Chapter Text
“To kill or not to kill: that is the question”
- Shakesy P. (probably)
_ _ _
The Bat family was known to be protective of its members. Very protective.
It was different with Damian though: He was the youngest, the baby. Sure, at thirteen he was a sassy and occasionally murderous baby, but still a baby nonetheless.
When one of the other bats were taken or injured, on the rare occasion someone managed to outwit or outstrength them, the others would be livid, but when it was Damian, they were downright murderous.
Red Hood attached two guns in holsters at his thighs, a long one in his back, and put several up his pockets. After a moment of deliberation, he also shoved a mini-pistol in his shoe. He nodded to Red as the two boarded their bikes, ignoring the disappointed look Batman gave him at the amount of firearms he’d stuck on his person.
Batman could suck it. Someone takes his Diablito, they die.
Jason had practically raised the little squirt when Batsy had been MIA. Those days had been hellish, and Jason had maybe allowed a little too much bloodshed to slip his notice while consumed in his own self-justified rage. He ended up fostering the boy’s natural murderous intent a bit too well, and try as he might, a returning Batman had been unable to bat-glare it out of him. Not that that mattered, Jason loved the kid no matter how stabby he got when provoked. He was very cute when scowling defiantly at Bruce, even with his uniform matted with blood.
However strange it was that someone had actually managed to kidnap Batboy, they hadn’t thought to check for trackers, or to hide somewhere other than a warehouse (god, it was always the warehouses!) so they couldn’t be that smart. Hood and Red Cardinal were sent ahead, having been deemed a sufficient enough rescue party against whatever wannabe villain did the deed, and if there was anything left of the kidnapper after they were through with ‘em, Batman would drop in and do his scariest growl, all “don’t do evil or I’ll hurt you,” and away they’ll go to jail forever and ever.
Hood would try not to shoot first, think later, but he hoped Batsy wouldn’t be too mad if he put Batboy’s abductor six-feet under.
_ _ _
“My family will come for me!” Batboy declared confidently as he stared at his upside down abductor. The man looked unconcerned.
He wasn’t actually upside down, he was balanced on the arm of a small wooden chair- placed in the center of the small, barren white room the two were in- reading the Gotham Gazette, although the headings were too, well, the wrong way up, for Batboy to read. It was actually Batboy who had been upended, tied up and hanging head-first from the low hanging ceiling, his hair grazing the floor as he shouted and declared, unable to get a reaction.
“-and they will take you down. Hood is not known to be merciful,” Batboy was not known to be very patient either, and his minimal goodwill had long since run out.
He opened his mouth to talk again, but his attention quickly snapped to the man as he put the newspaper down on the chair and hopped to the floor. It was the first time he’d moved in the twenty-seven minutes Batboy had counted them being there- except to push a button that had brought the rope around Batboy’s feet to the ceiling when he tried biting the man’s ankles- and the teen tensed as he started walking towards him.
The man looked to be relatively young, in his twenties or thirties. He had a domino mask similar to the Bats’ covering the top half of his face, and he wore a Superman t-shirt (as a Gothamite, he should be ashamed). His wavy black hair fell in front of his face and when he smiled at Batboy it was almost more unnerving than the Joker’s smile because it actually looked genuine.
“I’m Nightwing. What’s your name?”
Batboy scoffed because there was no way he didn’t know who the bats were. The man’s smile grew.
“Yeah, that was a pretty stupid question”.
His calm and playful demeanor, and his lack of insane ramblings or declarations agitated Batboy. Gotham villains did not act so normal, not unless they were truly unhinged. “I could kill you!” he spat.
“But will you?”
Batboy blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the question. He already had a reputation as a cold-blooded killer. There was no reason for Nightwing to doubt his threat.
Nightwing looked amused at his surprise. “Let me try again. Why will you kill me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He looked with disdain at the ropes coiled around himself, then back at the smiling rogue. He had no reason not to.
Nightwing sat down on the floor, falling into a lotus position with ease. It was mildly disturbing. “You’re a hero, right.”
Well, technically a vigilante, but he supposed it was close enough. “I am”.
“A hero who kills?”
Batboy bristled. He had enough of the whole “don’t kill” spiel from father; he did not need to hear it from his kidnapper. Sometimes, death was the only option.
“Some people deserve to die.”
“Which people?” Nightwing leaned forwards, his full attention on Batboy.
“What?” bad people, Batboy almost said, but it sounded a bit too childish. He blushed when he realized that what he’d actually said was just as embarrassing. Just as stupid.
“I mean-” Nightwing said, plowing past whatever response the vigilante might have come up with “how do you decide who’s bad enough to kill? You’re a hero, so you can’t just go around offing anyone who annoys you, or you’d be the villain instead. Where do you draw the line?”
“I-” Batboy opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like he just went around killing everyone who got on his nerves. Drake and Brown would not be alive if this was the case, but he’d never really thought about whether a person really deserved to die when he killed them. Why was it that he spared Harley but not the random thug he found robbing the bank yesterday? He didn’t know.
