Chapter Text
Bruce is being haunted by his son, and it catches him off guard. To call it a sucker punch would be an understatement. It feels more like a baseball bat to the face. He's an Atlas, the entire weight of the world dropped onto his shoulders and he deserves to bear it.
So he knows he deserves pain, knows that karma does collect, but he never thought retribution would come in the form of, in hot pursuit of a criminal, turning a corner and catching a glimpse of Jason standing across the street.
His youngest son watches him impassively, arms hanging at his sides with no tension. He doesn't appear to Bruce as he did in death; he's not even dressed as Robin. The Jason that haunts him, which more likely is a hallucination, wears a pair of worn jeans and a greased hoodie. The apathy ages him, though his state reminds Bruce of the Jason he took in, the one who audaciously stole his wheels and whacked him with the tire iron. But the Jason across the street is motionless. There's nothing behind those eyes.
Hallucination.
Bruce maintains pursuit and beats too much shit out of the criminal and does not think about this Jason. In the early morning when he gets home from patrol, he does not mention him to Alfred. He does not spend hours wondering if it's worth it, to keep toeing the line in hopes of seeing his son in his peripheral.
His son is dead, and Bruce remembers the gloss of denial he painted over the scene at first. He remembers the frantic search and shift of the rubble, hoping for a miracle and not considering the alternate reality. Bruce trained in medicine. He knew from the moment he uncovered Jason's body that his son was dead, but he still checked his pulse. Bruce can't escape the heft of his son's corpse in his arms.
He writes and files the patrol report. The Cave is dark, dimly lit by the screen light in front of him and the broken fluorescent lights above. He rubs his face. He goes upstairs and showers and scrubs at his skin until it's blooming red. On his way to get water, he runs into Alfred who is making his way to his quarters, but decides to follow Bruce into the kitchen.
Alfred fills a tall glass of water and sets it down in front of Bruce. Bruce drinks the full glass and Alfred takes it back. Bruce holds his tongue. Alfred wishes him goodnight.
The wish is futile; Bruce falls into an uneasy, restless sleep, and he is plagued by The Weight. His grief is an avalanche.
On fear toxin, he barricades himself into the basement of an abandoned building. Crane's toxin got him after he gave his rebreather to a child, and the Cave is too far away to make it there safely. His only option is the basement. He hasn't been hit with fear toxin in a very long time, and he doesn't want to hurt a civilian. But his worries end up for naught because Batman curls into the corner of the room and screws his eyes shut tight.
He begins counting, and when he reaches 139 he hears-
"B?"
His eyes snap open.
Jason's clavicle is exposed, jutting into his flesh unnaturally. His cheekbone is caved in and blood falls in thick streams down his legs, pooling on the pavement. His domino is nowhere to be seen. Despite this, his son stares at Bruce like he shut the lights in his room off while he was still reading.
"Let's go, B," says Jason. Bruce shudders. "We need to get outta here."
"You're dead," Bruce whispers. He tucks his face behind his hands. He wonders how long this will last, for how long he will see his reanimated son.
"No, I'M NOT," Jason yells. He stamps his foot angrily. A fresh bloom of red soaks through his Robin uniform, but his son doesn't seem to notice.
"I can't," Bruce says into his palms. He doesn't know what he can't do, only that this is too much.
Jason screams again. This time, the blood leaks from his waterline. There's so much of it. Bruce tries to cover his eyes, as if applying pressure will combat the drug gliding through his veins, but he finds his fingers are soaked in sticky scarlet. He startles, back banging against the wall.
Every move Jason seems to make just destroys his body further, filling the room with his bird-like screeching and screaming.
It's okay, you're safe, go to sleep, Bruce wants to whisper as he did years ago. When Jason had been lively and alive. But he can't, now. Bruce just tucks his arms around himself and shoves his face into the alcove he's made of armor and arms and recites Two households, both alike in dignity frantically until his son disappears again.
He's been seeing Jason for a very long time. He comes in different forms, in wildly varying situations.
