Work Text:
FIRST MEMORIES
You and Red Hood never talked. You weren't even sure if he was able to talk. And yet, you knew him better than everybody else in the shithole you two were in.
You knew how he preferred guns more than swords, but swords were more easy to get. How he liked to read and listen to rock music while in an airplane or helicopter to pass the time. How he liked to drink a beer after a mission and how he grunted every single time he disliked something. May it be the snow too high, the sands getting in his boots or the enemy screaming with an acute voice.
You knew he smelled like cigarettes and he sneaked them up someway even if it was a big no and how his steps sounded when he wasn't trying to hide them.
And you knew how he looked under the mask, a phantom of scars adorning his face, crumpled when he smiled, especially when you offered the beer, because he didn't feel like pocketing some loser at the bar.
Red Hood was your partner for years and you hated how you didn't know the sound of his laugh, how he became taller than you, how much he looked like a homeless boozer whenever he didn't do his beard. You hated how you didn't know his name, you didn't know yours too. Yet, not knowing his was worse. And worst of all, you hated how much you two were alike.
Whenever you got something about your memory, a fleeting feeling that something was back, that you were having a déjà vu, that you weren't supposed to be there but they trapped you, they sat you on a chair and zapped your brain. Making you forget about whatever was your life before Red Hood, the list of names you had to kill, and the blood on your hands. You were something else before. You didn't know what but you were.
Red Hood didn't have his brain zapped like you, he just seemed to forget. Red Hood wasn't a metahuman like you. But he was the only other one that was trained and stuck with a list of names. Men to kill. Objectives. And there was nothing in either of your lives other than the missions.
Until one time, when you two were on a mission and you heard him at night, you two in the middle of the woods, snow so high that your waist was nearly covered, keeping watch until the signal to go inside the base under the mountain.
-Grayson. - It was a gurgle. The sound of a man that never spoke before. And he repeated and you saw something different in the way he gripped his katana, as if it was a lifeline. With a desperation you didn't know he could have. You didn't know Red Hood at all, and the fact that you were the person that knew him best was pretty sad.
In some things, you two weren't alike at all. You didn't have anything to grip onto. The memories of your past life something that was easy to let go of.
-Who is Grayson? - You asked but Red Hood didn't answer. He never answered back even if you talked enough for both of you at times.
He just repeated the name to you as if you could give him an answer. You couldn't.
That night you two carried on with the mission.
The night you made him run away it was the first time you saw his eyes and for the first time you decided it wasn't a good thing to forget. His eyes were green like the sea, full of confusion and fear.
-I'm gonna keep them here. You go. –
He just nodded before running, jumping on a boat to get as far away as possible from that island. And you stayed there, a smile on your lips even if you knew you were gonna be on the run from that day on. Ra's al Ghoul didn't take kindly to betrayers and people that used his personal green pit. But you weren't going to forget anything this time.