Chapter Text
Tim likes to pride himself on his ability to be realistic. He knows that when his mom and dad tell him they’ll be back on a certain date, he should always add at least six weeks to that date if he wants it to be accurate. He knows that if Kon arrives at the tower with his headphones in and sunglasses off, red dancing in his eyes, then his best friend has had a chat with Superman, and that he should order more Kryptonian-grade punching bags. He knows that his time as Robin was finite and always has been, even if the end date was as of yet undetermined.
None of these things bothered Tim, necessarily, they just were.
However, he was slightly bothered by what he knew right at the moment, and that was that he was not going to win this fight.
He may have come to that realization as he was flying through the air on a collision course with the wall, but the journey isn't as important as the destination, and Tim’s mind had arrived at its destination only a split second before his body arrived at its destination.
The impact forces the air from his lungs, but it isn’t hard enough for him to forget his training, and Tim lands mostly on his feet. He has just enough time for a quick glance at his attacker, at the gleaming red metal, before he's throwing himself to the side to avoid bullets.
Tim turns his momentum into a neat roll, coming out of it at a run. He hears the sound of heavy, thudding footsteps behind him, but he doesn’t risk turning to look. If he's going to outrun the Red Hood—and his bullets—he’ll need every second he can get.
He knows—realistically—that Hood wouldn’t have come here without a way to completely isolate Tim. Ever since the man had shown up in Gotham, he’d made his hatred for Robin clear, and his cleverness even clearer. Bruce, understandably, wasn’t fond of villains who specifically targeted Robin, and so the man had thrown everything else to the back burner and made the Red Hood priority number one.
Tim had wondered, at the time, if that maybe sent a message to the other rogues, that the best way to get Batman’s attention was to go after Robin, therefore making him more of a target, but there’d been no increase in the rate he was targeted so far, so he wasn’t going to raise his concerns just yet.
But despite having all of Batman’s attention, the Red Hood was still on the streets. It was like he knew Bruce’s moves before he made them. He knew how to avoid patrol routes, how to avoid traps. He even knew to lay low when Nightwing came to town.
Ever since Jason, Dick was especially upset when Robin was targeted. That wasn’t a side of him most people got to see, but right now the Red Hood was bearing the full brunt of it.
Not to mention, he knew their identities. If that wasn’t the mark of somebody really smart, then Tim didn’t know what was. It was also the only reason Tim wasn’t freaking out more about the fact that he was unmasked and not in uniform, although he wouldn't exactly mind a layer of kevlar between his body and the man's bullets right now.
All this to say, the man was good. If he was smart enough to have evaded Batman and Nightwing all this time, then he was too smart to leave Tim a way to contact them while in danger.
This didn’t keep him from trying, though. Even if he couldn’t reach anybody from the comms center, he kept an extra bo staff hidden behind the desk. Would having his weapon improve his odds enough to win? No, probably not. Would it make him feel a lot better? Yes absolutely.
Unfortunately, the universe didn’t seem to be on his side tonight. He turns the corner, the door to the comms center in sight, and then a gunshot rings out and a searing pain appears in his thigh.
Tim cries out and falls as his leg crumples beneath him. He clenches his jaw against the pain, using his hands to drag himself to the near wall and pull himself up until he was standing again, all the weight on his good leg.
Hood’s footsteps had slowed to a walk, like he knew his prey was injured and now he was toying with it. Tim grimaces as he begins limping down the hall, every movement sending a fresh wave of pain from his leg.
Tim was barely halfway down the hallway when Hood turned the corner.
“Looks like someone clipped your wings, Replacement.” Even through the voice modulator, Red Hood’s amusement is evident.
“What, this? This is nothing.” Tim shoots back without hesitation. He doesn’t even turn to look at his pursuer, too intent on reaching the door ahead of him, which ends up being detrimental to his health.
If he’d looked, he would have seen the Red Hood raise his gun again, and maybe he would have been able to dodge the next bullet. But he didn’t look, and that bullet ripped through his abdomen. The surprise of it made Tim forget his already injured leg, which made no attempt at holding his weight when he accidentally stepped on it, which is how Tim ended up back on the floor. The pain in his side made it significantly harder to pull himself up, so Tim turned to face the Red Hood instead.
