Chapter Text
Three Wayne sons stare at the glaring yellow sticky note.
It was common knowledge not to mess with Tim’s coffee machine, lest you want to fear the wrath of a sleep and coffee deprived vigilante. A vigilante who figured out Batman’s and Robin’s identities from a flip, a vigilante who could hack into almost any technological device. So, in short, no one wants to be on Tim’s bad side.
Staring at the messy scribble as though it had personally offended Tim, and considering it was delaying coffee, that was a fair assumption. Tim removes it and sets it to the side. Going about his normal routine.
Dick continues to stare at the loopy writing.
Messing around with some friends, be back soon!
-J
A victorious grin paints itself on his face. Little Wing has friends!
Content that their brother is safe, the Wayne boys continue about their day.
Jason’s soul was tainted. It must have been.
How else would he be able to summon swords in the presence of pure evil.
He glares at the swords in his hands, his back bending over them. An Untitled is convulsing, innard bits oozing out of various slashes, inflicted by the All-blade.
There were only two options of how that should be even remotely possible. The first of which is that the Red Hood’s soul is absolutely good , that it naturally fights against its complete opposite.
Shuddering at all the people he’s killed, the ones who deserved it, the scummiest of scumbags, the dogs he put down, he immediately discards the idea.
The other idea, that his soul is dark enough to hum in harmony with the magical artefacts, gets discarded just as quickly. If that were the case, he’d be able to summon that at will. Magic coursed through his blood, the only thing that keeps his heart beating.
Taking a deep breath, relishing his chest filling with air, he vanishes the blades.
Twisting to walk away, leaving the Untitled to die a pitiful and rightful death, he laughs at himself for even considering the idea that his soul was good. A good person wouldn’t ignore others' pain. Wouldn’t inflict it.
Jason should go. Just, discard the Untitled the same way Bruce did him. The same way he’s done to so many other criminals. Jason’s let people suffer, given them a small piece of their own medicine.
He knows all he needs to know about the All-Blade. He doesn’t need to learn more. His curiosity doesn’t need to be satisfied. The weapons are a tool, nothing to be played with.
A useful tool. It can catch things Jason can’t, Alfred knows not even Jason can catch everything. That the most savage people are those who can put on masks and facades of care. Shrugging of concern like a duck does water.
Plus, magic is objective, right? Bruce can’t yell at the child young-adult for killing someone if their sole was pitch black. There’d have been nothing left to save. Nothing for Bruce to argue desired salvation or any other twisted reason he keeps Joker and the other villains alive.
Weighing the arguments in his head, he sighs. Knowing it’ll be a while before he’ll get a chance like this again. The Untitled won’t live long, even if the Outlaws try their hardest to keep it alive. It’s a rare opportunity he has. A chance to experiment with the swords. To be able to access them freely, if he takes the Untitled back with him to their safehouse.
“Red Hood to the Outlaws, prepare an extra bed for the safehouse. And circus’s supply of elephant sedatives,” his words take on a twinge of insanity, a cheshire’s grin, “We’ve got a guest.”
Staring down Jason with unimpressed scorn that would make Black Bat proud, the man in question has the audacity to not squirm under Roy’s disappointment.
The archer really would have liked to be informed that Jason was dragging a mostly dead Untitled back to their base.
As it is, he knows his best friend enough to know that is too much to expect. Jason does as Jason pleases, Roy should just be happy they got a warning about sedatives and the guest.
With a heavy sigh, knowing that his friend’s shenanigans will take years off his life, “care to tell me why there’s a pure evil creature in our base, Jaybird?”
Jason looks unimpressed, as though Roy’s concern was completely misplaced.
“I’m studying.”
Deadpan. As though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“I’m not coming to your funeral.”
“Already had it, see ya Harper.”
And he just walked away, dragging the bleeding and unconscious being behind him, leaving behind a trail of goop that inevitably Roy would have to clean up.
Letting out a long suffering sigh, he’d been sighing a lot more lately, he deemed it as a future Roy problem and left the room. Better tell Kori that Jason’s doing stupid shit again.
Getting to his room, Jason tosses the Untitled into the corner like it’s a sack of dirty clothes that he doesn’t want to think about.
He looks around, trying to figure out the best place to summon the blades. His room may be big, but it wasn’t his wingspan plus an additional 81 cm per sword.
His desk is pushed into the corner, sketches of the All-Blades litter it. The bottom of the pile begins to yellow with age, while the ones at the top look like they could have been done yesterday. Books scavenged from the All-Caste deliberately homed on shelves, a drape of fabric preventing the sun from damaging them further. Some of them were handbound, leather covers almost falling off. The newer books, the ones published while Jason was still training are treated with slightly less care. At least three are opened to prudently detailed glyphs and runes. Jason’s blocky notes detailing his own thoughts. The most useful book, one full of the All-Caste’s allies and enemies, was buried underneath half-drafted letters. Evidence of the longs for assistance but unwilling to fall into debt, of admitting that help was required.