One morning he nearly goes into cardiac arrest when he flicks the lights of the library on and sees Jason lounging sideways in an armchair, Of Mice and Men resting on his ribs as he reads, legs hanging over the armrest and swinging. Bruce shuts his eyes, the iron grip on the door frame the only thing keeping him upright. When he blinks his way back to the present, Jason is gone and the room has taken on a chilly quality he could have sworn wasn't there when he first entered.
He is leaping across an alley and Robin is leaping with him, a bright grin on his face. Bruce lands wrong on his knee as he tries to see Jason again. The twinge comes back from time to time, and the pain from it isn't as bad as the forceful reminder of why it occurs.
Bruce strays into Crime Alley not ready to admit to himself what (who) he came here looking for, and every dark-haired child looks like Jason. The small girl with a black pixie cut makes him double-take. He trails a man in a red sweatshirt. He leaves the Alley feeling a million years older.
When Tim comes along, he fights like hell to stop the kid from donning the suit. He doesn't want another Robin, but he loses this battle. Tim becomes Robin defiantly, and Bruce resolves to fix his problem. He will not, cannot afford to be distracted while Tim relies on his diligence as Batman. He makes this decision, and his memories of Jason stop leaking into his vision. Sometimes he misses them.
Bruce never once sees Jason in Tim. Tim is calculating and meticulous and trains with Dick compliantly. Tim doesn't question his orders nearly as much as Jason did. He asks questions modestly. Tim does not laugh on patrol, and his smirk is softer than Jason's. Their differences are stark, but this isn't why he finds no trace of his second son.
Bruce is standing in the middle of the library, square center on the rug. He's looking for one of his old college textbooks on chemistry, and can't bring himself to get closer to the bookshelves.
"Bruce?"
He tries not to be startled by his own name, said so casually. Tim has called him Bruce exactly twice; he usually sticks to Batman and Sir and Mr. Wayne to Bruce’s displeasure.
Dick meets him shoulder to shoulder, though his oldest son is still not quite his height. "What are you looking for?"
Bruce shakes his head. He doesn't need the textbook after all. He doesn't want to touch the shelves, the rows and rows of books though he'd get to see his second son plow through into his thirties. "Nothing." Dick leans away from him, towards the shelves. "How have you been doing, Dick?"
"Good. You know, Tim's a n-natural." His oldest tries to mention this with enthusiasm, but his voice hitches towards the end. He has noticed the book out of place on the second to last row from the bottom.
Frankenstein lies on top of the row of books, a golden bookmark hanging from its pages.
They both know who left that there. And the lack of dust in the room makes Bruce inclined to believe Alfred has known of its presence for a year. Bruce wonders if that book's placement will outlive him.
Dick rubs his jaw with one hand, and Bruce distantly registers that it's a habit Dick picked up from him. He wants to throw something. He wants to light this city on fire. He wants his son back. He wants to listen to Jason talk for hours about Orpheus and Eurydice again and wishes he'd paid more attention the first time.
"...in class, and this asshole during the seminar kept on talking about how stupid he was for turnin' back." Jason shook his head. "He didn't get it, B."
"What didn't he get, Jason?"
"That he couldn't. Hades knew no mortal man could resist looking back and it was a doomed mission from the start. Orpheus was doomed by his love for her and by his own humanity."
(Dick watches his father. In moments like these, he is forced into remembering that Bruce is just, still a grieving man.)
Bruce mumbles goodnight and hurries out of the library. He is happy Tim is doing well, is glad Dick is coming by more often. But every prideful emotion feels like taffy. He sighs.
Tim has grown as Robin exponentially. With the promise of communication and Dick's frequent visits to Gotham, he lets Tim go out without him. Having a partner on patrol is both a blessing and a curse. Without Tim, he's in more control of every situation. He can fight without worrying about knocking someone into Tim. He can dodge bullets knowing that they won't hit Tim instead.
And Batman can handle himself, but the curse comes when he doesn't care to. He's slower without Robin. He's more reckless, reckless in a manner he hasn't acted with since the months following his second son's death.