As the man approached, Tim did a quick appraisal of his injuries. His leg wound was minimal. There was no exit wound, so Tim had an appointment with a pair of tweezers to look forward to, but it wasn’t bleeding any more than your average gunshot wound so he knew his veins and arteries were still intact. The wound in his side was at least through and through, and Tim knew his own anatomy well enough to know that his organs were all still intact.
He should still be trying to get away. He couldn’t win this fight before he had two brand new holes in his body, and those additions hadn’t exactly increased his odds. But he knew that trying to escape would just add to his growing collection of gunshot wounds, and as fun as that would be, he’d rather postpone it if possible.
So he goes back to what he knows. Even unarmed and wounded, a Robin is never truly defenseless. Not when they can still speak. Dick had originated the act, the quips and the teasing and the riling up rogues so that they were so busy arguing with a child that Batman had time to arrive. Jason had taken to it like a fish to water when he became Robin, and although his words tended to incite violence, they still succeeded in throwing off the rogues enough that he didn’t get killed.
Until he did.
But it had taken Tim some time. He knew he could be annoying, he’d heard his parents say as much every time he’d spoken out of turn, or complained when their trips were extended. But intentionally being annoying was something they’d actively tried to train out of him. So when Tim became Robin, he was silent at first. He’d worked so hard to get there, to actually be patrolling with Batman, that he didn’t want to accidentally annoy Bruce into benching him.
When he did finally do things the Robin way, it was accidental. Poison Ivy had been monologuing, Batman and Robin wrapped in her vines, when she’d said something about photography. Tim can’t even remember what she said, just that it had been so blatantly wrong that he’d scoffed, and then he had to correct her.
During his lecture, Bruce had managed to escape the vines without her noticing, and had apprehended her quickly after that. When she was back in custody, he’d turned to Tim and the faint crinkle around his eyes nearly made Tim gasp out loud.
“Good work, Robin .” He’d said, and Tim had vowed at that moment to learn to quip with the best of them.
“You sure do know how to make a guy feel special, Hood.” He teases. He uses his good leg to push himself back, although it’s pointless. Every push is equal to two of Hood’s steps, and the man was rapidly approaching. “I gotta say, I can’t imagine what I’ve done to earn your undivided attention.”
“No?” Hood is standing over him now, and Tim realizes that he has somehow backed himself up against the wall, instead of the door a few feet away. That is less than ideal . “Let me explain, then.”
A frush burst of agony erupts from his leg as Hood stomps on his wound. Tim can’t hold back a startled shout and flings his good leg out towards his attacker. This proves to be a mistake, because Hood grabs his leg easily, trapping it against his side and twisting and oh , legs aren’t supposed to bend like that.
The pain from this new injury takes a few seconds to reach his brain, but when it does Tim’s vision goes spotty for a second. When he regains it, he becomes aware of a high pitched noise of undetermined origin.
On an unrelated note, the noise stops when he closes his mouth.
He barely has a moment to breathe before there’s a hand around his neck and he’s being lifted , his back dragging against the wall. His arms flail for a second before they wrap around the wrist pinning him to the wall. He’s not foolish enough to think he can really free himself from Hood’s grasp right now, but he does know that it’s probably not good for all of his weight to be supported by his neck, so he lets his— currently —uninjured arms do some of the work.
“What’s so special about you?” The helmet makes Hood’s voice come out as a staticky growl, and if they were on better terms Tim might compliment him on it. It certainly ups his intimidation factor.
Tim would know.
“I thought you were supposed to tell me?” He knows it’s a hypothetical question, but the words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. Now that he’s started, he’s not going to be able to shut his mouth until he physically can’t open it.
Or until Batman arrives, but one of those situations is looking far more likely than the other at the moment.
Hood rewards his comment by pulling him away from the wall and slamming him back into it. The action does nothing for the wound in Tim’s abdomen, and he swears he feels something in his ribs crack.
“Hey, that’s pretty impressive.” If he gets out of this alive, he’s going to learn how to shut up. “I know I’m not that big, but you’re easily lifting me with one arm. What’s your workout routine?”
Hood doesn’t think he’s as funny as he does, and Tim gets a fist to his jaw for his words. Then, because apparently he’s not done antagonizing the big, scary, Gotham crime-lord, Tim spits the blood from his brand new split lip right onto the shiny, red metal of the helmet.
Hood digs his fingers into the wound in Tim’s side and Tim clenches his teeth against a scream. As it is, he can’t keep the grimace from his face or the tears from pooling in his eyes.
