Chapter Text
If he’s honest, he has to admit it happens by accident.
He’s been paying less attention to Gotham, too wrapped up in setting up the takeover of Kord Corporation- he could delegate, probably, but Fox is a shrewd operator, and Jason doesn’t want this done in a way that anyone sees coming.
The Red Hood needs to seem untouchable, at least for the first six months, or he’s going to be shot to ribbons by the first guy that realises Jason doesn’t have backup. He needs to stack the deck in his favour if he’s going to be fighting Batman and the mob, and if that means he spends eight hours a day making phone calls to expensive German lawyers and investment brokers and venture capitalists, then that is what he’ll do. He’s worked with worse people. Probably.
But he’d be lying if he said it didn’t give him a headache.
With a heavy exhale, he lets the receiver clatter down onto the telephone cradle, and blinks away the pain in his temples, slouching over to the ratty couch that comprises fifty percent of the furniture in his Metropolis safe house, nearly falling onto it. He’d started this process in Germany but this close to the finish line he has to be Stateside in order to sign paperwork, and he had been determined not to get too comfortable in Luthor’s city.
He’s maybe regretting that now, just a little. With a sigh, he resettles, fishing out the TV remote he’d inadvertently sat down on, and, on a whim, thumbs the power button.
The TV buzzes to life, opening on a familiar scene: Gotham, entirely engulfed by chaos.
Jason shakes his head, bitterly. He steps away for three years, and this is what the Bat lets happen?
It’d been a shock, seeing Batman let himself get caught on film. A bit of faith Jason hadn’t known he still had in the old man, lost. He’d known Batman was stubborn, bullheaded, wrong, but for him to be sloppy?
Well. That just proved Jason was right, didn’t it? Batman wasn’t working anymore.
Jason lets the reporting wash over him, only half paying attention. It had rankled, at first, sitting across the bay while his home burned, but if he jumped in now, he wouldn’t be ready, wouldn’t have a plan. Things were still in motion, and he didn’t know how much had changed on the ground since he’d been gone.
Besides, this didn’t look as bad as the time last year, when Gotham had been ejected from the Union while Jason was halfway up a mountain with no television or newspapers. That had been a hell of a thing to come back to-
On the television, the camera pans across Gotham’s skyline, and Jason’s mind goes blank.
The clocktower, Babs’ new base of operations, is a smoking ruin.
No. No no no, she couldn’t- he wouldn’t have-
He let you die, a nasty little voice in the back of Jason’s neck whispers. Why not her?
Scrambling up, mashing the mute button on the remote, he rushes to the desk in the corner, wrenching open his laptop, fingers shaking as he activates the nuclear option.
Hacking the Bats’ comms is beyond risky, but (if Oracle is off the board) he has to know.
Putting the headphone to his ear, relief floods his chest when he hears Barbara’s voice for the first time in three years, then sours when he can process well enough to hear what she’s actually saying.
It’s not Barbara that’s dead.
It’s Robin.
Jason is on the road in less than a minute. If anyone needs his signature they can come find him.
He’s not meant to be patrolling solo. There’s probably a protocol, a document in the Batcomputer’s files, crisp and clean: action plan in case of bereavement. B, the hypocrite, probably dictated something like in the event of the death of-
Tim’s brain skips, once, like a needle jumping off a record.
- a Pre-Approved Loved One (see individual personnel files) no operative should patrol unaccompanied for a period of 1-3 weeks, pending review by Batman and a licensed counsellor.
But see.
Here’s the thing.
They buried Steph this morning.
And there’s nobody left to stop him and Robin is the only mould he can fit himself into without shaking himself to pieces and so Tim needs to be Robin and Batman needs Robin.
It’s not smart. Black Mask- anyone who looked up would see Robin’s not blonde any more, would start asking questions, this is something that they should discuss, should plan, but-
But Tim needs this more than he needs to be smart about this.
So, here he is. Patrolling. It looks like a quiet night anyway, now Black Mask has more or less consolidated his place at the top of the heap.
Tim is thinking of leaving Gotham.
He has not told anyone, but she recognises it, in his hesitance, his growing quiet. She thinks perhaps he cannot look anywhere in the city without seeing ghosts.
She thinks perhaps he is right. Perhaps she recognises it because she’s feeling the same.
Gotham was a home to her, for a while. But she is not Bruce, who carries Gotham like a snail with its shell, like Stephanie-
She flinches, at the thought. Stephanie, of all of them, had been the most like Bruce in that way. But Cassandra has lived in many places, and can do good anywhere there is violence. The things that tie her to Gotham are breaking. Barbara has left. Stephanie is dead.
She sights her grapple, breathes, and fires, launching herself into the night, feeling nothing but the lurch in the pit of her stomach, then hits the roof with a roll, righting herself, and moving on.
And Tim is thinking of leaving. He has not told her, which hurts, but he has not told anyone, so at least there is that.
Tim has started to be like Bruce, in that way. Cassandra understands. It is easier to keep moving, to keep fighting, that way.
