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There was a saying about doing something over and over and expecting a different result, and while Jason knew that Gothamites were insane, he was expecting the out-of-towners to have a little more sense. These particular idiots were from Bludhaven, and apparently thought that they could drag their party-city crime to the Red Hood’s territory.
“Red Hood!” came the shout as Jason strolled into their base of operations, hands on his guns. Instead of fleeing in terror—the usual response, especially after Jason had dismantled the entirety of Black Mask’s operations in a vengeful fury after the shitshow with the Joker—the thugs looked guarded but expectant.
A thin, twitchy man detached himself from the others and strode forward. The leader then. “Mr. Hood,” Twitchy attempted to smile, but it came out like a grimace. “It’s very nice to finally meet you.”
“You’re in my territory,” Jason growled. He was about to start on his tirade about human traffickers to terrify them before he murdered them all, but Twitchy just widened his plastic grin.
“Not to worry, Mr. Hood, we know about your cut. Thirty percent, right?” Twitchy clearly had no idea about the rest of Jason’s rules. “And, as an entry gift, we have something special.”
That stalled Jason’s movement towards his bombs. He’d staked the place out before walking in, he knew they kept the merchandise at a different location—which was shortly going to be raided by the GCPD—but Jason didn’t like the sound of a gift.
“I love gifts,” Jason said levelly, the mechanized voice coming out smooth.
“We’ve heard about your frustrations with the Bats”—frustrations, that was one way to put it, Jason had attacked Batman and shot him and tried to blow him up, but sure, they could call it frustration—“and we of course empathize. Nightwing was quite the annoying pain in our ass.”
Jason didn’t appreciate the past tense of that statement.
“Luckily,” Twitchy said with the kind of satisfaction that made Jason want to shoot him right then and there, “we dealt with the problem.”
Jason’s stomach dropped to somewhere near his feet. As much as he tried to convince himself that he hated his family, that they hated him, that he was better off without them, he couldn’t get rid of the jolt of panic.
“Oh?” Jason said, thankful that the voice distorter worked to smooth out his voice, and watched, on edge, as Twitchy motioned for two of his thugs.
They moved forward, dragging…something behind them. No, someone. A kid, wrapped with rope and gagged, face blotchy, and Jason had just enough time to think what about Nightwing when he met teary blue eyes.
Oh.
Oh fuck.
“We found ourselves a magic artifact that works to make ‘em smaller,” Twitchy confided. “Better for the merchandise. Also better for annoying vigilantes.”
Jason wanted to—to throw up. To scream. To start shooting. The Lazarus Pit haze colored everything around him a sickly green and it took everything he had to not give in to it.
“Really,” Jason drawled, “that pint-sized midget is Nightwing?” The kid looked momentarily offended. “Pull the other one.”
“He is!” Twitchy puffed up. “You can examine him yourself if you like. He’s your gift.”
Jason beckoned a gloved hand and the thugs dragged baby Nightwing closer and pushed the shivering boy in front of Jason. Jason crouched and made a show of looking him over—he’d lost the suit and mask and they’d dressed him in a Nightwing shirt, presumably for the irony—as he pulled out a flashbang.
The kid was looking at him with zero recognition, so this next part would be a little harder. “Close your eyes, Dickie,” Jason said quietly. “This’ll be over soon.”
The kid’s eyes widened in alarm, but Jason straightened from his crouch and shoved baby Dick down in one smooth motion, throwing the bomb and unholstering his gun.
He’d caught the traffickers by surprise and they were too slow to react; Jason had enough ammunition to take them all out as they screamed and shouted and stumbled blindly through the smoke. The sound of gunfire died rapidly, and the screams cut off shortly thereafter. He made extra sure that he blew Twitchy’s head off before scanning the room.
Dead. All dead. Save for the shivering shrimp curled up on the ground.
Jason left the kid where he was and thoroughly cleared the warehouse—he found something that looked like a magical artifact and bagged it very, very carefully—before returning to Dick. Or where Dick was supposed to be, because the floor was empty and Jason did not have a mini heart attack before spinning around and catching sight of a midget trying to caterpillar his way out of the warehouse.
“Just have to live up to that escape artist image, don’t you,” Jason snapped, more relief than anger as he stalked forward and hauled up the wriggling boy. “Quit it! Let’s get out of here before I get started on those knots.”