Maps decorate his walls, a poor mirror of a teenager’s band posters, Jason notices bitterly. A teenagerhood that he never had. Because of his own stupidity. In the centre of the wall, lay a graph of the entire world. Smaller maps adorned the area around it, narrowing in on continents, countries, cities and states. Brown ink, once again in Jason’s blocky writing, meticulously marking out his thought process, what places could offer refuge, which ones were better for information. Untitled sightings, All-Caste allies, Constantine’s hideout.
The middle of the room looks to be the best, minimal furniture risking his wrath, at least furniture that hasn’t already been inflicted by his frustration.
Crossing his arms in an ‘X’ in front of him, like Wonder Woman does to block bullets headed for her chest, (Diana might be a good person to go, her lasso of truth might work similarly to the sword’s judgement), he calls for the blades.
A slight gash appears on his wrists, just under his palm. Shifting from red to a glowing ichor, tips poak out of his wrist. Jason feels a slight chill, from his forearms up to his chest, something that’s normally blocked out by adrenaline. Shivering, the swords continue to emerge. Slowly, the blades emerge. Continuing to rise, passing harmlessly through his flesh, the hilt solidifies in his grip.
The ceiling has a new pair of holes. Whoops, Roy’s gonna do his almost-as-bad-as-Alfred sigh. Shuddering under the idea of Roy’s glare, he ignores the Future Jason problem.
Even while he was training with them, they’d been difficult to summon and work with. Being in the presence of whatever pure evil the All-Caste had been able to find and still recovering from being dead and humming with anger, getting used to the lazarus that had replaced his blood and struggling to understand how to summon the mystic blades hadn’t really lent itself to Jason being able to hold them, study them.
They were alive almost, warm to the touch.
This was the longest time Jason had ever been able to hold the swords.
He runs the short list of what he knows over in his head. Revisiting and prodding at it like a river to a rock.
1, the blades can only be summoned in the presence of Pure Evil. 2, Jason does not count as pure evil. 3, they feed off his soul.
He can’t go to the All-Caste for help. The Untitled made sure of that. Anything he wants to know he has to figure out himself. No one else can so much as touch the weapons.
Cursing his younger self for being so focused on vengeance and not asking [Duna] more questions he goes over the list once again.
It’s short, too short.
How short is his range? Can he summon the blades 15 metres away from pure evil? 15 centimetres? Can he have them and just walk away? Do they cease to exist or does he have to dismiss them?
He stops pacing, that’s something he can test.
They have a workshop at the base, both he and Roy like to test out new equipment. That requires precise and less precise measuring equipment. If he wants to set off a string of explosives, it’s heavily dependent on getting the displacement between bombs correct.
All that to say, he has measuring tape in the room next door.
Casting a quick glance to make sure the sack of flesh wasn’t going to ramshackle the base, he scurries out of the room.
Ducking into the lab, Roy is there.
Perfect! A witness!
Grinning, with a tone that is both an excited five year old and twenty year old man who can’t be trusted in the kitchen, Jason cheers: “Roy, I need supervision.”
The redhead stares as though his best friend is a dead man walking, which he is.
Grabbing the tape measure before Roy can go full Arsenal, Jason restreats, forcing the fellow anti-hero to follow.
“Jason why do you have an Untitled in the corner?”
Roy never should have befriended the zombie.
“I told you, I’m studying.”
He says it as though it is the most obvious thing in the world, like the first time they’d encountered one hadn’t almost ended in Kori dying. (Not that Kori’d been related to Jason’s fight, but still.)
“How to die?!”
Roy, really, really should not have befriended Jason. Should have dropped him faster than Jason dropped his fondest memory.
“Nah, already did that. Gotta say, the final exam sucked. Anyway, just make sure the Untitled doesn’t, like, try to kill you or anything.”
While Jason talks, he approaches the incapacitated magic being. The tape measure is flexible, simply a long canvas strip with questionable stains and distances marked with a sharpie. Finding the end of the fabric, he ties it around the thing’s wrist. Roy’s heart crawls up his chest, unease settling heavy in his gut.
Unknowing, or more likely uncaring, about the redhead’s inner turmoil, Jason wraps the remaining fabric around loosely his forearm, as though he were simply preparing to destroy yet another punching bag.
Jason knows that there’s an argument on his tongue. A perfectly reasonable explanation of why this plan is a bad idea, and could they just wait for Kori to come back , walks away before Roy can protest. Completely disregarding Roy’s safety for his own plans.