Tonight, he is staking out a warehouse where an arms deal is going down. He's kneeling on a roof across the way, spying. Robin is with Nightwing right now, on a hopefully uneventful patrol on the other side of the city.
A man stalks out of the warehouse, and Batman reaches for his grappling hook when he notices the figure watching him. His breath catches in his throat.
Jason is wearing jeans and a black shirt, and he's staring at Batman intensely, eyes narrowed. His son is older. How he might have looked if he'd been allowed to grow. Bruce knows this isn't healthy, knows this is a step backward, seeing Jason again, but nevertheless, he indulges in the sight. His son, tall and bulky but still contentious.
Bruce lets himself close his eyes, burning the image into his mind. When he opens them again, his Jason hallucination is gone. But so is the man who left the warehouse, so Bruce grapples down to the street, gets in the Batmobile, and pursues.
That night, he goes through his regular routine of report, shower, water but makes a stop at a room he hasn't entered in a very long time.
Jason's room is untouched. The Catcher in the Rye and The Iliad are stacked on his bedside table. His favorite jacket hangs on the back of the desk chair. His bed is made, and placed in the crevice between it and the table is a glass of long-evaporated water. A pack of gum sticks out of his school bag. Long ago, he'd paid the overdue fees and bought the novels checked out from the public library so that they could sit in this room forever.
Bruce settles on the floor, against the wall with his legs tucked to his chest. He breathes in slowly. The floor is cold and the air is stale. His son is in the ground and he is above it. He knows Jason would be disappointed in him for thinking this, but Bruce thinks that if Hades gave him the chance to walk out of the Underworld with his son, he wouldn't make the mistake of looking back.
He doesn't talk about Jason with Dick or Alfred or Tim. He lets him go unmentioned, and any attempt to bring up this part of the past is met with volatility. He doesn't do it consciously, snapping and freezing them out, but he's recognized this is his barrier. This is how he makes it through the night and how he gets back up. He regrets the years in which he iced Dick out, let him run off thinking he was unloved, and then let him think he was the cause of his brother's death—because that's what Dick and Jason were. Brothers.
The second time Stephanie Brown comes into the Cave, this time with permission, she zeros in on the Case. She walks right up to it and peers at the engraving, curiously. For all his neurotic tendencies, he never considered that Stephanie would see the Case. But all she does is glance back at Batman, and something in his face that makes her shut her mouth. He can tell, though, that she doesn't feel scolded or scared into staying quiet.
Stephanie is being merciful, and Bruce is grateful.
After a particularly hard night, Dick, who has been in town for the past week, and him work in the Cave on a new project: decluttering the workshop. Dick is the reason he discovers the bomb under the Batmobile.
Opening the desk drawer too forcefully, he knocks down a bolt, which rolls a few feet under the Batmobile. "Shit," Dick says, and drops flat on the floor to retrieve it. Head under the carriage, he freezes, inhaling sharply.
"Bruce?"
"Dick."
"There's a bomb under here, you know that?"
"What?"
And they extract and defuse it safely. It's anyone's guess how long it had been stuck to the car. Dick goes up to the Manor, shaking his head and muttering about how the hell Bruce and his paranoia didn't catch this. Bruce holds the bomb up to the light, inspecting it to figure out the manufacturer, but it looks homemade. He lowers the item a smudge, and that's when Bruce notices him.
Jason—older and bulkier Jason—sits on the grated ledge below the rafters, feet swinging idly. He stares at Bruce balefully, a little judgmental when his eyes lock in on the device in his hand. Jason lifts an eyebrow as if to say, you deserve it.
And doesn't Bruce know it?
Stephanie is vivacious and hardened. As Robin, she doesn't take orders she thinks are stupid (as Spoiler, she didn't take orders at all). She has a Park Row accent and crosses her arms with impatience in the same movement his son used to do. He never once saw Jason in Tim, but god does Bruce see him in Stephanie. It may be why he's so hard on her. Every time she takes a fall and takes too long getting back up, his heart drops through his chest and he has to scramble to pick it back up. It quickly becomes too much.
It does not pain Bruce to fire her, until it does.