Mother killed everyone, good and bad, but mother was a villain, and Batboy was not. Hood did have a ‘line’ as Nightwing had called it. He had specific rules that could not be broken, and if they were, then you died. Father didn’t like Hood killing, but he understood it. He didn’t try too hard to stop Hood. Batboy on the other hand….
“More importantly-” Nightwing’s voice broke through his thoughts, the rogue’s lips twisting impishly- “am I behind that line?”
Batboy scowled, fidgeting a little from his position upside down. He wanted to say yes, but in truth, this had been probably his most comfortable kidnapping ever, even with all the blood rushing to his head, though he supposed he hadn’t been upside down for more than a couple minutes, and only then because he’d attempted to attack his kidnapper. Sure, one could die if left hanging too long, but he hadn’t even been given a slap on his wrist for trying to bite Nightwing. For a rogue the man was almost…nice.
“I’ll leave you to figure that out,” Nightwing stood up, flowning smoothly out of the lotus pose, and stepped on the button that was on the floor by his chair. Batboy fell the short distance to the floor, landing hard without his limbs to catch him (being tied up as he was), and the amused chuckle that Nightwing let out at his grunt when he hit the ground was perhaps the most sadistic and well, Gotham rogue-like, he’d been since Batboy had woken up in the little room with him.
While Batboy struggled to sit up, the world tilting disorientingly, Nightwing got up on the wooden chair and brought his hand flat against one of the tiles of the low-hanging ceiling, the one directly above him, and pushed. The tile came out with a pop, and the rogue used his hands to pull himself up through the square hole it left behind.
As Nightwing disappeared inside the whole, Batboy, who could not seem to loosen the ropes, or to make himself move to stop the man, briefly wondered how much upper body-strength the rogue must have to so easily pull himself up there, and in the same stream of consciousness wondered why he hadn’t just used the door to Batboy’s right.
One he was fully up, Nightwing stuck his head back out the whole, grinning at a glowering Batboy. “Oh yeah, say hi to Hood for me will ya?”
The ceiling tile was put back into place from above, and exactly ten seconds later Batboy got the answer of why he hadn’t used the door, as the little wooden thing went crashing across the room with a bang, shattering against the opposite wall.
Jason Todd, aka the only Wayne other than father that Damian held any respect for, stood at the door, guns ablazing and menacing in his six-foot glory. Damian could make out footsteps behind him, likely one of the others catching up.
“Haven’t you heard that we-” he cut himself off abruptly, looking around the room in confusion as he realized that Damian was the only one there. “Huh,” he got out, lowering his guns. Damian said nothing.
Red Hood turned back to talk to the person behind him, “there’s no one in here but Batboy.”
A voice that Damian recognized as Red Cardinal responded, “The rest of the warehouse is completely empty. Spoiler arrived a couple minutes ago, and is already checking the grounds. She said she hasn’t seen anyone so far.”
“Damn it.” Hood stuffed his guns back into their holsters and turned his attention to Damian again. “Ya need help with that?” he asked, looking at the ropes coiled tightly around him.
Damian nodded. He’d already tried to free himself, but Nightwing had obviously known what he was doing, and had tied his hands tightly to his sides, preventing him from reaching the knots, or his weapons.
Red Cardinal pulled out a camping knife from his belt and handed it to Hood, who knelt down besides Damian and started cutting him loose. He stayed silent as he worked, focusing on his task. Red Cardinal on the other hand had already started typing furiously into his bat-watch.
“Batboy, report,” the older teen commanded, and despite Damian’s belief that he had no right to order him around, the boy’s training forced him to respond.
“Was sedated during patrol. The attacker managed to evade my notice. Woke up like this”, he tilted his head down in a gesture towards the ropes.
“There was a man sitting on that chair. Black hair, slightly wavy. White passing, with tanned skin. Superman t-shirt and domino mask,” Red Cardinal nodded, and Damian flushed as he remembered the next part. “I tried to bite his ankles and he pressed that button, causing me to hand upside down from the ceiling.”
Hood’s hands shook a little, and Damian glared at his shaking shoulders. Red Cardinal, to his credit, only huffed out a single laugh, looking amused as he nodded for the younger to continue.
“He introduced himself as Nightwing. He did not harm me, but he-” Damian fell silent, and after a couple seconds, Tim sent an impatient glare his way, “he did what, Batboy?”
“He asked me questions about why I kill. I could not answer them”.
Hood momentarily stilled, his helmeted head turned to look at Damian silently, and the boy wondered what he was thinking. Then he turned back to the ropes and with one last pull they fell loose on the floor.
Damian stretched cautiously, checking for injuries and trying to get his blood flowing again as Hood stood up. He was still looking at Damian. Finally he reached down and offered the boy a hand, helping him up, before placing his hands on his shoulders.
“Don’t let no third-rate villain judge you, ya year me?”
Damian shook his head, choosing to ignore the man’s sentiment for the moment: “I do not believe he was third rate by any means. Seconds before you entered the room, he told me to ‘say hi to Hood for me’”.
Hood’s grip on his shoulders tightened just a little, not enough to be painful, but enough that Damian could tell he was surprised.
“You mean he knew we were coming?” Red Cardinal piped in, stating the obvious. The whites of his domino mask were blown wide.
“Did we walk into a trap?”