Dick thankfully stopped squirming when Jason unhooked his grapple, but he was unsteady on his feet when Jason set him down on the rooftop a block away. It was odd, to look at any version of Dick Grayson and see that shaky loss of balance.
“Okay, now don’t move,” Jason unsheathed a knife that was perhaps bigger than it needed to be. Dick’s eyes looked like twin saucers. “This is delicate work.”
It wasn’t actually, for all the traffickers’ fondness for trussing the kid up with an enormous amount of rope, they had more enthusiasm than sense. All Jason had to do was saw through a couple of ropes and the whole thing fell apart.
As soon as the kid was free, he bolted for the other edge of the roof, yanking off stray bits of rope as he went. He looked around ten and the way he moved—checking for exits, scanning for threats—was reminiscent of Robin training. The quick glance in the shadows for the flicker of a dark cape was definitely Robin 101.
It also set all of Jason’s nerves on edge.
“Planning on going somewhere, kid?” Jason drawled, letting the mechanized voice twist his tone. Dick kept looking for Batman, like the Dark Knight had ever made a habit of saving his Robins. “It’s just you and me up here, birdie.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Dick spoke for the first time, voice high and clear. His glance over the edge of the rooftop showed no fear, only calculation. “And who are you again?”
So Dick hadn’t kept his memories. Which meant that Jason was glaring at the ten-year-old original Robin. “You can call me Hood,” Jason deflated, growling because this had never been in his job description. “Come on, we’ll get off the streets and I’ll call Batman.”
“You know Batman?” Dick asked warily, but he’d inched away from the ledge, so Jason took the success. “I’ve never seen you before.”
Yeah, because back when you were this short, I still had both parents, Jason mentally snapped. Outwardly, he just extended a hand, “Well, I’ve seen you, pipsqueak, and I happen to know that B’s not on planet right now, so your choices are me or the streets.”
“He’s off the planet?” Dickie gasped, and wow, his face was really expressive. Jason had previously believed that the ditzy Golden Boy was always open, but if this was what his face could actually do, then they were all getting a milder, toned-down version.
Nightwing and mild in any connation together made him shiver, though, so he ignored it.
“He’s fighting aliens or something, I don’t know all the details,” Jason shrugged. It was a pretty routine occurrence that Jason only really kept track of so he’d know if there was someone subbing in the Batsuit and if he’d need kryptonite. Upon reflection, he realized that this tinier version of Dick Grayson would never have been off-planet and might not have met an alien yet.
Indeed, the kid was edging away from him again, naked suspicion on his face. “How do you I know you’re telling the truth?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “I don’t know who you are, and Batman would never work with someone who carries guns and kills people.”
There went the hope that the kid hadn’t been paying attention in the warehouse. And the hope that he could do this the easy way.
Jason briefly pondering calling Drake and washing his hands of this whole mess, but he wasn’t entirely sure where his replacement was, he’d avoided Alfred thus far, and he had too much self-respect to track down the Justice League. If he let the kid escape into the streets of a Gotham he didn’t recognize, wrapped up in self-righteousness like it was armor, he would get hurt, and somehow it would end up being Jason’s fault.
Most things were.
“You’re right about that,” Jason admitted. “I said I know Batman, I never said I work with him.”
The kid’s eyes went wide, already scrambling for an exit, but he was too late. It only took one tranquilizer dart and the kid was slumped on the rooftop, fast asleep.
Jason hoisted the little birdbrain up and unhooked his grapple. This was going to be a long night.
Jason, it turned out, had understated matters.
He’d woken from his light doze to the sound of a bull rampaging through his safehouse, only to find the kid having wriggled out of the loose bindings he’d tied him in, out of deference to his age. That had been a mistake, as Jason soon learned, because the kid was as slippery as an eel and very inclined to throw things at him. Jason narrowly missed splitting his skull open on a vase before he finally grabbed the little shit, ignored his hissing and spitting, and wound him in all the rope Jason had on hand.
One thoroughly hogtied baby Robin later, Jason took a deep breath.
“Mm-hmm hmmph mm!” emitted from the bundle, accompanied by a fierce glare. Jason no longer had any doubts as to how a nine-year-old had managed to force Batman into taking him on as a partner.
“Would you calm down?” Jason snarled back. “Where do you think you’re going anyway? This isn’t your Gotham!”
“Mmn nnn mmpnh?”