Sitting at her bedside, he thinks I've been here before.
Stephanie says good. She says she got to be a part of the legend.
Bruce thinks that if he hadn't looked at her so desolate, Stephanie would have asked about the Case, and he would have told her. And, if Stephanie knew the true story of Jason Todd, she wouldn't have gone near Black Mask.
Stephanie dies quietly.
Jason—Baby Jason—is always sitting at the kitchen counter when Bruce comes in to make breakfast. Every morning, Jason asks him a mundane question: B, what’s your favorite Coldplay song? Do you know if the public library is open on Sundays? When’s Dick coming over? Hey, you’re a gazillionaire, aren’t cha? Can’t you just… poof poverty away? Do you know what square waves are? What's the freezing point of water in Kev-Kelvin? B, are you listening to me?
The Red Hood bursts onto the scene like a tsunami: Batman looks away from Crime Alley for one minute and suddenly, the tide has retreated. When he and Dick read about his entrance, his son whistles.
"Impressive." Bruce glares at him. Dick looks concerned, but still manages to joke, "I'm just saying, seven heads in one duffel bag? How'd he get them all to fit?"
Batman gets lost in time before he ever finds out the answer to that question. Throughout his entire journey, his second son follows him. Not in glimpses, or as temporary drug-induced hallucinations, but as a fixed figment. Sitting on a crate with his short legs swinging above the deck, he pokes fun at Blackbeard. He looks at the cowboys with starry eyes and mentions reading some Cormac McCarthy when they get home.
But Batman is the only one who makes it home. As soon as they get back in Gotham, Jason disappears without a trace. Breakfast Jason is gone from the counter.
Gotham is different when he returns. Tim is Red Robin and Stephanie is alive and Spoiler again and Dick is Batman and has been living almost full-time in the Manor, helping Alfred settle in Damian al Ghul, his biological son?
Bruce has a big family now, he supposes. He likes it when he wakes once a month to a full house. Stephanie comes over just for Alfred's cooking, and Tim's owl-eyes unglued from the Batcomputer so he can head upstairs for the sweet scent of maple syrup on hot pancakes. His home is swimming with children who laugh and brawl and knock over vases and he thinks he enjoys the company.
Batman is sitting on the ledge of Wayne Enterprises. Jason Todd is sitting next to him. Both are silent.
Older Jason Todd is back. He sort of misses the fifteen-year-old that followed him through the Wild West, but this one looks like he could have a college degree so he's alright with this subconscious trade-off.
The wind is howling enough that Batman feels safe enough to say, "I thought I got rid of you."
Jason stiffens. "That's nice, B."
"No offense, Jason, but I don't think Leslie considers hallucinating a valid form of coping with grief."
Jason turns to look at him. Batman turns back. He studies his son's face.
"I'm really mad at you, you know."
"Yes," Batman agrees. He has every right to be.
"You should've killed the Joker."
"Probably."
"And- What?"
"I should have done a lot of things, Jay."
Jason makes a strangled sort of noise. He exhales tiredly. “I could be real.”
He can't do this now. Batman puts his head in his hands. He remembers how Jason used to be a tangible thing, how he slipped far and farther. The one in front of him hits too close to home. "I'm going to go home now."
There's no response. When Batman looks up, Jason is gone.
Cassandra Cain is lovely, really, even though when she crashed into his life he thought she might be an Angel of Death. But he and Stephanie teach her ASL, and when she feels more comfortable leaving the home, she asks to take dance lessons. He loves her, easily.
The Red Hood continues to kill people in Gotham, and sometimes, Batman thinks he knows what to do about it. But every time he approaches the Red Hood, the man breaks from the scene so efficiently, so ruthlessly avoidant, that Batman decides pursuit is too inconvenient.
He lets the situation fester for another week—
Until he's with Nightwing, following a lead on a drug trafficking ring into Crime Alley and two blocks in, the Red Hood appears like a demon, leering from on top of the roof entrance.