Then, Hood drops him, and Tim’s legs had apparently forgotten they were both injured now. They try to bear his weight, and although he’d been able to keep his mouth shut before, the combination of pain from his broken leg and the leg with a hole in it does draw a sharp cry from his lips as he falls. The landing is worse, because apparently Tim was right when he thought he felt something crack earlier, and his ribs light up with pain when he lands on them.
“What, nothing clever to say now?” Hood crouches down over Tim. If he were smarter, he wouldn’t get that close to Tim’s arms. Or maybe he’s just smart enough, because Tim is too busy gasping in pain to retaliate.
“I asked you a question, Replacement.” Tim finds out first hand how it feels to take one of Hood’s steel-toed boots to a set of broken ribs, and frankly, it’s not an experience he would recommend. 0/10, would not do again . Unfortunately, he doubts he’d get much choice in that matter. “Answer me.”
“Sorry,” Tim pastes on his sweetest smile, though his bloody teeth may diminish the effect. “Can you repeat the question, I couldn’t quite hear it.”
Instead of repeating the question like Tim had so kindly requested, Hood grabs his arm. Tim jerks against his grip, panicked, but can do nothing to save his shoulder as Hood twists it violently. There’s a sickening pop and Tim’s arm falls limply to the ground. Nausea swirls in his stomach as he struggles to breathe through the fresh wave of pain.
“Did you get it that time, or do I have to repeat myself again?”
“Fuck. You.” Tim gasps out, glaring.
Within seconds there’s a gun at his temple, and Tim freezes. Not that he’d had much range mobility before the gun was there, but it certainly is a good deterrent.
Hood chuckles, dark and low and probably very intimidating even without the voice modulator. “Nothing to say now, birdie?” He digs the muzzle of the gun into Tim’s temple, but Tim has finally remembered how to stay quiet, so he only glares. “That’s what I thought.”
Now that Tim has finally stopped talking, it seems like Hood has decided it’s his turn to fill the silence.
“I thought you were supposed to be an improvement? The Bat got his first Robin from the circus, he picked the second one up out of the gutter, but you? You’re born and bred Gotham Elite, shouldn’t you be better than a circus boy and a gutter rat?” He uses the gun to move Tim’s head from side to side, as if inspecting him.
Tim’s silence apparently only lasts as long as it takes for someone to insult his predecessors.
“Don’t you dare talk about them.” He hisses furiously. “You don’t know the first thing about them, either of them. They’re both better men than you’ll ever be, than I’ll ever be. Don’t—don’t you dare.” He clenches his jaw and looks at the floor, anticipating the sudden burst of pain that always comes after he talks.
It doesn’t come this time, so he chances a glance back up. The Red Hood is oddly still, and the glowing white eyes of his helmet are boring into Tim in a way that makes his heartbeat speed up.
“Well,” Tim flinches as he speaks. “ One of them is a better man. The other one will never be a man, isn’t that right? Because he went and got himself killed. By my count, you’ve actually got him beat, so at least you’ve got that going for you. He only lasted two months past his fifteenth birthday, you’re going on three.”
“Shut up!”
“That’s a lot of anger for the dead boy you replaced. Tell me, how long did you wait? How long until you decided it was okay to steal his place, his name, his family .” The gun is back to prodding his temple, and Tim becomes starkly aware of angry tears streaking down his face. “How long until Batman decided to replace his son with the better model.”
Tim shakes his head, trembling slightly, though whether it’s from fear or anger, he’s not sure. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No?” A dark chuckle accompanies the question as the gun is pulled away from Tim’s head and holstered. Now would be the perfect opportunity to move, but it seems that there’s a bit more of his blood on the floor than in his body, so he’s finding it very hard to do anything but glare right now.
He watches as Hood lifts his hands to his helmet, fingers deftly pressing buttons and flipping latches until it loosens enough for him to lift it off of his head. The man underneath the helmet is simultaneously exactly like Tim had expected and nothing like he’d expected.
His hair is dark, save for the strand of white that flops across his forehead. Underneath that shock of white is a red domino with the lenses retracted, revealing a toxic, swirling green. His jaw is clenched and his lips are screwed up in an antagonizing smirk.
That’s everything Tim had expected. All of the scary, intimidating parts of Hood’s appearance could have jumped straight from Tim’s nightmares.
