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The sound of his own gunshot heralds an entirely unrelated eruption of broken glass.
It's only reflex that lets Jason react in time, ducking under the actual fucking crowbar as it whistles past his ear. In the next second he's crossed the room—feet sure even as he navigates around the dozen dead bodies—and leveled his gun at the intruder.
The man has at least two inches on him and a fair amount of bulk, covered in a glittering shower of glass. He's wearing a domino, a red half mask somewhat reminiscent of a muzzle, and some sort of sleeveless red vest with a hood pulled low over his face that doesn't quite hide his white bangs. He has ribbons (??) around his forearms. It looks inconvenient. It looks impractical. It looks ridiculous.
It doesn't matter, because the man is already rising to his feet, with a noise that takes Jason a second to interpret as a snarl. He has the aforementioned fucking crowbar in a white-knuckled grip.
Crowbar. White bangs. The hood in red. (A goddamn bat on his chest.) Jason notes that, pushes it aside, because the man is lunging again, crowbar swinging.
Jason steps out of the way again, weaving back across the field of bodies. He whirls, aiming his gun at center mass, only for the man to twist out of the way of the bullets in a far too practiced motion.
Red's fast, far too agile for the kind of bulk he has. He's skilled, better than Jason, but he isn't thinking. It's all instinct, movements shaky with adrenaline, breaths harsh through what must be a voice modulator in the mask. Crowbar in his hand. Sword in the sheath on his back. A pair of holstered guns. He has a utility belt. God, Jason misses having a utility belt.
Jason himself has a single glock with sixteen—fourteen, now—bullets in it, and a body exhausted from running around London all day. The adrenaline rush from the fight with the Igvene Clan—the men whose corpses are now decorating the floor—is threatening to come down any moment.
Jason doesn't win this fight.
The bat symbol implies nonlethal, but Jason's not willing to bet on it. Not when he can hear the clang of the crowbar on brick when he's forced to dart out of the way once more. Not when he knows what kind of hit was aimed for his head the first time.
Not when he knows exactly how they'll feel if they land.
Jason's next bullet pings off the man's chest and he doesn't even falter. Fuck.
Jason doesn't have any backup to speak of. Shurik's dead, slumped in the only chair in the room, not that he would have helped—hm, his body could be decent cover though, if Red remembers he has guns. This warehouse is abandoned, too secluded to hope that some concerned citizen calls about the gunshots. Talia—he hasn't been able to reach Talia at all, not since she showed him the new Robin.
(It's not the longest time she's been out of contact but something's wrong, something's stewing in the League, he knows and he can't do anything about it—)
He doesn't move fast enough this time—the crowbar clips his arm with its claw, the scrape painful and all too familiar.
He grits his teeth and keeps moving. He's spent the past two years ensuring he wasn't going to crumble like he did in Magdala. He's not going to forget his training now. He thinks he has some idea of what's going on, so as soon as he's generated enough distance, he says, "Trying to beat a kid with a crowbar, Red Hood? Thought we were better than that."
Red goes rigid, and Jason knows he guessed correctly. The voice comes out in a crackle, a manic laugh that only gets more frantic, a little too close to Joker's for comfort. Goddammit, Jason's pissed. He had just gotten a lead on where that clown freak was plotting his next entirely preventable murder spree. He doesn't have time for whatever bullshit his older (alternate?) self is trying to pull.
The crowbar's trembling in Red's grip as his head raises to stare directly at Jason. "Hah, 'kid.' We haven't been a kid in a long fucking time."
Jason shifts his grip on his gun, aiming it carefully at Red's forehead. Killing his probably-future-self might have unfortunate repercussions, but he finds that somewhat preferable to getting brained with a blunt instrument again. "Mhm. Sure. Why are you here, Red Hood?"
The bastard's laughing again. "I've been thinking about it, you know. Really considering what moment it was, when my life really went to shit."
"Let me guess, is it when you plastered that shit on your chest?"
Red glances down at the bat, like he forgot it was there. His voice drops angrily as he presses a hand to it. "I earned the right to this. This is proof that I'm better than what you made me."
"What I made you?" And Jason's laughing too now, sharp and bitter. "What the fuck did I do?"
Red takes one predatory step forward, like he doesn't even see the gun trained on his face. "What didn't you do? Look around us! You get an unexplainable second chance and instead of going back home, you spend it murdering people."
Anger flares in Jason's chest. "Really? I should have just let them go ahead and drop their bombs in kids' backpacks? I should have just rolled over and died instead of defending myself?"
Red sidesteps his point, like they all do. It's always killing people is wrong, clutching at pearls and ignoring the clear, objective good that came of it. "There's always another way. And you stopped looking for it. You ruined me."