"You're in my territory," the helmet distorts. The Red Hood is kneeling, one hand braced on the pavement and the other resting on one of the guns holstered to his thigh. He doesn't sound particularly aggressive, but Batman is wary. Red Robin had filled him in on all of Red Hood's activities while he was away.
Hood is violent and benevolent. He racked up at least thirty bodies in his relatively short stint as a crime lord and was intolerant of selling drugs to kids. Rapists lose three of their five appendages in Crime Alley nowadays, and rumor had it that when Hood was in a good, playful mood, he let them pick which ones stayed.
Maybe, Nightwing had quipped weeks ago in the Cave, he's a polite crime lord.
"You're in my city," Batman responds.
Hood shakes his head. "It's a little late to do something about that, now."
Batman supposes this is true.
"What are you and Big Blue doing over here?"
Nightwing frowns. "Drug ring-"
"Nightwing-
"You gonna let us pass?"
"No," says Red Hood. Then, "What do you know."
Nightwing's frown deepens.
In the Cave, they gathered to discuss the Red Hood situation a month ago. They'd been split on the situation: inevitably, when they had their next operation in Crime Alley, would they cooperate with Red Hood and would the man cooperate with them?
Batman was obviously against the prospect. He evades us at every turn. We don't know him, or what he can do.
Nightwing was more open to it. We should avoid fighting with him. He's powerful, and he doesn't seem like the worst crime lord to be friendly with.
I know killing is bad and all, but I kinda wish I'd had a Red Hood when I was a kid. Someone to keep us safe and keep... everyone else in line. Stephanie.
Tim had been indifferent. He shot at me one time.
What?
Tim-
Dude, why-
Imbecile!
Well, it was only one shot. He missed, and then we just kind of stared at each other for a minute before he left. He didn’t seem too hostile.
They never came to a consensus, and now the decision was placed in their hands.
Nightwing hands the information over. Then, Red Hood shoos them away.
"I waited for you," this Older Jason accuses. Bruce has been hit with one of Ivy's disorientation pollens. Now, he's lying flat on a rooftop, a few blocks away from home. He doesn't think he can make it without plummeting to his death, though, so he just lies down, resigned to wait it out.
"I know, Jason."
"No, you don't know. I was really, really angry. Irate. Furious. Violently-choleric. Raving-fucking-mad. I had plans, Bruce. And you decided to fucking disappear for fuck knows how long, and I thought you were dead. You missed everything."
"I missed you." Jason gives him a scathing glare. He amends, "I miss you."
"You don't train your kids well enough."
This, Batman takes offense to. "My kids are great. They're competent. You would've loved them."
"Well, I sure don't love watching them get kidnapped every other week."
Batman jerks upright. "Who got kidnapped last week? Was it Tim?"
"Of course it was Tim. That one is easy to kidnap. That's why I was gonna do it."
Batman lies back down, remembering that Tim is at the Manor right now, nursing broken ribs and studying for a semester final with Stephanie. "Tim is good."
"Tim is not good. I think he has narcolepsy."
"Your brother does not have narcolepsy. He just works too hard."
This shuts Jason up.
A loud thump of two feet hitting the roof startles them both.
"Batman?" Nightwing asks, confused. Batman sits up again. Jason watches them both quietly. He watches Dick indifferently, a little coldly. "Come on, let's go home."
"Okay," agrees Batman, standing up with his help. "Do you think Tim has narcolepsy?"
"Probably, B.”
Bruce feels soft, like room-temperature butter, on most days. He’s not dissociating. He checked with Leslie, because it would be very dangerous to patrol while dissociating. He described to her this feeling, the one that deepens when he watches movies with Damian and sees Stephanie dance with Cass at galas. Leslie had given him a strange look at first, but it morphed into satisfaction, easily. Bruce, this is what healing feels like, she said.
But, sometimes, Bruce feels like the butter that comes out of microwaves, the piping hot cavities. On days like these, he likes to sit in the library and read Jason’s copy of Peter Pan with a mug of hot chocolate to make the pain of the concavity in his chest subside.