“Did you pay attention to nothing those goons were talking about?” Jason ran a hand over his face, aggrieved. “You’re fifteen years into the future. You’ve been deaged by magic.”
The kid’s glower showed no sign of abating.
Jason huffed out a breath, patience stretched narrow and thin, and retrieved his phone. He didn’t like admitting he had Batman’s number, much less Bruce Wayne’s, but the idiot hadn’t changed his personal cell in years. “Here,” he said, brandishing the screen in the kid’s face. “I texted B to come pick you up. He’ll fix you. He just has to get planetside first.”
‘Have D. Problem of the magical kind, currently stable. Pick him up when you get back.’
He’d even restrained himself from adding a threat or two, though it had been hard to suppress the urge.
The kid’s gaze narrowed, but he stopped squirming as much, thank god. “Now will you behave?” Jason asked.
“Mnh mhhnnh?”
Right. The gag. Jason wrenched it out and waited for the kid to finishing clearing his throat.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” the kid asked hoarsely. There were still angry splotches on his face, but he looked kind of pathetic now, all tied up with nowhere to go. He kept shifting his shoulder and wincing. Jason felt a pang of what he refused to call guilt.
“Look, kid, I am not paid nearly enough to take care of B’s brats for him.” The kid’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Either you behave and I’ll remain open to the possibility of untying you sometime in the future, or you continue mouthing off and I’ll leave you as a rope mummy.”
Dickie’s face settled into a scowl that, on the adult, made Jason want to duck and hide somewhere well insulated, but on the child, merely gave rise to the urge to pinch the kid’s cheeks. Unfortunately, the scowl faltered to a grimace as the kid tested his range of motion again, hunching protectively over his left shoulder.
Ah, fuck. If Jason had actually injured Batman’s precious first Robin, there was nowhere in the universe he could hide, not even six feet under.
Jason sighed and reached out to loosen the ropes. He had no frame of reference for fighting a kid this young—Drake was almost sixteen, and even Jason had turned thirteen before Bruce had finally let him out on the streets. Brat or not, Bruce shouldn’t have even contemplated—
“Ow!”
Said brat grinned at him with bloody teeth as Jason gripped his bleeding arm and swore roundly as his rage swelled with the pain.
Jason counted to ten. Then twenty. Then a hundred. With his arm still throbbing and his vision hazed over in green, he did the only reasonable thing left.
Jason wouldn’t say he was calm, especially not when he glanced past the missing flowers on the coffee table and the shards of his broken possessions in the trash, but making breakfast had soothed some of his lingering tension.
Bruce had yet to respond and Jason wasn’t going to starve the kid, no matter how much of a pain in the ass he was—he was giving serious thought to whether dealing with the kid or the Replacement was a greater chore—so he plated up the waffles and took it down to the sublevel garage he’d turned into his command center.
It was modeled heavily after the Batcave—minus the bats and the cave—complete with a glass-walled decontamination cell he rarely used. Today, it had the honor of being the pipsqueak’s temporary quarters since there was nothing in the cell that the kid could break, and if baby Dickie could break himself out of a Batman-proof cell, he was welcome to the streets of the Gotham.
Unfortunately for Jason’s quiet Tuesday morning, the kid was still here. Curled up a ball tinier than it had any right being considering the destruction he’d waged, but still managing to give Jason a virulent glare.
“Breakfast,” Jason chirped, sliding the paper plate through the small slot at the bottom of the transparent door. “I hope you like waffles, kid.”
The kid bared his teeth. “How stupid do you think I am,” he snapped, “that I’d eat anything from you?”
“It’s not poisoned, kid, I wouldn’t waste good food if I wanted to kill you,” Jason retorted, honestly affronted. He slid the paper plate back out and took an obnoxiously large bite of waffle. “See?” he said, muffled as he chewed. “All good.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Kid, I could’ve just shot you when I was killing all those other people,” Jason sighed, only belatedly realizing that reminding the kid that he was a murderer was perhaps not the best idea. “I have no reason to want you dead.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you?”
Jason opened his mouth and closed it again. “I didn’t say you had to trust me,” he finally responded, unable to pinpoint exactly why Dick Grayson’s narrowed blue eyes felt so uncomfortable. “I don’t care whether you eat it.”
“Good. Because I’m not hungry.”
“Fine,” Jason snapped back, unsure why he’d ended up in a debate with a toddler over his breakfast. “I’ll just leave then.”
