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The Clocktower is quiet. It’s a strange sound, silence, from what Jason remembers as a lively place. The specifics escape him, but memories of the place always comes with the whirring of machines and laughter. Jason thinks it was his, but he can’t be sure when smears of color and sound slip through his fingers like sand in an hourglass.
No matter. The silence won’t stay long. Jason has a message to deliver, and he’s nothing if not efficient. He slides his helmet back on, welcoming the unique sense of detachment brought only by viewing the world through a lense.
It’s easier than it should be to break past the tower’s defenses. Jason notes the weaknesses and moves on. He loops the feed from a camera on the outside, shorts out the motion detector on the window, and slips inside.
Barbara doesn’t notice him right away. If she had, she would have triggered the lockdown protocol connected to the Batcave’s security system. If she had, the Bat himself would already be on his way here. Ever since the Joker took her unawares, Barbara has made it her mission to be in the know.
That was the hardest thing to outmaneuver — her paranoia. But Barbara has one weakness: fear. She knows what it’s like to be trapped. She knows the fear of death just as intimately as Jason, knows how it wraps around your spine and squeezes, whispers in your ear, “No one is coming to save you.”
There’s a hole in her system that anyone trained by the Bat could find and exploit. Room for an ally to slip through. A reassurance that help is coming. Jason almost feels bad for using it against her.
The room is illuminated by the soft glow of several monitors set up around the space. Some run code, others play security feeds. Jason sees his looped feed somewhere to the left. And in the middle of it all, Barbara herself.
Her chair is facing the wrong way. She should be looking at the monitor, but instead it’s Jason she faces. There’s a shotgun aimed at his chest that they both know she’s willing to use, Bat’s rules be damned, and at this range even his fancy armor won’t protect him from basic physics.
“Heya, O,” Jason says, forcing his voice level. It’ll be a dog fight from here, but he’s faced worse odds. Talia runs a hell of a summer camp.
“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure,” Barbara says. Absurdly, Jason is reminded of afternoons in her hospital room, sneaking fancy teas and watching Pride and Prejudice from the shitty couch next to her bed. The memory slips away, and Jason has the violent urge to wrap his hands around it and squeeze, to tighten his grip so impossibly that it might never escape.
It doesn’t work. The memory leaves, and Jason is left with one less piece of a dead boy shoved in his head. It makes it easier to sound like the villain he’s supposed to be.
“Red Hood.” Jason doesn’t raise his hands. He hasn’t lost this yet, and luring her into a false sense of security won’t work anyways. Instead, Jason tips his imaginary hat to her and says, “The Pleasure’s all mine.”
Something in his voice must piss her off. Jason barely has time to jump out of the way before she squeezes the trigger and a spray of gunfire litters the door behind him.
“Well that was rude,” Jason quips, lunging for the gun. He gets hands on it just in time to catch an elbow with his gut. He grunts, caught off-guard by the force of the blow. “Ow. Didn’t anyone teach you manners?”
“Piss off,” Babs spit. Jason gives the shotgun one good yank. Barbara lets it go. She knows when she’s lost. Instead of fighting it, she makes sure he can’t use it.
Jason cursed his past self. Dog fight doesn’t even begin to describe it. He feels more like a scruffy cat fighting tooth and claw in some back alley for the last good scrap of the day. When he finally gets Barbara down, it’s because of a lucky hit and the good ninety pounds he has on her.
He’s breathing hard when he lets the empties the ammo from the shotgun and presses it into the surface of a desk, next to the broken remains of a monitor Barbara sent them crashing into. He has no desire to make an example of her in the way he did the Drake kid. She was good to him, Jason thinks, even when Dick wasn’t. He won’t hurt her. No more than he has, anyways.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” Barbara says. Jason turns to her, and gazes upon the product of his own to hands. She looks up at him with blood in her teeth and a bruise blooming across her cheek. Jason feels his father settle beneath his skin. He laughs anyways.
“Always that phrase,” he says. “Who’s gonna make me pay, huh? The Batman? Don’t make me laugh.”
Barbara watches him carefully. Jason can only imagine what she’s thinking. The Red Hood is still a relatively new player in Gotham. He’s always known things he shouldn’t, but they could always be explained away by happenstance.
But this. Knowing exactly where to find the mysterious Oracle. Knowing exactly how to get under her skin. That’s no minor thing. The Bat will eat it up, spends hours obsessing over every detail he filed away as unimportant, and he will be forced to draw the final conclusion: Jason Todd, returned from the grave with vengeance on the mind.
It will undo him. Jason will watch, and when the time comes, he’ll give the damning confirmation. His plan will be completed when Br— Batman ends it, either with a Batarang through Jason’s chest or a bullet in the Joker’s skull.
It will be a fitting end to their little tragedy, Jason thinks.
For now, though, Barbara is still looking at him with eyes that see far too much and yet so, so little. Jason doesn’t want to know what she has to say. So, he doesn’t. The Red Hood turns and leaves without another word. He’s done what he came to do.