Batman gets dosed with Fear Toxin in Crime Alley. It sounds like the punchline to a terrible, really-not-funny joke, but in all seriousness, the situation is appalling. His coms are broken, and his rebreather is with a child he encountered a half-hour ago. Now, after straying too far north chasing Crane, he’s on the second level of an abandoned shoe factory and he’s gassed. Crane escapes, and Batman wanders through the hell of his own memories, the toxin shifting until it settles on Jason. Dead is undoubtedly his least favorite reanimation.
This Jason takes one look at Batman and begins screaming his head off. The piercing, continuous noise is unnaturally grating monstrous.
Batman claps his hands over his ears, pressing the cowl into them forcefully. The muffled shrieks persist. The Jason’s multiply. “I’m sorry,” Batman whispers.
“YOU’RE NOT,” the Jasons accuse. Batman backs into the wall, heaving. The Jasons are closing in, their eyes wide and bodies gushing blood so warm it heats the room. He’s choking on his own anguish. Shutting his eyes just makes them louder, so he keeps them open, watching and waiting.
Is Batman shrinking, or are the Jasons growing taller? Batman doesn’t know, but all he sees is a sea of red green red yellow red green red yellow red-
Green-
Red-
Yellow Red
Red?
RedGreenRed-
A hand, a black leather-clad hand reaches through the Jasons and someone is yelling, in a measured but urgent tone:
“Take it. Let’s go.”
Batman takes the hand at the wrist, and the Jasons dispel and the Red Hood pulls him along, out onto the fire escape and up to the roof, where the air is blissfully cold. The moon is so bright, and Batman can’t breathe quite right, so the Red Hood grabs his shoulders and placidly says, “Calm the fuck down.”
It almost works, because as Batman straightens, breath caught, and the Red Hood quickly backs away,
“What did I say about staying out of my territory?” Hood grounds out. Dead Jason appears behind Hood, silent and grinning. Batman tries not to look him in the eye.
“Thank you,” says Batman, glancing quickly at Dead Jason. The boy sticks his fingers into the gaping hole in his shoulder. He smiles harder. Batman covers his mouth with one hand and gazes intensely elsewhere to ignore this action.
“That is not what I said,” says the Red Hood, but he sounds so uncomfortable that the bark is nonexistent. “Jesus. Can I call someone for you? Robin? Not-Robin? The Spoiler?”
“Do not call Spoiler!” Batman hisses. That could be awful. He can’t see Hood’s face, but he imagines he looks amused. Batman would really, really like to go home. But he doubts Hood is going to let a hopped-up-on-fear-toxin and incredibly-unstable Batman go parading through his territory unsupervised, and he also doubts the crime lord wants to play babysitter, either. So many choices. So many bad choices. Hood taps his foot, arms crossed.
Tim, he thinks, is probably sleeping right now. Duke is definitely sleeping right now. Cassandra is at the Manor, having a night in after a particularly hard patrol a day ago. Damian is with Nightwing in Bludhaven. Which means that Stephanie is the only good option. And, she’ll have the antitoxin on hand. Which would be nice to get.
Dead Jason blinks. Batman grimaces.
“You want me to get Spoiler?” the Red Hood asks, voice distorter poorly disguising his delight.
To Batman’s dismay, Hood adjusts the side of his helmet and cheerily says, “This is Red Hood to Spoiler. I have a Batman that needs picking up... Yup. You’ll find us... Don’t worry, Bats. She’s coming.” The Red Hood nods at Batman. “Have we learned our lesson?”
Batman ignores this. Dead Jason is choking on his own blood, and Batman watches until the Red Hood turns to look behind him, too. Glances at Batman and back again. Lets it go.
Sure enough, after ten minutes of Hood tapping his foot and Batman staring at the ground as Dead Jason proceeds to reenact his death dramatically, Spoiler lands on the roof beside him and sticks him with the antitoxin before he can turn.
“Hey, B,” Spoiler says. “How are we doing?”
Batman frowns at her. She rolls her eyes. He turns to look back at Hood, and Dead Jason is gone.
Stephanie grabs his arm. “Thanks, man!” she calls to Hood, who salutes her. Then, she whisks them back to the Cave, where a long shower and another read of Peter Pan awaits him.
