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When Jason finds out about the bomb in the warehouse, he’s mostly glad.
The abandoned warehouse is being used as storage by some of Black Mask’s goons, and a new up and coming gang has decided (stupidly) to blow it up. The gang definitely isn’t established enough to take on Black Mask, but Jason’s not gonna stop them from killing each other and making his life easier. All Jason’s got to do is make sure the streets are empty and the homeless folk know to give this place a wide berth for a few hours.
He’s done his sweep of the surroundings and is getting ready to get to a safe distance when a kid runs towards him. He’s a young, gangly looking boy with blond hair sticking out of his baseball cap, and he looks terrified.
“Hey! Mr. Hood! Did you check if the kids were in today?” the boy asks, skidding to a halt in front of Jason.
“Check if the kids were in where?” Hood demands.
“The warehouse,” says the boy, trying to catch his breath and failing. “Chloe and Pen and Isaac and sometimes Charlie too – we use it as a clubhouse.”
“Oh Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
“You have to check – please –” The poor kid is near tears.
“I’ll check, I’ll get them out, okay, kid?” Jason says. “You gotta go, though. Get at least another street down from here. Do not follow me, or I swear to God –”
The kid nods frantically, and Jason, unsure how much time he has left, rushes into the warehouse.
“Hey! Is anyone in here?” Jason shouts, moving his way through the first floor of the warehouse. It’s packed full of crates and boxes, most of them probably containing drugs and guns. He can’t really see much of anything. “There’s a bomb in here, you gotta get out.”
He sees the bomb as he turns a corner, sitting right in the middle of the floor, with big red numbers counting down from 28 minutes.
After the sharp spike of panic at the sight of red neon numbers that remind him of another warehouse, in another lifetime, he gets a hold of himself. Okay. He’s got plenty of time. He can do a quick sweep and make sure the place is empty.
“I swear, alley kids have the most warped sense of danger,” Jason muttered, heading for the staircase. The kids of Crime Alley were suspicious of authority, didn’t trust cops, knew better than to snitch, and expected to be robbed, lied to, or attacked at any moment. But with that came a certain desensitization to danger – like not flinching at gunshots, or you know, deciding that an abandoned warehouse was a good place to set up a clubhouse.
He’s got plenty of time, but maybe he should’ve factored in the incompetence of a newly established gang.
The bomb goes off early.
*
He wakes up to complete darkness and pain. The panic slams into him like a train as he realizes where he is and what just happened and he’s trapped under an entire building’s worth of rubble and no one knows where he is.
He can’t do this. He can’t do this again. Please, God he can’t –
He takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out. Panicking is going to make this worse, use up whatever air he has faster. He needs to – to get a grip, somehow.
He’s still trying to fight off the panic attack when he hears the small hiccup followed by a sob. A sob that is clearly coming from a small child.
Oh fuck.
“H-hey, is anyone down here?” he called, coughing out the last of the dust. He dragged himself up until he’s sitting, his head bumping against the half-collapsed beam that had probably saved his life. “Kid?”
He pulled out a glowstick from his belt and cracked it to life. There, huddled in the corner, clutching her arm to her chest, was a small girl, sobbing her eyes out. At the sudden light, her eyes darted around and landed on Jason - something like hope flickered in her eyes.
“I d-don’t know w-what happened,” she says. “My wrist hurts.”
“Hey, that’s alright,” Jason says, voice reassuring even though he feels two seconds from falling apart. He takes stock of his injuries. His left leg is definitely broken. His ribs feel cracked, and his left arm is not sitting where it should be in its socket. He’s not wearing his hood, only a domino, which is stupid, because now he can feel blood, hot and sticky, at the back of his head and dripping down the side of his face. “You can come closer, if you want - I can’t really move much right now,” he says. His leg is visibly crooked. He thinks if he moves it even a few inches, he’s going to black out.
The girl cautiously scooted over until she was almost touching Jason. Her hair is tied back in a braid that is half undone, and she’s covered in dust and grime. She’s wearing a hoodie that’s just a little too big for her. As she scoots closer, she scuffs her ankle against the floor and one of her shoes lights up.
A cheerful, innocent flash of pink light in the dark.
“Nice shoes,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“Penelope,” she says with a sniff. “You’re the Red Hood.”
“Sure am,” he says. This seems to put her at ease a little, and Jason will always be proud that no matter what fuck ups he’s done, the kids in the Alley trust him to keep them safe.