“Good,” the kid huffed, turning away from Jason.
Jason ended up grinding his teeth as he stomped back up to his apartment.
Grumbling around his apartment had done nothing but reaffirm the notion that he was beefing with a preteen and Jason felt rather like he did upon his return from Titans Tower and his best attempt at turning the Replacement into a bloody smear on the ground—like he’d accomplished his goals but to zero satisfaction. It was the way he’d felt about the majority of his actions these days, hollow and disappointed.
He’d tried to tell himself that he was disappointed in Batman, but he was having the creeping feeling that he was disappointed in himself.
Even Batman finally responding didn’t make him feel better—he’d written that he’d be back that night and would pick Dick up then. Jason was hardly expecting Batman to mobilize the Justice League, but the nonchalance irked him. Like Batman didn’t care that he was leaving his darling, original Robin in the hands of a crime lord because his stupid mission was more important.
Several more circles around his coffee table didn’t help. Jason was itching to shoot something and there was a lack of things to shoot.
He finally decided to write the day off as a wash. Jason only had to babysit for another half day before he could deposit the twerp and the magical artifact in Batman’s hands and then it wouldn’t be his problem anymore. Surely he could keep a Robin alive for a few more hours without any trouble.
Jason resolutely suppressed his instinctive reaction at the thought.
He ended up making a complicated, time-consuming pasta dish for lunch that he’d been meaning to try for some time, but he was wary of giving the brat any weapons, including cutlery. The kid would get a sandwich, if he wasn’t still on that ridiculous hunger strike.
Sure enough, the kid had his back turned to the transparent cell door when Jason stomped up to it. The waffle and the water bottle were both untouched.
“It’s lunchtime, kiddo. Grilled cheese with caramelized onions and chilis.” Only after a beat did Jason realize that he’d unconsciously prepared his older brother’s favorite sandwich.
The kid twisted to stare at him with narrowed eyes. Jason kept a careful watch on him as he slid the paper plate into the cell, but the kid made no attempt to move.
“I’m not hungry,” he repeated.
Jason rolled his eyes. “Look, kid, you’re not fooling me and the food isn’t poisoned. The only person you’re hurting by not eating is yourself.”
Dickie turned away again. He was clearly going to sulk till the end of time. Jason had a brief flashback to the vicious, petty arguments Dick would pick back when Jason was Robin, culminating in shouting matches between Dick and Bruce.
“Come on, kid,” Jason cajoled. “I know you’re hungry. Just eat it. Take a bite.”
“Go away.”
“Who are you starving yourself for? Batman? He’s on his way to pick you up, he’ll be here this evening. You think he wants you to be hungry?”
“You’re lying,” the kid said, but he twisted back to glare at Jason.
“I’m not,” Jason sighed. It should not be this hard to keep one brat fed and watered. Jason would never have refused food at his age, even if he thought he was being kidnapped. Hell, he hadn’t refused Batman when he’d offered up Batburger after Jason had stolen his tires, and Jason had practically been kidnapped. “Come on, Dickie. It’s your favorite sandwich.”
“No, it’s not!” Dickie suddenly shrieked, uncurling in an explosive motion. Jason rocked back on his heels in surprise. “You don’t know what my favorite sandwich is! You don’t know anything about me! You—you’re a liar and a murderer and—and Batman’s going to find me and you’re going to be sorry when he does!”
Jason couldn’t help the laugh. “Oh, Dickie,” he stepped closer until he was right up against the glass, looming over the kid. “You’re fifteen years in the future. Batman’s failed more times than you can count on your itty-bitty fingers. He never finds his Robins in time—if he did, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
“Shut up!” the brat shouted back. “You’re lying! You—you—”
“I’m not a liar,” Jason said coldly. “I’m telling you the truth. You have no idea how badly he’s failed you. Do you want to know? I can tell you all about your future, Dickie.”
And what a future it was—Jason hadn’t been around for most of it, but he’d picked up enough, with the thread shifting from Batman’s failures to Nightwing’s. Jason’s face curved into a growing smile; he could tell this irritating little brat about exactly the kind of hero he grew up to be, the number of people he failed, the city he nearly got wiped off the map—
There were tears on Dickie’s face. Angry tears, face red and scrunched up and hands balled into tiny fists, but tears nonetheless. The suddenness of the realization hit Jason like whiplash as he stumbled back a step.