Tim doesn’t go out as Red Robin as often as he used to, and a part of him feels awful about it, and the other is slightly relieved. He doesn’t get a rush like Spoiler or Nightwing when they successfully topple a trafficking ring or put Crane in Arkham again. Tim may be a little psychotic, but the energy it takes to patrol doesn’t come easy to him.
What didn’t improve his feelings towards initiating vigilantism? Getting kidnapped.
Later into patrol, Red Robin is innocently hopping around Gotham, humming Swan Lake to get into the mood when he gets knocked out of the air by a fire extinguisher. Needless to say, Red Robin is down for the count, with two broken ribs and a concussion as he groans next to a pile of trash bags. Then, the fire extinguisher comes out again, and all he hears as he gets clunked into unconsciousness is false alarm. It’s just the red one.
And Red Robin takes great offense to that when he comes back to. Red Robin didn’t work this hard to be called just the red one. He deserved oh no! It’s the red one! or even false alarm. It’s just Red Robin. And, his kidnappers are stupid because they left him on the ground with his hands tied in front of him. Yeah, he was in complete darkness and the floor was chilly, just the level of negligence put into these restraints was insulting. He deserves much more respect.
A thin stream of moonlight fills the room. His eyes adjust, and he realizes he’s on the pavement floor of a warehouse. Ugh. Also, his comms are gone. Double ugh.
“I . . . man. What should we do with him?” says a nervous male voice.
“Give him back?” says another, helpfully.
“You want to give him back? You want to drop him off next to the Batsignal with a sticky-note saying ‘my bad’?”
“We can’t leave him here!”
“Sure you can,” says Red Robin. He can’t see their faces, but he can assume they just realized he’s conscious. “Batman will be very grateful you gave me back.”
“What if Batman doesn’t know he’s missing?” The second man crouches down, and Red can see his face now. White. Thirties. Grey eyes. “Hey, birdie. If we give you back to Batman, will you tell him we didn’t lay a finger on you?”
“Absolutely,” Red Robin says, and he kind of means it. His head hurts and he’s already mortified. He would like to take a nap. Another set of footsteps draws nearer, and more light floods the room.
“Nimrods, guess- Holy shit.”
“Hey, man-”
“You captured Red Robin.” That's right! Put some respect on his name!
“We didn’t mean to. We’re gonna give him back!”
“You are not ‘putting him back,’ are you out of your mind?” The third one may be the brains of the operation.
“Man, then what should we do?”
“I don’t know! Beat him up and make a ransom video. Sell him to Catwoman or some shit! What the hell!” Red Robin is no longer a fan of Number Three, and he’s also offended they think Selena would buy him like that.
“Don’t beat me up,” says Red Robin half-heartedly. He turns onto his back. His head really hurts now. He wants to sleep. He closes his eyes.
One of them, he’s pretty sure it's Three, kicks his shoulder. “Ow,” says Red.
“Hey, don’t kick the kid.”
“We were literally aiming for a smaller kid. What did you think was gonna happen, then?”
“Ugh. Why would you guys want Robin. He’s so mean.” He doesn’t really mean it. Damian’s come a long way, but the guy still verbally and physically eviscerates every criminal he comes across. Red Robin feels like he’s way better at being a kidnapping victim than Robin, but maybe the pain and humiliation is making him a little rude and/or delirious.
“Shut up,” says the Third, who kicks him in the side this time. It irritates his already-broken ribs. He groans. “You’re-”
A gunshot rings out, and the Third one howls, falling over and clutching his leg. The First and Third look around wildly.
“Stay where you are,” a distorted voice declares. Red Robin groans. It’s the Red Hood. “I’m gonna let you both go, because I’m nice and you’re funny, but don’t kidnap any more kids. Capiche?”
The first one nods, but the second one asks, “Well who else are we gonna kidnap?”
“Batman,” Hood answers, after staring a little. He fires a warning shot into the ceiling. “And, take your friend to the hospital.”