“Were there other kids in here?” he asks. “Your friend told me you were using it as a clubhouse.”
Penelope shakes her head, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her sweater. “No, I was the first to get here. I was waiting for them.”
Thank fuck. “You hurt anywhere else but your wrist?”
She shakes her head again, and Jason resists to urge to check her for a concussion because honestly, what the fuck was he going to do about it if she did have a concussion?
He taps his comms and to his relief, they come on with only a slight bit of static. “Red Hood to Bats, come in,” he says. He waits a few seconds, the silence making him feel like he was choking as it dragged on. “Red Hood to Bats - A building just collapsed with me inside it, on the corner of 12th and 90th. Need evac.”
Nothing, static. Penelope is looking at him with wide eyes. He cannot panic right now.
They wouldn’t - they wouldn’t leave him here, would they?
He flipped the channel to Oracle’s direct line. “Red Hood to Oracle, come in.” The silence was damning. His voice was less steady as he added: “O, I’ve got a kid with me, she’s like nine –”
“Eight,” came the quiet correction from Penelope.
“Eight, sorry, she’s eight years old. We need an evac.”
Nothing.
Nothing.
He was going to die here and no one was coming.
He switches back to the main channel with trembling fingers. He wishes the kid didn’t have to listen to him do this. “If anyone is listening - Corner of 12th and 90th, explosion. Please.”
Maybe the comms are busted. Maybe they’re not transmitting anything. Maybe they’re being ignored, because Jason just had a pretty nasty fight with Bruce, and well, he’s always been on thin ice, right? Maybe they just don’t give a shit.
Penelope is still staring at him.
“There is a civilian with me, she is eight years old and she’s injured - if you won’t come for me, come for her at least,” says Jason, voice breaking. He takes a deep breath and glances at Penelope. “Do you want to give it a go? It goes in your ear. It’ll let you send a message to Batman.”
He pulls out the comm, making sure it's on. Penelope pushes her hair back and lets him put it in.
“What do I say?” she asks.
“Repeat where we are, and your name and your age,” says Jason. Because surely, surely if the Bats heard a little girl asking for help they wouldn’t ignore it. They couldn’t brush it off as a trick Jason was playing on them.
“B-batman,” Penelope starts. “My name is Penelope Hays, I’m eight years old, we’re at…”
“12th and 90th,” Jason repeats.
“12th and 90th,” says Penelope. “Red Hood’s bleeding, and his leg looks…really bad.”
Jason grimaces. Yeah, didn’t exactly take a medical degree to know that a leg shouldn’t look like that. It made him nauseous to look at too long.
There are tears streaming down her face, leaving faint trails in the grime on her little face. “My wrist really hurts, and it's super dark down here and - Why isn’t Batman answering?” she whispers.
“Don’t worry, he’ll come,” Jason says. He wishes he believed it.
*
“Explosion in Crime Alley,” Oracle informed them all on the comms.
“Red Hood’s having fun tonight,” Tim says.
Dick, who was perched on a fire escape far up enough to see the faint plume of smoke coming from Crime Alley, isn’t overly worried. Jason was eager for any excuse to use explosives.
“Definitely Red Hood,” says Oracle. “His tracker’s in the area.”
“Should we go check?” Dick asks.
“If Jason’s in a blow shit up mood, he might be in a trigger happy mood too,” Tim says. “O, can you get a hold of him and check in?”
“I’ll try.”
There’s a few moments of silence before crackling appears on their line, with a voice saying:
“Red Hood to Bats, come in.”
Nightwing freezes, because Hood doesn’t use their comms for anything short of an Arkham breakout. “We hear you, Hood, where are you?”
There is a long beat of silence.
“Hood, do you need assistance?” Nightwing tries again.
“Red Hood to Bats - A building just collapsed with me inside it, on the corner of 12th and 90th. Need evac.”
“Are you injured?” Batman asks. Another beat of silence. “Hood, report.”
There’s nothing. The crackling cuts off.
“Heading to 12th and 90th,” Nightwing says. “Hood, if you can hear us, we’re on our way.”
It’s not long before the crackling returns.
“There is a civilian with me, she is eight years old and she’s injured - if you won’t come for me, come for her at least.”
It’s like having his heart carved out of his chest. Jason sounds so young, and terrified, and so certain that they’ll only come to save the child. That they’d leave him there otherwise.
And then the comm switches hands, and a little girl comes on the line, obediently rattling off the address and her name.