What he hadn’t expected is what they looked like all together. The domino mask did little to conceal his appearance, not when Tim had spent so many nights looking at that face through a camera lens. Tim was pretty sure he knew that face with a domino better than he did without, and that face belonged to Jason Todd.
A much older, meaner, and scarier Jason Todd, but Jason Todd all the same.
“Jason?” Tim’s voice wobbles embarrassingly as he speaks, and Hood’s— Jason’s expression turns to one of amusement.
“Wanna try and tell me again that I have no idea what I’m talking about?” Even his voice is instantly recognizable. It’s much deeper, and the undercurrent of cruelty running through it is one that Tim’s never heard before, but it’s Jason Todd’s accent and inflections.
“I don’t–” Tim’s train of thought comes to a halt. “What?” All he can do is examine Jason’s face, eyes flickering between that face and the helmet on the floor, brain still struggling to comprehend the fact that Jason Todd and the Red Hood are one and the same.
Tim’s shock ends abruptly when there’s a flash of movement and then a bright burst of pain in what was previously his only remaining functional limb. He’s too shocked to even try and keep from crying out—in surprise, in pain, who knows—and he jerks forward instinctively. He looks down at his right shoulder and inhales shudderingly as he examines the hilt of the knife sticking out of it.
The tears that once stemmed from fury were now caused by pain and anguish, and Tim slumped against the wall, all of the fight draining out of him.
“Why are you doing this?” The defeat is obvious in his voice, in the tears that cut tracks through the dried blood on his face, but Tim can’t find it in himself to care.
“Because someone has to.” Jason has drawn his gun again and points it at Tim’s forehead this time. “Because someone has to keep Bruce from ever putting another kid into the suit. If he can’t keep Robin safe, he doesn’t deserve a Robin.”
“Bruce didn’t–” Tim’s mouth snaps closed as Jason’s finger tightens on the trigger.
“Avenge me? Didn’t put that piece of shit down like the rabid animal he is? I noticed, and if Bruce thinks you’re actually safe with that clown still running around, he’s delusional.” Jason tilts his head and sends Tim a look that almost seems sympathetic. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but this is nothing personal. You replacing me is kind of an asshole move and all, but I probably wouldn’t have to kill you for it if Joker were dead. This is just to teach Batman a lesson. Bruce will learn one way or another, either he quits putting kids in the suit, or he starts putting his villains down.”
Tim’s eyes dry up, and there’s a sudden roaring in his ears that almost drowns out Jason’s speech after he says it’s ‘nothing personal’. How can it not be personal? This is Robin, and he’s going to kill Tim because he hates Tim. He has to hate Tim, because indifference would be worse. Knowing that he doesn’t even matter enough for Jason to care whether he lives or dies outside of the mantle of Robin hurts .
“This is because he won’t kill the Joker?” Tim’s voice is a hoarse whisper, so soft he’s not even sure Jason heard him. Tim lifts his head, a steely determination in his eyes, and glares straight down the barrel of the gun. Suddenly, he’s struck by the petty, vindictive urge to just be mean , and if he’s going to die anyway, he may as well give in.
“You’re no better than he is.” He spits out, jaw clenched. For the umpteenth time that night, there’s a fresh bloom of pain on Tim’s body, this time across his cheekbone as Jason’s gun comes down hard against it.
“Don’t you dare compare me to Batman.” There’s fury in Jason’s voice, and satisfaction curls in Tim’s gut.
“I’m not.” He straightens his head from where it was turned by the force of the blow and meets Jason’s eyes. “You’re a little ahead of schedule, sure, but then who’s going to criticize an overachiever?”
He thinks he sees a glimmer of recognition in Jason’s eyes, but Tim forges on. “The last guy, he stopped calling himself the Red Hood long before he got to this part, so really, well done.”
“No.” Jason’s voice is hoarse now, but Tim is on a roll.
“It’s nothing personal, right? It’s not like you have it out for me personally . This is all just to get to Batman , he’s the one you care about. Robin’s just an unfortunate bystander, really. You wouldn’t go after him if it weren’t for Batman. Hey, you know what, I could give you a recommendation on a hairstylist if you’d like, so you can dye your hair, really get into character.”
The gun is trembling between Tim’s eyes now, and he decides to go in for the final blow.
“You’re no better than him, Jason.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re no better than the Joker .”