The second one nods. “Got it, boss.” As a peace offering, the guy tosses Red Robin’s comm to the floor and gives Hood a thumbs up, before lugging the third one out of the door, the first already out the door.
When the three men are gone, Red Robin closes his eyes again. He doesn’t really know what the Red Hood is gonna do to him now, and he feels like this might be awkward since the last time he saw the Red Hood, the man missed a shot at him from a measly distance of ten yards. And Red hadn’t even said anything or moved or been that offended. It wasn’t either or their greatest moments. And seeing as this situation was even more shameful on Red’s end, he thought taking a nap might be nice for now.
“I can’t believe you got taken out by them,” the Red Hood says. He sounds insulted! On Tim’s behalf! Red Robin cracks an eye open. This guy gets it.
“They called me ‘just the red one,’” Red mumbles. Hood snorts, but it sounds a little weird coming through the helmet. He approaches, and with one swift move, he slices the ropes off his wrists. Which is nice, but Tim really just wants to sleep now. He’s not in the mood to take himself back to the Cave. No one even knew he was missing. “Can you just leave me here?”
He imagines the Red Hood rolling his eyes. “No, I can’t just leave you here. If I leave you here, I’m going straight to the Spoiler to tell her what happened.”
Red Robin can’t let that slide. “I’m concussed. You wouldn’t sick Spoiler on a concussed person.”
“I would.” And the Red Hood does, because he picks up the comm from the ground and throws it to Red. “Call your friend.”
He manages to alert Oracle, who tells him that Spoiler is on her way. Red Robin sighs. “This isn’t even Crime Alley. What are you doing here?”
“Donuts,” says the Red Hood, and Red Robin accepts this as a truthful answer. By the door, next to a fire extinguisher is a pink box with a receipt taped on top of it.
Spoiler arrives quickly and almost backs out of the warehouse when she sees the Red Hood. “Oh, shit!” she says, before realizing who she is and what she is here to do. “Look, I don’t want to fight you, but-”
“Just take your friend,” says Hood, exasperated. Red Robin feels for him. He probably just wants to take his donuts and go back home. “If you give him enough painkillers he might tell you what I’m doing here.”
Spoiler kneels by Red Robin and pulls his arm over her shoulder, hoisting him up. Steadily she manages to get to the door with little help from him. “You better have a good story to tell about this,” she warns him. Spoiler salutes to the Red Hood, then takes them both off into the night.
Needless to say, Red Robin takes a month off duty after this ordeal.
Crime Alley has been quiet, somehow keeping itself intact without the presence of their crusader, as the Red Hood has not been spotted for three weeks—which isn’t really that big of a deal, but none of them feel good about it. Red Robin had tracked down a Hood goon the day after they caught on to his disappearance, but the goon just frowned and said Hood? I saw him yesterday. He is completely fine.
Red Robin said that sounds like a pretty rehearsed response, man.
And the goon said ah, shit, and bolted, so their conclusion was clearly that the Red Hood was up to something, and if he wanted Gotham’s vigilante gallery to stay out of it, it must not be good.
On the twenty-third day of the Red Hood’s disappearance, the Joker is found dead in the Amusement Mile by a security guard, a shot between the eyes and a small “J” carved into his cheekbone the only marks on him. The body is cross-examined and DNA checked and autopsied and after countless procedures, and then the Joker is confirmed dead publicly.
Gotham celebrates. Who killed the Joker is never revealed, because the GCPD has no idea. Concrete evidence (or lackthereof) points them nowhere, but Bruce is eighty-five percent sure it was the Red Hood.
Bruce comes home after checking in with Gordon one last time before the city releases their official statement on the Joker’s death and takes a very nice shower. He feels relieved. His head swims with questions, like why now? and what the hell? but he figures that answering them can wait. Tonight, Dick has arranged for a family movie night (it's going to be Megamind again), so Bruce towel-dries his hair and gets into pajamas.
As he leaves his room, he passes by Older Jason, who is walking out of the Manor with Frankenstein in his hand. Jason waves to Bruce as he passes, footsteps silent on the hardwood floor. Bruce lets him go without a word.