“He thinks we’re ignoring him,” Tim says quietly.
“Almost there,” Batman growls. “Oracle, keep trying to reach him.”
“I’m on it, Batman.”
Dick is not going to fail his little brother again. He won’t.
*
“Superman is off-world,” says Bruce grimly.
They are staring at the wreckage of the building and there’s no way they’re going to be able to dig them out quickly by normal means. No cops or crews have arrived yet, and they might never arrive – just another explosion in Crime Alley, who cares, right? And they aren’t going to call it in, because it’s never 100% clear how many outstanding warrants for his arrest Jason has at any given time.
Sometimes, Dick understands why Jason is so bitter, and why he’s so protective of the Alley. Someone has to be.
He’s looking around at the empty streets for something, anything, a fucking miracle at this point - and instead spots a boy, maybe ten years old, crying and staring at the wreckage.
“Are you alright?” Dick asks, breaking away from the others. He hears Tim follow behind him. “Are you hurt?”
The boy, shaking, turns to Dick with wide eyes. “Hood was in there when it went off. He was in t-there and it’s m-my fault. I asked ‘im to check for my friends. It’s my fault –”
“It’s not your fault,” Dick says. His heart twists on itself. Of course Jason was in there because he was looking for kids. Of course Jason would have gone rushing in if it meant a shot at saving them. He hates that he has to do this, he hates that he has to ask: “Is Penelope one of your friends?”
The boy blanches. “Oh god. Oh god is she in there too?”
“Hey, she’s alright, she’s alive,” says Dick. “We can hear her on our comms, okay? Do you…do you have a way to reach her parents?”
“Yeah, I know where her mom lives,” the boy says, nodding frantically. “I c-can go do that.”
The kid bolts off before Dick even has a chance to answer. He turns back to look at the wreckage that they have no way of tackling. There’s no way of knowing how long they have until Jason and the girl run out of air, or until the thing collapses entirely.
“Superboy,” Tim says at last. “I can call Superboy.”
Dick and Bruce start digging, even knowing it’s fruitless, because what else are they supposed to do? Just stand and wait?
In his ear, Dick hears Jason reassure a little girl and keep her distracted. If he didn’t know Jason, he’d say he sounded pretty calm for a guy trapped under a building’s worth of rubble. But he does know him, and he can tell that Jason is close to falling apart.
*
Jason has taken back the comm, and left the line open, just in case. He has no clue how long they’ve been down there. He tries to keep Penelope talking, about anything at all - she’s in the third grade, the blond kid outside was named Rudy and he was her very best friend in the whole wide world, and her mom was working late tonight, so she’d snuck out to hang out with Rudy and Chloe. Sometimes they’d have sleepovers here.
(Really warped sense of danger, Jesus).
Jason tries not to think about whether there’s enough air down here to keep them alive long enough for a rescue.
Penelope has started talking about the Power Rangers, when the building shudders and groans. Jason moves instinctively, grabbing Penelope and shielding her as the rubble moves, rocks and chunks of cement raining down on them, and something sharp rips its way through Jason’s leather jacket and kevlar, clean through his shoulder.
Penelope lets out a scared wail and then starts sobbing loudly. He is still clutching her to his chest with the one arm that still works, bending over her as much as he can.
“Are you hurt? Kid, are you hurt?” he asks, not daring to so much as lift his head or loosen his arms around her because something was going through his shoulder, and god, what if moving made the whole thing come down around them? He’s not stupid enough to think that he’s holding up the building by himself, but it feels like he is, with the concrete pressing into his back and against his skull.
“N-no,” she sobs.
The comms are still open, because Jason hasn’t closed them, still clinging onto hope that someone would answer him. That hope is rapidly vanishing.
“Please, please, this place isn’t fucking stable,” he begs, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t move. His leg is in agony as is his shoulder, but he stays still. “Come on, man, I’ve got a kid with me. You have to get us out of here.”
Ominous groans make both him and the kid flinch, but nothing shifts this time.
“I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home,” the little girl in his arms wails.
“Shh, shh,” Jason tries to pull himself together. “You’re alright, we’re alright, help is coming. Help is coming.”
He is lying through his teeth at this point, but if they’re both going to die here then at least one of them should be able to hold onto hope until the end. Jason certainly isn’t.
He lets out a sob of his own because he doesn’t want to die again, and he certainly doesn’t want to die failing to protect a little girl who trusted him to help her.