What was he doing?
The brat’s naivete was infuriating, true, his blind trust in Batman enraging, but Jason didn’t need to strip his innocence from him. Dick Grayson wasn’t actually nine, and when Batman figured out how to undo whatever magical curse he’d gotten himself tangled up with, he’d return to his normal self. Hurting him, terrifying him, scarring him would be nothing but pointless cruelty.
Jason was a lot of things, but he hadn’t thought he’d sunk that low.
He stumbled back another step, ears ringing too loud to hear the kid’s retort. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t—he had to leave. He needed to leave.
This was stupid.
This was incredibly stupid and also pointless. Batman would be here in a few hours, Jason would get to pass over the kid and the magical artifact and wash his hands of this mess. Even if the kid complained about him, he’d soon be restored to his real age, and Jason couldn’t imagine that Jason being mean was high on Nightwing’s list of priorities.
Dick would probably dismiss the whole thing, even if he remembered it. No one expected any better of Jason anyway. Maybe next time something like this happened, Batman would send someone to rescue whatever hapless bird had ended up in Red Hood’s clutches before it was too late.
It was stupid.
And yet, Jason was staring at a small elephant plushie, bought on impulse while he was grocery shopping.
Dickie was going to ignore this, like he ignored the food and all of Jason’s attempts to keep him calm. It was stupid. It was a waste. Jason should just sit and wait for Batman to show up.
And yet, he found himself descending to the sublevel, elephant tucked under one arm.
The kid was still curled up at the back, but he was facing the door this time, eyes tracking Jason’s approach. Jason knelt and shoved the elephant through the slot before he could think of something to say, tongue sticking inside his mouth.
The kid tracked it, eyes scrunching at the corners, but Jason still didn’t have the words. His gaze caught on the plates—the kid had eaten the sandwich.
It was enough to firm his resolve.
“I know it’s not Zitka,” Jason said, words halting and apologetic, as Dickie’s fierce blue eyes suddenly focused on him, “but—it might help.” It sounded even more stupid when he said it out loud. “Look,” Jason sighed, “Batman is coming tonight. He’s picking you up. It’s not safe for you to go wandering around Gotham on your own.”
Dickie didn’t say a word, just kept staring at Jason with that unnervingly penetrating gaze. It burned far worse from the elder, but even on the younger it stung.
“If you promise not to try and run away, or destroy any more of my stuff, you can come back upstairs. I’ll make whatever you want for dinner.” Jason was not above base bribery. “How about it, Dickie?”
The kid slowly uncurled and reached out to grab the elephant plushie. For a moment, Jason thought he’d tear it to pieces and spit more vitriol, but instead, the kid tucked it against his side, holding it tight.
He looked even younger. Young and scared and locked in a cell that Jason had shoved him into.
Jason took a deep breath and let it out slowly before reaching up to unlock the door.
“Come on, kiddo. We’ll wait for B upstairs.”
The kid followed him silently, clutching the elephant plushie the entire time.
Jason didn’t remember falling asleep, but it had been a long day, and his first thought upon regaining consciousness was irritation. It was still dark outside, couldn’t he get a break?
Then he registered the shifting shadows of whatever had woken him up and, in an instant, he’d unholstered the gun hidden in the couch, curled around the slumbering kid half in his lap, and aimed into the darkness.
“Take another step and I’ll put a bullet in your skull,” Jason growled as menacingly as he could without the voice distorter.
The figure shifted and the kitchen light suddenly spilled out, illuminating a figure Jason could recognize even cowl-less. His outstretched gun abruptly looked ridiculous and Jason was aware that he’d instinctively moved to protect the little leech curled up against him.
“You’re late,” Jason snarled. Dickie had silently cried himself to sleep while Jason had kept his gaze on the Disney movie he’d cued up and fervently pretended not to notice. He’d certainly kept cool and calm and relaxed as the brat wormed his way over to Jason’s side and snuggled up to sleep, still gripping the plushie. “Did you get lost on your way back to Gotham or something?”
The only saving grace was that young Dickie Grayson was a temporary state and thus nothing that happened here really counted. That was Jason’s story and he was sticking to it.
“There was a delay,” Bruce said evenly, gaze piercing even in the semi-darkness. Jason realized he was still hovering protectively over the brat and played it off as a stretch as he inched free. He was free to cross his arms and glare as Bruce strode closer and peered over the edge of the couch to see Dickie.