"What's wrong with you?" Jason says, and he's curious, almost. "Wearing his symbol, spouting his dumbfuck rhetoric. Who did this to you?"
"You aren't listening!" Red snaps. "If you just went back home after the Lazarus Pit, if you just talked to Bruce instead of trying to fucking—to kill him, he would have accepted me back. They all look at me and they see you . They're my fucking family and they don't trust me for shit, always waiting for the day I inevitably snap, because you decided to make us a murderer."
Family. As if. Did Jason really try to slide back under Bruce's wing? "The day you inevitably snap? Like whatever the fuck this is? Newsflash, asshole, you are me. You're the one who made these choices. Personally, I don't regret a single one."
Red snarls. "You were so quick to throw away everything he taught you. We were alley trash, and he made us something good. He made us something right. He gave me the best fucking years of my life. Look at how you're repaying him."
"You can't actually believe that." Jason says, incredulous, but it's brittle. His voice is shaky with something other than anger at this point, but he keeps his grip on the gun steady. "Is that the kind of shit Bruce has been spewing to get you back on his side? Why are you listening?"
"He doesn't have to say it." Red stalks forward another step, and Jason hates the way he automatically edges back in turn. "It's obvious. Don't pretend we wouldn't have ended up dead in a ditch before eighteen if he didn't save us."
"Did you fucking forget that we died at fifteen?" Jason scoffs. "I should have killed him when I had the chance."
Red stills, cocking his head, and Jason realizes distantly that he might have fucked up. "Why didn't you?"
Jason swallows, pushing back his apprehension and letting his anger guide him. "He deserves worse than an anonymous car bomb for—" Red Hood surges forward at that and—fuck—now that he's calm he outclasses Jason easily—and it doesn't help that Jason's already tired. He's backed too close to a wall in the earlier fight and he doesn't have a chance before he's slammed into it, one of Red's hands fisted in the jacket and his other arm pressing against his windpipe.
The crowbar clatters away across the floor along with Jason's gun.
Red's manic again, laughing as he speaks. "You know it in your shriveled little heart, Jason. You didn't kill Bruce because you still want him to love you. He doesn't. He doesn't, you little shit, because you kill people. You're going to show up in Gotham in two weeks and throw a goddamn tantrum trying to get his attention, and he won't give you shit because you took everything Robin was meant to be and pissed over it.
"Me? He loves me. He cares about me, but he can't fucking trust me because of all the shit you pulled. Every time I've backslid it's because your serial killer bullshit gets into my head. Every single shitty thing that's happened to me is because of you."
"He hates you for killing people, huh?" Jason chokes out. His breaths are shallow and his pulse too quick under the arm on his neck. It's fine. Turns out, Red's actually a fucking dumbass, because Jason's hands are free.
"He loves me," Red corrects, and oh, there's a real pathetic undertone to his voice that even the modulator can't hide, like he's been repeating this as a mantra to himself. "He just can't look past the fact you made me kill. Can you blame him?"
"Maybe—maybe you should be hunting down nine year old little Jay then, asshole. Since we haven't been a kid in a long time, yeah?"
"What the fuck are you—" The pressure loosens ever so slightly, and that's all Jason needs. He lunges forward, managing to snag one of Red's guns from his holsters and—Jason doesn't think about it too hard, he just presses the muzzle against Red's bare bicep and fires.
Red reels back, hissing as he clutches his arm. It's clearly broken, but not bleeding as much as it should—
"Rubber bullets," Jason says. "Rubber bullets. Bruce really has you defanged, doesn't he?"
"Shut the fuck up," Red says, and Jason unloads the rest of the gun carelessly into his chest. It's armored. Rubber fucking bullets. He can take it.
Red stumbles back with the force of the impacts, ending up leaning against the wall. Jason would stalk forward, but he knows better than to get in range of a swing. "Come on, Red, did you forget about Robby? Mom's sick fuck of a dealer that we pushed down the stairs at the tender age of nine? We were already a murderer before Bruce took us in. He thought we pushed Felipe Garzonas, because he knew we were glad that rapist ate shit on the sidewalk. This penchant for killing? Knowing that this is a line that needs to be crossed? It was always in us."
"Shut the fuck up," Red repeats, choking on his own breath. He's giggling, and yeah, no, it's not just a similarity.
"Are you on Joker venom? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"He fixed me," Red says. "Just a little microdose to put me back together again. Some guy with delusions of being the real deal. Isn't that funny? He thinks he killed me, and he fixes me. Gave me a chance to actually kill the big guy this time. Messed it up but" — a burst of laughter — "we'll get 'em next time, yeah?"
