Chapter Text
Nightwing was back in town, both he and Batman worried by the inexplicable appearance of a League assassin in Gotham when both of them had made it extremely clear that Gotham was off-limits, which gave Jason the space to go out on a solo patrol.
The scuff of footsteps sounded on the rooftop behind him, and Jason froze. The Red Hood was leaning against the rooftop access door, staring straight at him.
As their villains went, a strange guy in a red helmet who went around offing corrupt politicians and dirty cops was definitely one of the better ones, and Jason had picked up enough chatter from the street kids to know that the guy kept his violent tendencies to those that deserved it.
He hadn’t mentioned his findings to either Damian or Bruce. Bruce was furious that the League was disobeying his edict to stay out of Gotham, and Damian’s arguments on the morality of killing gave him a headache. Jason thought it was pretty hypocritical, since Damian used be an assassin himself, but he always found himself debated into a dead end.
Neither of them knew what it was like on the streets. That the people they caught didn’t always go to jail, and even when they did, they never learned their lesson. As far as Jason was concerned, a more permanent end definitely suited everyone on the Red Hood’s kill list.
But despite his belief that the guy was more vigilante than villain, he wasn’t inclined to test it on the rooftops of Crime Alley, far from backup.
Hood watched silently as Jason snapped out his staff and settled into a wary stance. Surely the fact that Hood hadn’t already shot him meant something. Was Hood looking for information? An introduction? Was he just curious?
“I used to have a bo staff,” Hood said, his voice distorted and level.
“Oh, yeah?” Jason gave it a twirl, “Why’d you change to guns, then?” He nodded at the two visible holsters in the shadow of the dark leather jacket.
“To piss off all my teachers in one fell swoop,” Hood said, and there was something in his tone, an undercurrent that Jason didn’t like.
“League’s not fond of guns, huh,” Jason said, inching back to the edge of the roof. If he could get the slightest head start—no one knew Crime Alley better than him.
“No,” Hood said, and his tone was ice cold, “They’re not.” He shifted forward as Jason shifted back. “It’s a shame. Guns are so efficient.”
Jason was moving before Hood’s fingers finished curling around the trigger, diving to the side as the gunshot cracked the air, bullet spitting against stone. Hood was fast, faster than Jason had expected, and he was forced to dance out of the way of several gunshots, unable to make a break for the edge of the roof.
Warning shots, Jason realized, because even accounting for his dodges, the bullets were never going to hit him. “You want a fight or something?” Jason asked testily, stomping forward.
“Or something,” Hood said, quiet malice in his tone, “Just continuing the tradition, Robin number three.”
Jason set his jaw, and attacked.
The guy was good—almost as good as Damian, and Jason’s older brother had spent his whole life being trained by either Batman or the League. Jason momentarily wondered if he should call for backup, but Hood hadn’t actually tried to kill him, and he’d put the guns away in favor of meeting Jason’s strikes with hand-to-hand.
Jason had sparred with Damian before, but that was training. This guy was absolutely ruthless. He attacked Jason’s weaknesses, locking him in close range and rendering his strikes mostly ineffective, and exploited every opportunity he saw.
Jason hissed as a punch slammed into his stomach, and attempted to follow up with a retaliatory lunge—his staff only swung a foot before it hit body armor, and Hood didn’t even flinch.
Jason disengaged, and leapt back, his heart beginning to race. Suddenly, fighting with an unknown on the rooftops of the seediest part of the city sounded like an extremely bad idea. Hood didn’t let him go—he immediately attacked, forcing Jason on the defensive, his staff barely fast enough to keep up against the whirlwind of punches and kicks.
A harsh boot to his wrist caused Jason to jerk his hand back with a cry, and Hood grabbed his staff and twisted, tearing it out of his hands entirely. Jason barely registered the clatter of it hitting the floor, stumbling back with wide eyes as Hood approached.
He blocked the first punch to his face, and the kick to his ribs, but he was unable to stop the follow-through momentum of his dodge when Hood feinted out of his next strike. There were a series of harsh pinches—elbows, and the back of Jason’s thighs—and Jason crumpled to the roof with the structural integrity of a limp noodle.
He was never going to hear the end of this from Damian and Bruce. If he actually got out alive.
Jason had seen the images of Hood’s assassinations. The guy talked about efficiency, but it very clear that his victims died slow, and died screaming.
Hood’s boots stopped in Jason’s view, a foot from his face. Something whistled through the air, and Jason realized that he was holding Jason’s staff.
“You need a better weapon,” Hood mused, hefting the staff from hand to hand, “You’re not suited for this one. Too aggressive, too impatient, too insistent on getting close.”
Jason set his teeth in a snarl. Hood didn’t know anything. Jason hadn’t done some sort of cost-benefit analysis to picking up the staff. He’d just wanted—he wanted to be the Robin everyone else saw when they looked at his face.
