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“Where is he?” Anita paces around the room as if it will make Tim appear.
Greta sighs. “I don’t know. He said he was here when I texted him five minutes ago. His bag’s still here, see?” She pauses to point at the green duffle bag, a phone in a red case that she recognises as Tim’s on top. “He probably went to get something. Just be patient.”
Taking out her phone, Greta scrolls through her message history with Tim.
In the main meeting hall rn, meet u here?
That was the last message he sent, and she’d replied with a thumbs up emoji. So where the hell was he now? She exits the messaging app, ready to scroll through social media for a bit to wait for Tim to arrive, when Anita calls her name from across the room.
“…Greta. Come look at this.” She’s crouched over something on the ground. Greta makes her way over, freezing when she sees what Anita was pointing at.
A faint trail of blood dripped on the floor, leading down the corridor.
There’s no moment of hesitation, a fraction of a second of eye contact is communication enough; the two former teammates immediately take off, racing down the corridor, following the trail. Greta vaguely recognises where the trail leads from the last time they visited. It’s the memorial hall with all the statues of fallen Titans.
She gets there before Anita- and immediately freezes. She takes in the horrifying scene in front of her: Tim, bloody and beaten in front of the crumbled statue of Donna Troy. A man wearing a leather jacket with black hair sporting a singular white streak, attacking him with his own staff. Greta momentarily panics when the intruder whips around and turns the crimson stained staff on her, for the first time wishing she still had her powers, so she could at least help in any way instead of standing there, uselessly-
“FREEZE!” She hears Anita yell as she skidded to a stop next to Greta.
“Wha-“ The man immediately stops and visibly struggles to escape her command. Greta breathes a sigh of relief.
Anita grits her teeth, and glances at Greta. “Secret, I can’t hold him for long. He’s strong- you’ll have to knock him out or something.”
“On it.” She walks over to the who’s still frozen under Anita’s mind control. Snatching the staff from the man’s hands, she makes eye contact with him- and the swirling toxic green of his eyes stirred Greta’s memories of some buried knowledge from when she was a Warder.
“Lazarus,” she hisses.
His eyes seem to widen when they meet hers- in what seemed to be fear. “The abyss..?” Greta hears him whisper.
She ignores him, and instead glances over at Tim, bleeding and beaten.
She channels all her rage towards this stranger who dared hurt her friend, and strikes him in the side of the head.
-
Jason wakes up, rubbing his head. What happened..?
Last he remembered, he was at Titans Tower to teach his Replacement a lesson, before two girls he didn’t recognised showed up. Damnit, where had they come from? Jason knows for a fact they weren’t Titans- he hadn’t accounted for anyone other than them in his plan. He had incapacitated Beast Boy, Cyborg and Raven, and fully expected to be completely alone with the Replacement.
Then they showed up. That meta girl with surprisingly strong mind control, and the other girl who should’ve been a normal human by any means, but when he looked into her eyes, he saw-
The abyss. The place he was in briefly, after he died, before he woke up in his grave. It shouldn’t be possible, he shouldn’t even remember it, but it couldn’t have been anything else.
He looks around, taking in his surroundings. He’s still in Titans Tower, but in one of the holding cells. Well, his plans definitely fell apart. Fuck. They’re definitely putting him in Arkham, aren’t they?
“You.” Jason looks up, and sees the blonde girl glaring at him from outside the cell. What was it that the mind-control girl called her earlier? Secret?
“I may not be a Warder anymore, but I can still recognise forms of death magic. Tim said you’re the second Robin back from the dead. It was the Lazarus pits, wasn’t it?”
“So what if it was? Who are you anyway?” Jason asks, and she shrugs.
“I used to be part of Young Justice.”
He scoffs. “Oh yeah, the Replacement’s old team. Fell apart quickly, didn’t it?”
There’s an awkward silence for a few seconds, before Secret breaks it.
“Why did you attack him? Were you just jealous?”
Jason bristles. “Jealous? No, I needed to teach him a lesson. I died, and he couldn’t even beat me. What right did he have putting that costume on? He’s not good enough.”
“He’s a competent leader. You caught him off guard tonight, in the Tower where he was waiting for me, not expecting an attack. Plus, you’ve definitely had extra training since, I’m guessing with the League of Assassins because of the Lazarus pits. That’s not a fair comparison.”
“Still! Batman shouldn’t have let him be Robin after what happened to me. He didn’t even avenge me. I was his son, and he couldn’t even kill my killer.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to be avenged,” Secret’s voice is suddenly quiet, as if recalling a bad memory.
Jason only gets angrier. “What the hell do you mean? He was supposed to be my father! Not only did he let my killer go free, he put another kid in that damn costume, like I meant nothing to him-”
“You don’t want to be avenged,” Secret repeats, forcefully. “Trust me. Especially not by your father.”
“And what do you know?” Jason asks mockingly.
Secret clenched her fists.
“I know, because my dad killed my killer. Killed his own adopted son to avenge me. And it fixed nothing! He was put on death row, and I tried to break him out, but-” Secret begins to speak faster, tripping over her own words. “But, then he killed himself out of guilt. And then my mum went crazy and they had to put her in a mental ward, and I got myself involved with Darkseid! And the worst part?” She laughs mirthlessly. “The worst part is that Harm isn’t even dead, he just came back. I had to take care of him myself. All that- all that for nothing at all! So no! You don’t want your father to avenge you!”
Jason stares at her in silence for a few seconds, then shakes his head.
“Maybe you’re right.”
Maybe he does have to take matters into his own hands.
…once he gets out of here, that is.