“Well?” Jason snapped. “Take him and get out of here.” He pointed to the bag on the coffee table, “And take that with you, it’s the artifact that got him into this mess.”
Bruce was still staring at Dickie, something soft and warm in his expression. It wasn’t an expression Jason was particularly familiar with, and he didn’t appreciate its sight now. He’d had to babysit a terror and burn a safehouse and he was distinctly not in the mood.
“You keep standing there and I’m going to start charging you rent, old man.”
Bruce finally looked at him, raised eyebrow almost mild. “Thank you for taking care of him,” he said.
Jason grimaced and glared. He wasn’t about to agree with the idea, but disputing it felt worse.
Bruce picked up the kid easily, settling him on a hip with a familiarity that hurt. Dickie barely woke up, blinking his eyes once, twice, then subsiding with a happy sighed B as he clung to his mentor.
Jason scowled harder.
Bruce paused, gaze caught on Dickie’s arm, the one tucked against his side. The one tucked against his side and still clutching the elephant plushie.
Bruce didn’t say anything, but the silence was stifling.
“Get out of my apartment before I shoot you,” Jason hissed.
Bruce looked at him again, expression unreadable. He paused for a long, lingering second, waiting for what Jason didn’t know, before he inclined his head in a sharp nod.
Jason rolled his eyes and turned away, bristling at the unspoken acquiescence. By the time he turned back, Bruce was gone.
“I forgot how annoying it is when he does that,” Jason said to the empty room.
Jason assumed that was the end of it. The traffickers were dead, the children safely in GCPD’s custody, and Jason had made sure he’d caught what few rats had escaped. Batman wasn’t going to mention that he’d lost a bird and Jason would just make sure to shoot him a couple times to make up for that look he still didn’t want to dissect.
Zatanna or Constantine or whoever else Batman had consulted had clearly broken the curse because Nightwing was back swinging through Bludhaven a few days later according to the news, and if Jason had an itching feeling to drive over and check for himself, well, he made sure not to scratch it.
He’d done his good deed, end of story. There was nothing more to discuss.
Of course, Dick Grayson had never let anyone else have the last word.
The ambush was neat—Jason had been perched on a water tank all by himself, looking out over Crime Alley from the clear vantage point the tank afforded him. It was the highest point for blocks around, so when he caught sight of a familiar blue-and-black on the rooftop, it was to the sinking feeling that there was nowhere to run.
Jason shimmied down to the rooftop, keeping a hand on his gun as a visible threat. “What are you doing here?” he snapped. “No Bats in Crime Alley, or does Nightwing think he’s above the rules?”
“Technically, I’m a bird,” Nightwing said, with far more friendliness than was warranted. This was veering close to Jason’s worst fear, that his street cred had been irreparably ruined.
“Maybe my eyesight’s going,” Jason snarled back, unholstering the gun and aiming, “bats, birds, I don’t fucking care. Leave or I’ll shoot.”
Nightwing raised his hands conciliatorily, though he still looked too fucking smug. “I’ll get out of your hair. Just came to return what I borrowed.”
It was the elephant plushie. It looked much smaller in Nightwing’s grasp than Dickie’s, though Nightwing held it with the same soft reverence.
Jason didn’t realize he’d lowered the gun until Nightwing spoke again.
“Thank you,” he said, hesitant. “For taking care of me. I know it wasn’t easy.”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Jason sneered. “If I’d let you out on the streets and you ended up mugged, B would’ve blamed me. I was just saving my own skin.” Nightwing merely stared in polite disbelief. “And keep that thing or throw it in the trash, I don’t fucking care. Why the hell would I want it back?” And because Nightwing’s face was beginning to really piss him off, Jason continued, “It was the only thing keeping you from chewing through the furniture, that’s all.”
“Mhm,” Nightwing pursed his lips and stared down at the elephant plushie. His lips crooked into a soft, sad smile. By the time he looked back at Jason, it had turned into a smirk. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Little Wing.”
Jason processed the old nickname with dull horror. By the time he’d rebooted enough to react, Nightwing was already swinging away and too fucking far to shoot.
“I should’ve kept you locked in that cell!” Jason shouted after him. A familiar cackle drifted back and Jason shuddered as so many criminals must’ve done back when Dick Grayson was Robin.
Once a menace, always a fucking menace.