Tim Drake had wielded the bo staff like it was an extension of his arm.
There was a sharp snap, like wood cracking.
“Did you seriously just break my staff?” Jason sucked in a furious inhale.
“You know, someone broke my staff once,” Hood mused, crouching down until Jason could see the white slits of his helmet. The broken staff was in his hand, jagged, splintered tips pointing out. “And then they impaled me on it.”
Jason stopped breathing.
“One through the hand,” Hood said, carefully rearranging Jason’s limp fingers until they were curled around one of the pieces, “And one straight through my right lung.” He lifted Jason’s arm and tucked the other piece underneath it. “It was an unpleasant experience. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Jason kept his mouth shut as Hood finished repositioning his limbs to his liking. He was wrong. This guy wasn’t a coldblooded League assassin. This guy was crazy.
Finally, Hood straightened. “Find a better weapon, baby bird,” he called out, stalking away, “Before somebody clips those wings.”
Damian almost fell off his grapple line, nearly crashing into a wall when he caught sight of red-black-green, lying limp on the rooftop, half-curled with one arm outstretched like he’d been trying to get away, the jagged pieces of his staff—
No. No. This was a nightmare. Damian had been hit with fear toxin. He hadn’t failed another Robin, he hadn’t, he couldn’t—
“Nightwing,” came the hoarse voice when Damian landed on the roof, and he nearly crumpled in relief.
“Robin,” Damian said, breathless, lunging to Jason’s side—he wasn’t moving, lying so still and silent that he could’ve been dead, and the staff was—
Wasn’t impaling his lung. Damian harshly jerked both the pieces free, and only calmed down when there was no blood on either.
“Nightwing, I’m fine!” Jason’s voice was loud and alarmed and Damian realized that he had been breathing shallow and fast. He took a deep breath and started the exercise to calm down his heart rate.
“Robin,” Damian snapped, “Report.” Damian assessed his brother’s condition—no blood, a purpling bruise on one cheek, no lump or break near Jason’s spine.
“I, uh, ran into the Red Hood.”
Damian’s fingers tightened to claws on Jason’s shoulders. He thought he’d made it perfectly clear to Grandfather what would happen if he took an interest in another one of Damian’s brothers.
“We…fought? He didn’t shoot me or anything, but then he pinched me behind the elbows—”
“Nerve strike,” Damian exhaled, the final traces of anxiety calming. He hauled Jason upright, no longer worrying about the integrity of his spine. “And the staff?”
“He broke it and tucked a piece under my arm. I don’t know. It was weird.”
It wasn’t weird. It was downright abnormal. The position, the placement—it was too eerily similar to be a coincidence.
Damian could count on one hand the number of people that knew how Timothy Drake had died, and two of them were dead.
This was a message. Damian had assumed that the Red Hood helmet was some kind of joke, a convenient disguise picked up by a League assassin for their stay in Gotham, but now—
Now it was clear that it was a joke. The murderous kind.
Damian didn’t know who was behind the mask, but he had sworn that the Joker would never lay a hand on his family ever again, and he was a man of his word.
Jason wasn’t stupid. He knew he wasn’t the genius detective his predecessor was, but the streets were a harsh teacher, and Jason had learned to trust his instincts.
There once was a little boy with a camera bag that used to scurry through the streets of Gotham, and he passed out granola bars and cheese sticks to the hungry street kids.
And then there was a red-black-green vigilante with a grapple gun that used to fly through the streets of Gotham, and he passed out tiny packed meals to the hungry street kids.
And now there was a silent killer with a red helmet that stalked through the streets of Gotham, and he passed out food vouchers to the hungry street kids.
Jason used to be one of those hungry street kids. He was well aware that finding one good samaritan in Gotham was a strange thing. Three? The odds were verging on implausible.
“I know who you are,” Jason called out from his perch on the fire escape. The Red Hood stopped at the mouth of the alley, hand twitching towards a gun, before he looked up.
“A little robin far from its nest,” Hood said, the voice distorter making his voice dispassionately level.
Jason jumped down, using handholds in the fire escape and exposed brick, to land in front of Hood, blocking his path.
“I know who you are,” he repeated, snapping open his staff.
“I thought I told you to find a better weapon,” Hood said neutrally, shifting forward.
“I chose the staff because it’s yours,” Jason said. Hood stilled.
“Excuse me?” Jason pretended there was a hint of surprise in the tone.
“I chose the staff because Batman said that you were better with the staff than anyone he’d ever seen,” Jason pressed, stepping forward. “I know who you are—” he darted a quick glance to make sure there were no obvious ears in sight before dropping his tone to a whisper, “Tim Drake.”
Hood stared at him for a long, fraught moment. Finally, he sighed, shoulders slumping. “That’s a dead boy’s name,” he said flatly.
