, or why; doesn’t want to know the vengeance and the fear that guides Jason to another grave; doesn’t want to ask how he died or whose fault it was.) 

“Should I be concerned that we’re all sharing this?” Roy asks, holding up a wine bottle and raising an eyebrow. 

Jason rolls his eyes. They’ve both lost the domino masks, now, with no need for the formality in Jason’s safe house.  (They must look ridiculous, still in their costumes, ambling around the kitchen making stew.) “Alcohol is null when I add it to a reduction, Roy.” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he snickers, putting it back on the counter. 

“It’ll have to cook for a couple of hours on the stove,” Jason says, moving the carrot pieces to the side as he moves to slice up his final carrot. “We’ll add the vegetables in a while. Can you sear the meat?” 

“I really didn’t think stew involved searing the meat,” Roy hums, but he moves to do as Jason asks. Trust, in a way. 

“This one does.” 

They cook in tandem, and Jason finds it’s his first notable memory without the Red Hood helmet obstructing his vision. 

Roy doesn’t ask about Jason’s status as the Red Hood; Roy doesn’t ask about anything work-related while they’re eating, and certainly not near Lian. 

By the time dinner is done and they’re done eating, with the dishes put away and Lian yawning quietly, it’s far too late to make the trip back to Star City. 

Jason’s only got a one bedroom, as he doesn’t see a reason to spend money on a waste, so he shrugs it off. “You and Lian can take my room, I’ll sleep on the couch.” 

“Jay, we don’t need to -” 

“No, Lian deserves it,” Jason waves off Roy’s concern. “She’s had a rough couple of weeks. Get some sleep, Roy. You’ve had a rough couple of weeks, too.” 

The exhaustion clings to Roy like a second skin, and with Lian, the concerned part of that has eroded away, but the tiredness remains; Jason doesn’t even want to know the last time Roy’s had a full night’s sleep. 

“You can take a pair of sweatpants, too,” Jason adds, remembering that they’re both still in costume. “Might be better to sleep in than kevlar, yeah?” 

Roy is silent for a while, pursing his lips. They’re sitting on Jason’s tiny couch, and something heavy is in Roy’s gaze that Jason doesn’t like. Lian is sitting on the floor again, back to her coloring after her food, and finally, Roy speaks.

“You know, Jay,” he says, earnest and sincere and all of the things Jason doesn’t want to hear. “I’m glad you’re alive.”