(Jason would never endanger the marksman for his own greed – at least not without telling Roy that that was the idea.)
Another long suffering sigh made its home in the Outlaw’s base.
Taking a moment to bask in Roy’s annoyance, Jason leaves the room. Alertness descending upon him, his shoulders hitch up. His posture stiffens before immediately loosening, prepared to run, to fight, to defend .
He mentally catalogues the base, the entrances and exits in case something goes wrong. How long it would take to run back to Roy had the Untitled awakened. Knows to walk towards the medbay, instead of away from it
Roy would kill him if he died because he stepped too far away from the Untitled and died because swords sucked his soul dry like a vampire.
Rolling his shoulders, he presses forward. It might be a stupid idea, but he does need to learn more about the All-blades. They are one of the few reminders of the All-Caste. There is too much of Jason’s life that is unknown, that ignorance has led to too much suffering. He has a weapon, he needs to understand how it works to not cause collateral damage.
Each step through the hallway is about a metre long, the tape measure unwinds. Dragging behind him like a trail of blood.
Shoving aside the too familiar image, he forces himself to focus on the blades. They feed off his soul, and are strangely sentient.
As he walks further away from the Untitled— leaving him entirely undefended a chill begins to overtake him.
Coldness swirls in his chest, slightly below his heart. It’s nothing at first, but with each thud of his foot it grows intensity. Swirling until it’d be more accurate to call it a tornado or hurricane.
The biting cold works its way out towards the rest of his body.
Thud . He takes another step, leg muscles burning from the effort, as though he’s trudging through molasses.
His shoulders feel stiff, moving sluggishly when he tries to examine the swords. Which are begging to burn in his hands, something akin to humming in displeasure. Which, semi-sentient swords, sure.
Thud . His left foot comes into contact with the ground, sending shivers across the man’s entire body.
Each breath feels as though icicles are stabbing his lungs. Where the rest of his body is cold, the blades are practically on fire in his grip. His ears ring, he can’t tell if that’s the descending blizzard or the swords somehow announcing their displeasure.
Jason tries to move his right leg, but can’t force the limb to cooperate. Thoughts moving sluggishly, he goes to move his favoured arm forwards.
Half a metre from his face, the tip of the blade stopped existing .
Gears turning slowly, far too slowly for having a fairly easy day, he drags his arm back. The tips reappear. Jason feels a slight aura of anger and judgement from the inanimate object. Which, rude.
Before he can think about that too hard, he passes out. A resounding thump carries through the hallways, straight to Roy’s waiting ears.
Roy’s hit with a bolt of panic. Flipping through the dozens of scenarios, Jason was hit with a delayed spell — stopping his heart when he’s the most calm. Whatever magic that brought him back from the dead suddenly failed — leaving everyone’s hearts shattered.
Shoving the thoughts to the back of his mind, he probably just tripped, but then why hasn’t he laughed at his stupidity, the markman rushes out of the room, heartbeat thudding in his ears.
When the redhead sees the man who makes too many zombie jokes, his heart stops beating, his legs stop moving.
Jason lays unmoving, a golden sword protruding from his gut, clean through his body. Strangely enough the blade is pristine, no rusty ichor staining the ground.
Crouching over his best friend, his hands go straight to his neck. There’s a slight beat, but it’s trembling. He doesn’t have time to register the slight wave of relief washing over him. He’s alive, but who knows for how long.
Desperate pleads fall from his lips, “come on, Jason. Not like this. Dick would never forgive me. Come one, you can’t just leave me and Kori like this. Jaybird, stay. For me, please.”
“Pussy. Sapface.” Jason grumbles underneath him.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Roy gently slaps Jason’s shoulder. “You are an idiot, you know that.”
Jason rolls over to his side, completely ignoring the sword inside of his chest. Which, great self preservation.
Roy lets out an disbeliving huff, “Dude, there is a sword in your fucking chest.”
Jason just grumbles at him. “No’ real can’t hur’ me.” His words slur together, and it’s only because of multiple nights of dealing with Drunk Jason that Roy can decipher what he’s trying to say.
Roy is gonna drop kick this idiot into oblivion. He will use the man’s white streak as target practice. “Idiot, you aren’t impenetrable. Pretty sure you’ve proven that to Kori.”
“Magic, an’ shu’ up. I regre’ ‘hat.”
“Do you?”
Jason’s embarrassing silence could go either way. “Anyway,” he is no longer slurring his words, Roy wonders if that’s all it takes to get a Sober Jason: embarrassment, “I’ll explain later. Nap time now.”
The blades disappear. Jason passes out on the floor, not even caring to get to the bed.
Figures.
Roy sighs, he’s been sighing a lot more since befriending Jason and leaves the man on the floor.