Before Shiva, she would have done the same. She’d been arrogant, childish. Stupid. Shiva had, in a way, taught her better, although she hadn’t meant to. Cassandra had seen what perfection looked like, and she found she wanted something else, instead.
She wants to go with Tim, when he goes. She would have wanted to stay with Barbara, with Tim, with Bruce, with Steph.
She cannot have that. So she will go with Tim, when he goes. And so she has to find him, and get him to tell her where he is going.
It hadn’t exactly been part of the plan, to go after Robin. For one thing, last he checked, Robin was dead.
It had been a surprise to see little Timmy Drake back in the red and green and much less yellow, if only because Jason had thought he might have the decency to hold off for more than a day after they buried the last one.
Drake’s lack of respect for the dead is one thing, but him being out all alone does present an unexpected opportunity. So far Jason’s busied himself with keeping Sionis from sitting too comfortably, making a name for himself, and setting up safe houses.
He’s going to get on the Bats’ radar soon, so he might as well do it in a way that takes one of them off the board.
In his after-action report, he’ll probably call what just happened ‘a fight’.
What actually happened was Gotham’s newest up-and-coming drug baron mauled him like a bear hunting salmon.
Tim hits the roof so hard he bounces twice, rolling into an undignified heap. The tumble does neatly disguise the way he hits the emergency alert, so he can at least claim it was all part of the plan.
“Twice? Twice? Are you insane?” The metallic rasp of the Red Hood’s modulated voice turns almost indecipherable through their furious disgust. “What makes you so special you think you can take this gig from a dead kid twice?”
Robins are supposed to quip, at times like this. Tim opts instead for gurgling indistinctly into the tarmac of the roof. It doesn’t have the same effect a one-liner would have, but does at least let his attacker know he’s still conscious.
Shit. No. Bad. Should have played dead, come on Tim, you know this. Oh well, the jig’s up, might as well get-
The world goes white and Tim hears shrimp colours as the Red Hood hauls him up by the wrist and wrenches his hand-
-It’s whole seconds before he comes back to himself, crumpled on the ground, but it’s okay, it’s a broken wrist at least but he’d be a lousy excuse for a Robin if he couldn’t fight with at least a few bones broken, he’s not out of the game yet-
The Red Hood snorts and steps back, unimpressed, and finally Tim feels himself tapping into the kind of furious adrenaline that’s actually useful. Condescending prick.
“Yeah I don’t think the big man upgraded here.”
“Wha-”
“Am I talking too quick for you? I'm saying you're a kid playing dress up. Come back when you’re at least tough enough to wear short pants.”
Joke’s on this asshole, Tim’s communicator clicks once, which means Cass is about to swoop in and dribble that helmet like a basketball-
Tim blinks and the Red Hood is gone. By the time Batgirl drops silently into the scene the only evidence they were ever here is a few scuff marks in the gravel and Tim’s neatly fractured wrist.
Tim’s emergency alert goes off, which does make finding him easier.
It’s not the same, she forces herself to remember, tearing across rooftops. He has not been taken. He’s in a fight. He can fight back, or get away. He has his gear. He’s closer. There is nothing distracting her, or getting in her way. It’s not the same.
There’s movement on the top of a tower, still streets away, the tallest building for blocks around. The angle is bad, but she can see a figure standing up, faced away from her, looking down at their feet.
No time to catch her breath. She clicks her comm once, aims her grapple, and launches herself up as quick as she can.
Not quick enough, no no- the figure half-turns to face her as she pulls herself toward the next roof, a glint of a helmet in the moonlight, one hand on a hip, reaching for a gun, and she can see it, the movement playing out in her mind, inevitable. The Red Hood will draw a pistol, turn, and shoot Tim while he’s lying on the ground. And she will be too late to stop it.
In his ear, there’s a click on the Bats’ comm line, which means it’s time to reassess.
It hadn’t been an accident that he jumped Robin here, on the tallest building on the block. He’s got sight advantage on every building within grapple range. Bats like pouncing down on people, and he’s not inclined to let them indulge.
He’s about finished here, anyway. Robin’s not a factor for six weeks, twelve if Alfred is still deferring to Leslie. And maybe the little twerp can take the downtime to think about how bulletproof he isn’t.
Unlikely, though, from what Jason’s seen of Robin Three And Five. He doesn’t seem the introspective type.
Anyway, he half-turns, one hand on a gun for his own peace of mind, scanning the rooftops below for signs of Batman or Nightwing or-
Uh-oh.
Batgirl incoming.
Cain hadn’t been part of the plan. Or, rather, the plan had been to avoid her at all costs. The second she got involved his options narrowed dramatically.
He knows Batman. He can fight Batman, exploit the fact that he knows the man to have the upper hand against anyone Batman trained. He’s not afraid of Batman or Nightwing or any variety of Robin.
Batman, by all accounts, didn’t teach Cain a single goddamn thing about fighting.
Time to skedaddle.