“Who was impaled on his own staff,” Jason said impatiently, “Just like you said you were. You’re him. I don’t know why you’re trying to hide—D—Nightwing and Batman will be so happy to hear that you’re still alive! They’ve missed you so—”
Jason cut off as a gun was levelled straight at his head.
“You’re a smart bird,” Hood said, “Too smart for your own good.”
Jason was torn—because, on one hand, he’d gotten a compliment from his predecessor. Tim thought he was smart! On the other hand, that gun was still aiming right between his eyes.
“Every cape in this city is trying to keep me away from you, and yet you wander straight into the lion’s mouth,” Hood made a resigned sound, “And here I thought B had learned his lesson about Robins that don’t follow orders.”
“You’re not—”
“If your next words are anything about how Nightwing has missed me so much, I will pull the trigger,” Hood said, his fingers pressing at the catches on his helmet.
“But he—” Jason cut himself off as Tim finally pulled off the helmet, revealing a face he’d seen in countless photos. Taller, hair tied back in a messy bun that was further mussed by the helmet, a single line of white braided down behind one ear, but the same fine-boned features that had characterized the second Robin.
And vivid, almost glowing, bright green eyes.
“Do you know how many people lined up to stand between me and my murderous older brother?” Tim asked, quiet and slow and dangerous.
Jason swallowed against a dry throat. Jason wanted to protest that Damian didn’t, Damian wouldn’t—but he knew the expression in his eldest brother’s eyes every time he talked about the second Robin, and there was definitely guilt.
“I’m glad my death meant something, at the very least,” Tim said, holstering the gun and pulling out a wickedly sharp knife. Jason eyed the serrated blade with trepidation, shifting a step back. “That it gave them the push they needed to be a better family. But they’ve failed to protect this city—criminals are walking the streets with impunity, the desperate are ground even further into the dirt, and insane murderers are allowed to catch baby birds in dark alleys.”
Jason stumbled back a step as light glinted off the knife. Tim stepped further into the streetlight, his eyes almost dancing, his face blank. Jason swallowed, and stopped moving, dropping his staff out of its guard. Tim stilled.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Jason said fiercely. This was Tim. This was the Robin that had spent so much of his time on Gotham’s streets, that had done so much to keep its children safe. This was a boy who’d dedicated himself to saving the city with every breath he had, he wouldn’t—
The sudden burn of the blade sliding into him was an icy shock. Jason stared at Tim, and then down at the hilt sticking out of his stomach.
He dimly registered crumpling to his knees. A gloved hand tightened on his collar, pressing the emergency tracker sewn into Jason’s suit, before brushing a lock of hair out of Jason’s prickling eyes.
“Never meet your heroes,” Tim said softly, “All they’ll do is disappoint you.”
Jason was upright this time, not that it meant much when there was a blade piercing his gut. Jason’s expression was stunned, sucking in high, fluttery breaths as he lay slumped against the alley wall, one hand pressed to his wound, the other clenched tightly around his staff.
“Robin,” Damian said tightly, dropping down next to his brother. Jason flinched before registering his presence. “Report. Do you have any other injuries?”
Jason shook his head, mute.
Damian gently peeled Jason’s hand away from the wound. The dagger was League make—the hilt bore stylized depictions of dragons. Not just League make. League favored. Damian didn’t know anyone who received such extravagant weapons aside from his mother, and himself back when he was still a favored heir.
It was slim and sharp. Damian examined the wound, careful not to jar the knife—it had bled very little, its placement just slightly off from impacting any major organs, and—
“It’s Tim,” Jason whispered, “The Red Hood is Tim Drake.”
Damian snapped his gaze up to Jason’s face—the dagger could’ve been coated in anything, though the League didn’t usually favor hallucinogens.
“I saw him,” Jason breathed out, his voice shaking, “He took off the helmet. It’s him.”
Ra’s al Ghul’s sudden retreat from Gotham after Tim had died. His strange acquiescence to the terms that Damian and Batman had set. The Red Hood, League trained and yet focused on Gotham, the way he knew exactly what Tim’s injuries had been, the—
The placement of the knife. Carefully, deliberately non-lethal. A centimeter lower, and Jason would be down a spleen.
A taunt. Can’t keep this Robin safe either, Nightwing.
Damian eyed him as he stepped onto the training mats, his cold gaze sweeping over Jason and lingering on a spot next to his stomach. Jason fought the urge to close his arms—it had healed, there wasn’t even a scar, but his entire family had apparently taken the excuse to treat him like glass.
“You promised you’d continue my sword training today,” Jason reminded him, crossing to the weapons cabinet to retrieve the wooden practice swords. He’d pretty much dropped the training back when he decided to focus on the bo staff, but in light of recent events, he was trying out new weapons.