“I’ve got you,” he says, trying to force his voice steady.
*
It’s Conner’s fault, and it takes everything Dick has not to yell at him. Conner shifted the building too fast, and something let go and now -
Now Dick’s little brother is crying and begging for help and Dick can’t answer, can’t get to him, can’t do anything.
Conner already looks pale and guilty and frozen in place, so Dick swallows back every accusation he could throw at him.
“Okay - okay. We gotta go slower,” Conner says.
*
Jason is losing bits of time. He still hasn’t moved from where he’s holding Penelope. The kid hasn’t stopped shaking since the building shifted. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he passes out for real, he doesn’t want to crush her.
“Hood,” her voice, insistent, draws him back to focus. He gets the feeling it's not the first time she’s said his name.
“Jason,” he says. “My name’s Jason.”
Because what does it fucking matter now, anyways?
“Don’t go to sleep, Jason.”
“Yes ma’am.” He’s trying, he’s really, really trying.
The comms are still quiet, with faint static in the background to let him know they are on. He doesn’t know if anyone is listening, if this thing is even transmitting - because even he has to admit that it's unlikely Batman would have let a little girl die just because Jason is a screw up. Which means they’ve probably been speaking to the void for hours now.
Penelope pushes her head against his chest harder. It’s a hell of a way to find out that there is, in fact, something worse than dying alone.
*
Jason wakes up to a cacophony of noise and light, bright and harsh, streaming in, cold air hitting him as the rubble was moved away from them. The movement drags something out of his shoulder, and he can feel the moment it leaves, tearing on its way out, and he screams.
Penelope cries out - oh, he scared her, he didn’t mean to scare her, it's just that he’s in agony and he can’t help it.
“It’s okay, Jaylad. We’ve got you.”
There are warm hands cupping his face and feeling him for injuries and then Penelope is being pulled out his arms.
“No, no, don’t -” he flails, and it lights up his body in white hot pain and he cries out again.
“Nightwing’s got her, she’s safe. You did it, you saved her.”
It’s Bruce.
Jason blinks the tears and dust and too bright sunlight out of his eyes to see Batman crouching in front of him. “Took you long enough,” he says and then he’s letting out horrid, ugly sobs, completely losing it because the kid was safe now and his dad was here, and this time, Bruce had gotten there on time. Almost too late, but still on time.
Bruce is kissing his forehead, muttering reassurances that Jason can’t make out. He faints before they manage to shift him onto the gurney.
*
He wakes up in the cave. The lights are dimmed, and the only sound is the occasional beeps of the monitors he is hooked up to. He feels fuzzy around the edges and every part of him aches, but it’s not the sharp, terrible pain from before.
It takes a second for him to realize that someone is holding his wrist, another second to drag his eyes to the slumped figure of Bruce, sitting bent forward so that his head was resting on the edge of the bed, pillowed by his arm, his other hand wrapped around Jason’s wrist loosely at his pulse point.
Jason twitches his wrist almost instinctively. Bruce startles awake.
“Jason,” he breathes out in relief, letting go of his wrist to run both hands down his face. “How do you feel?”
“Doped up to high hell,” says Jason. And suddenly, another thought strikes him. “The girl – Penelope - Is Penelope alright?”
“Penelope is fine. She got out with only a fractured wrist and a few bruises, thanks to you,” says Bruce. “She didn’t want to leave your side. She made Dick promise that you’d come visit her after you were healed up.”
The kid got out. He didn’t lie to her, in the end - help really did come.
Jason is going to blame the drugs for how it makes his eyes sting.
He doesn’t know how to ask what he desperately wants to know. “Wasn’t sure you were gonna find us in time,” he says finally.
“Jason, we - we could hear you,” Bruce says. “The whole time.”
“And you didn’t think to fuckin’ answer at any point during the hours we were stuck down there?” Jason says, anger bubbling up. “You can hate me all you want, but I had a kid with me, and she was terrified. You couldn’t have answered her at least?”
“We tried. You couldn’t hear us,” says Bruce. He looks old in a way that makes Jason feel uncomfortable. “We tried to contact you as soon as we heard the explosion. Oracle did too. Your comms weren’t working. Tim called Conner to help us dig you out, but he went too fast and it destabilized the rubble. That was our fault.”
Jason swallows hard. “Okay,” he says quietly.
“Jason, if you hadn’t had the girl with you –” Bruce begins, making Jason’s stomach lurch.