Jason swallows, suddenly angry again, because what the fuck does Red think he's trying to imply here—
"It's your fault," Red says, and he's scrabbling his mask, pulling off the muzzle to reveal a mouth that's stretched in too wide of a grin. It's Jason's own face looking back at him, and he was expecting that, but it still makes his skin crawl. "Bruce—hah—Bruce tried to fix me, too. He—it was to save me from myself, it's what he said, you know, and, and it went a little wrong but—hah, well, I've been thinking. It was you. It was you I needed saving from. You're the one that fucked me up first."
He wants to kill him. He wants to pick up the crowbar and beat him bloody and bruised until his lungs collapse and he can't laugh anymore. Red's dressed in the Joker's old mantle anyway—it'd be close enough. "God, you are pathetic," Jason hisses. "You haven't even managed to kill the Joker, have you? How many years has it been?"
Red cuts himself off on the next inhale, and then he's practically chortling, sliding further down the wall in a barely controlled collapse. "Oh, oh. You're blaming me for that?"
Jason's throat dries.
Red looks up. His eyes are startlingly clear, the same calm brilliant blue as Sheila's. Jason can smell cigarette smoke and cordite and it takes everything in him not to gag. "Oh Jason. Ja-son. I know what you're thinking. You think you're such a big deal. Scary tough guy, killing whoever's in your way before you're even able to drink yet, aren't you special? No. You're a fucking coward, you know that? You couldn't kill Bruce when you had your finger hovering on the detonator. And just a few days from now you're going to be standing in front of the Joker and you won't kill him either."
"You're lying," Jason says, but it's weak to his own ears.
"You freeze up," Red says, and his voice is too vicious, too satisfied. "You have a flashback. And of course you make an excuse, make it about Bruce again, you lie to yourself again and again, but at the end of the day you're fucking weak. You don't have the stomach for the shit you do. You felt sick after Robby went crunch at the bottom of the stairs, and that's never changed."
Jason stoops to pick up his gun, tense, but Red doesn't even seem to notice, gaze distant. He's still talking. "I tried to kill the Joker again. It didn't work. The first time, because I thought Bruce was there—and you won't believe what you try to make Bruce do, when we all knew what the answer would be. He ruined me. He loves me and he ruined me and a little girl died in a fire when I was right there because of you and I needed someone who thought he was my fucking murderer to fix me. And I couldn't even kill him. I lost my chance because you wasted yours. A child is dead because of you. It's all you. This is all because, after you decided to give us a kill count in the triplicate, you looked the Joker in the goddamn eyes and ran away like a—"
Jason notes, the satisfaction dulled and distant, that Red's pants aren't reinforced. It lets his bullet—a proper one, lead in a copper jacket—burrow into the flesh of Red's thigh. He barely hears the choked scream. "I think," Jason says drily, "that you are on Joker venom and spouting shit. I think that you've gone crawling back to Bruce and realized that it isn't what you wanted. You've realized that you're a miserable, worthless mess and you're trying to convince yourself that it's for any reason besides your own spinelessness."
Red rests his good hand over the hole in his leg, pressing down weakly like it'll do anything against the blood welling up. "You're the one who couldn't commit when it mattered," he says, voice soft, like he's suddenly run out of steam. Like he's explaining something to a small child. It's patronizing.
"I'm going to kill Batman," Jason hisses. It's been the plan from the start. He stopped really wanting it at some point, the idea of watching the light leave Bruce's eyes less appealing over the past months, but he's still willing to do it. Bruce still deserves it. "You're the one groveling at his feet after everything."
"I fucking hate you." There's no heat in the words. "Being Robin was the best thing that ever happened to me, it was the best thing that ever happened to you, and I can never have that again."
"Yeah, because we died," Jason says. Red looks oddly small, propped up against the wall with a broken arm and bleeding leg. Jason should have stopped listening to him a long time ago. He knows what he's doing. Killing the Joker had always been a part of the plan, ever since he learned Bruce didn't do it. He's not going to fucking freeze up. "We died, it ruined everything, and nothing changed. It's not my fault you've forgotten. Look at you. You're, what, twenty-five? And your life still peaked at fourteen."
Red looks up, and something about how exhausted he looks makes Jason's gut twist. His eyes are glistening, something desperate past the glassiness. "Bruce loves you," he says. "Just. He does. He loves you. He doesn't know that you—you did all this, not yet. You can still go back. You could—things can be better, for you. There can still be better years ahead. It's not too late."
Jason raises his gun. He runs his finger along the outside of the trigger guard, considering. Red watches him with Sheila's eyes. "Don't worry, Red Hood. I'll make sure I never end up like you."