“There is nothing wrong in postponing it—”
“I’m tired of postponing things!” Jason couldn’t quite manage to keep his voice level, weeks of frustration bubbling over, “You won’t let me go on patrol, you won’t let me train, you’ve barely let me out of the house! I didn’t die!”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he wanted to take it back. A shadow crossed Damian’s face, the same shadow he’s seen on his father and older brother every time Tim was referenced.
There had been a confrontation, Jason knew, but no one would tell him what happened. All he knew was that Damian had limped home with a gunshot wound, and in the foulest mood he’d ever seen.
“I’m sorry,” Jason muttered.
“If you’re certain that you’ve healed, we can begin some light training,” Damian said, accepting the second practice sword and drifting back to take up a guard position.
Jason waited a couple minutes after they started, slow, easy strikes as Damian corrected his form, before speaking up, “What is he like?”
There was a split second of hesitation, but Damian didn’t try to pretend like he didn’t know what Jason was talking about. He corrected Jason’s grip on the sword, and settled back into position.
“He was smart,” Damian said, demonstrating the next step. “He was bright. He was determined—the only person aside from Pennyworth that I’ve seen argue Father to a standstill.” Jason almost lost his grip on the practice sword as he pulled it through the last motion, and Damian paused to fix his grip again.
“He was a great detective,” Damian said softly, and neither of them shot a glance to the glass case against the far wall, the tattered uniform under which those very same words were engraved. “He outsmarted my grandfather. He saved Father when he was lost in time. He—every day I regret that I never treated him like a brother. He was…brilliant.”
Jason paused mid-form. “He is,” he said quietly.
“What?”
“You keep saying he was,” Jason said, meeting Damian’s gaze, “But he’s not dead.”
Damian was perfectly still, and Jason wondered if he’d finally crossed a line.
Finally, Damian spoke, his words quiet, “Timothy Drake would’ve never stabbed a child to make a point.” There was no emotion in his tone, but Jason flinched back all the same.
Damian regarded him for a long moment before tilting his head up, “We’ll continue our practice with a live weapon. Get one of the training swords.” Jason hurried to the weapons cabinet, glad for a distraction, and grabbed the first blunt sword he found.
“No,” Damian snapped out sharply and Jason nearly dropped the sword on his foot. “Not that one. That belongs to someone else.”
Jason eyed the sword in his hand, which had no identifying marks whatsoever, and Damian’s cloudy face, before he slowly returned the sword to its place and picked up the next one.
Damian waited until Jason got back to his position before speaking again. “He died, Jason,” Damian said slowly, blue eyes sharp and piercing, “Do you understand?”
Jason nodded, biting the inside of his cheek to prevent from saying something stupid. I understand that you don’t want to accept that he’s back.
Damian let out a slow exhale after Jason headed to the showers, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling and the shadows where the bats rustled. The child was headstrong—at first, Damian had been pleased. Jason never tried to hide what he was feeling, and protested fiercely whenever he deemed a situation unacceptable. He wouldn’t come up with a plan that no one would approve of and hide it from everyone until it ended up backfiring spectacularly.
Unfortunately, it seemed like his time in the Robin suit had let him to pick up some of his predecessor’s bad habits.
Damian could interpret the look on Jason’s face easily enough. You’re wrong and I’m right and it doesn’t matter what you say. He’d often seen it on Timothy’s face.
Jason wouldn’t let this go. And Hood—Hood had already hurt him once.
It wasn’t Timothy. It couldn’t be Timothy.
He could remember Hood’s harsh laughter, the burn of a bullet slamming into his knee less painful than meeting narrowed green eyes and the blank expression as he tore Damian’s wingding out of his throat and sent it flying straight back at him.
It couldn’t be Timothy, because that would mean that Damian left his little brother alone with Ra’s al Ghul for three years.
Damian had firsthand experience with how the Pit changed a person. How repeated, multiple exposures slowly eroded away at self-control and carved out space for delusions. They called Grandfather a demon for a reason.
Father was on a fool’s errand to find Hood and convince him to stop, convince him to come home. There wasn’t enough of Timothy left to save.
Damian replaced the training swords back in the weapons cabinet and stared at the plain, unmarked training sword that he hadn’t let Jason touch.
They had just started sword training—two months after Father had returned, two months of being a proper family. And then Damian had stomped back to Bludhaven after some pointless fight, Father had left on Justice League business, and the Joker broke out of Arkham.
“I’m sorry,” Damian said quietly, “I should’ve found you sooner.” Before the Pit dissolved everything that made Timothy Drake a good person, and left only the pieces that had made him deadly.
Gotham was a shithole. It wasn’t even an opinion, it was an objective statement of fact. The crime rate was ridiculous, even putting aside the Rogues, and twenty years with a Bat lurking in the shadows hadn’t changed that.
He took a deep breath of polluted air and stared at a sky that smog and streetlights turned into an orange haze. He smiled.
Gotham was a shithole, but at least it was home.