He doesn’t want to know this. Couldn’t he keep the illusion that his family gave a fuck about him for a few more minutes? “Stop.”
“ – We would have come anyway. God, Jay, you’re my son.”
Now Jason’s eyes are really stinging. The tears escape without his permission. He doesn’t look at Bruce, stares at the ceiling instead. “We fought a couple weeks ago.”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t care what we fight about, or how angry I am, or what choices you make, you’re my kid. I already buried you once, I won’t survive doing it a second time.”
“Sorry,” Jason says. He has no idea what he’s apologizing for. Dying? Getting blown up twice? For doubting him? For their fight from two weeks back?
“You don’t owe me an apology,” Bruce says gently. He sits back in his chair, looking exhausted.
That’s generous of him, because Jason can think of a few things he probably owes Bruce an apology for, but he’d rather get a tooth pulled out than bring any of it up. But then, Bruce owes him more than a few too, which Jason knows he’ll never get.
Maybe that makes them even somehow.
*
He gets the address off Dick once he’s well enough to return to the Alley.
Penelope and her mom live in a dingy apartment that smells like weed and cigarette smoke. Jason pulls off his helmet, shaking out his hair, domino in place, before he knocks on the door.
The woman who answers is short, hair falling out of a ponytail as the noise of a TV plays in the background. She blinks at him in shock and Jason has to stop himself from shifting uncomfortably under her gaze.
“I just wanted to make sure Penelope was alright?” Jason offered.
She smiled. “Oh, she’ll be so happy to see you - she’s been very worried about you. Nightwing dropped by to let her know you were awake, tell him thank you for us.” She turns towards the kitchen as she lets Jason into the apartment. “Pen! You've got a visitor!”
The girl comes out of the other room - it’s odd seeing her in full daylight and not covered in grime. She breaks out into a grin. “Jason!” she cries, running at him full tilt.
He just has the time to crouch down to catch her as she impacts him with all the force of a small determined car.
He glances up at her mother just then, and catches a glimpse of her mother’s pale, horrified face.
Right. An eight year old knows his name now.
“Hey, Pen,” Jason says, as she pulls out of his arms, still grinning. “You know I told you my name, but that’s a secret, yeah? Can you keep a secret?”
Penny’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not allowed to keep grown up’s secrets because that means they’re up to no good.”
Jason can’t help but snort. “Okay, well, I think your mom’ll agree this is a special case.”
“I’m so sorry,” her mom is tugging on Penelope’s shoulder, trying to push her behind her. Penelope lets her, stumbling back, frowning in confusion. “She doesn’t - she would never - I -”
Jason stays crouched down, makes no sudden moves. “It’s alright, Mrs. Hays. I slipped up and I told her my name when we were trapped together. Blood loss makes you loopy, who would’ve known?”
“Hood’s not gonna hurt me,” Penelope says. “He’s a hero!”
Jason exchanges a look with Mrs. Hays. They both know that’s not exactly true.
But her mom must agree with her a little because she relaxes, and Jason gets to his feet without incident.
“Why don’t you go get your drawings and show Hood before he goes?” Mrs Hays says. Penelope is off like a shot. “I can’t thank you enough for protecting her.”
Jason shrugs. He doesn’t say that he’s pretty sure Penelope’s presence was the only thing that let him hang onto a shred of calm in the face of his worst nightmares coming back to life.
“I’m - I’m wracking my brains on how to repay you, but I don’t know what I could offer that a vigilante like yourself would even need,” she says with a self deprecating laugh.
“Don’t need nothin’,” says Jason, resisting the urge to slam his hood back onto his head because he could feel the tips of his ears burning. “S’my job.”
Penelope comes racing back with papers clutched in her hand. “LOOK!” She thrust the papers into Jason’s hands - it was a crayon drawing of Jason in his Red Hood get up.
“Oh - that’s, uh, that’s great,” Jason says, trying desperately not to sound choked up and kind of failing. “Thanks, kid. Can I - uh - can I keep this?”
“Yeah, it’s for you,” Penelope says.
“If you ever need anything,” Penelope’s mom says.
“Don’t tell anyone my name, and we’re even, alright?” says Jason. He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “If you ever need anything…”
“Oh,” the mom says quietly, taking the paper and looking at the phone number written within.
Jason leaves with a promise to check in on them both again soon, and a crayon drawing tucked in his jacket.