Noisome

A rooftop game ends in chaos when Joker breaks into the Batfamily’s comms with a challenge: one of you is missing — come find them. The clock is ticking, the trail is rotting, and not everyone is where they’re supposed to be.
What It Means
Noisome is a formal and literary word used to describe things that are very unpleasant or disgusting; it is used especially to describe offensive smells. Noisome can also mean “highly obnoxious or objectionable” as in “we were put off by their noisome habits.”
// The noisome odor of a trash can in the alley was so strong that even diners seated inside the adjacent restaurant complained to staff.

Notes:

hey ya'll, these Word of the Day stories were originally supposed to be one shots... but with this idea I wanted to let it breathe. So this will be a couple of chapters and I might be a smidge slower than my usual getting them out.
Hope ya'll enjoy the intro chapter!!!

Chapter Text

“--llo, helLlLlLoOoOoO HAHAHAHA. Is this thing on?”

The bats froze in their tracks as the familiar voice sounded out over their comms.

“Joker” Batman replied, able to recover quicker to the intrusion than his children.

“Oh boy it DID work, HAHHAHAHAHA!” Joker all but screamed in their ears. It had been a quiet night, quiet enough that they had decided to play rooftop tag. “I’m oh so sorry to break up your fun HAHAHAHA, but” dropping his pitch he said in a sing-song manner “I have a better game in mind.”

“Oracle, track his signal” Red Robin pipped in, breaking the two’s conversation.

“Oh yes Oracle, hack away HAHAHAHAHA. It doesn’t matter though, I took precautions. It will take your precious little Oracle longer to find me than I need HAHAHAHA.”

“Get on with it” Nightwing barked out. Every bat around the city had frozen in their spots, they had scattered themselves for their game of tag. Meaning the second they had a location it would be easy to catch the Joker.

“Now, now tisk tisk,” Joker said, toyingly. “The original never did have any manners.”

Silence.

“Since the little birdies are flying around all on their own tonight I thought it would be the perfect time to play a little game; Who can find Robin the fastest. The birds and the bats, or dear Uncle Joker HAHAHAHAHA. Time’s ticking you better run.” Joker then tacked on “you might not have a second, HAHAHAHAHA,” before he left the frequency for their comms.

As they heard him chime off their devices chaos erupted.

“ROBIN REPORT”

“Baby bat where are you”

“Tracking Robin now”

“Fucking hell”

“Robin head to Batman”

“Fuck fuck fuck fuCK FUCK”

“ENOUGH” Robin screamed, breaking their spiraling as he declared “I am atop —-”

“NO DON’T” Red Robin butt in. “If he has access to our comms no one gives locations away. Everyone heads to the rendezvous.”

Then the comms fell silent.

All the little birdies flew but one.

0o0o0

Tim was the second to last to arrive at the rendezvous point. He had been hiding in one of the old boats at the docks so he could maintain having never been caught at tag when shit had hit the fan.

He had been the furthest away.

Why wasn’t he the last one to arrive?

Everyone exchanged glances, they were all thinking the same thing when the comms chimed again, signaling someone was joining the frequency.

“Ahhhhhhh, I see you all are in your little gossip circle HAHAHAHA.”

“Joker” Batman ground out – his voice sounding like razor blades being ground through gravel as he stalked towards the edge of the building, protectively putting his children safely behind him – “We have Robin. What are you planning?”

“Ohhhhhh, no no no no no Batsy,” Joker explained, giggling to himself. “You misunderstood me, and now you little birdy is lost again, HAHAHAHAHAHA.”

The quiet chime of Joker leaving the frequency was heard as silence befell the Bats. Their hearts were rabbiting away in their chests as they realized what Joker had meant.

“You better run,” Red Robin recapped, quoting Joker. “You might not have a second.”

As everyone frantically looked around at each other he put the pieces together. “He wasn’t talking about time, he was talking about Hood. The second Robin.”

Chapter 2 Summary:

Jason gets boo boos

Chapter Text

Consciousness was beaten into him with a laugh.

As he came to, he was met with the stench of the sewer systems and the shrill laughter of a clown.

Trying to sit up proved futile, his legs had been bound together and his hands were cuffed around an exposed pipe.

Maneuvering his arm to try and reach the hidden lock pick in his sleeve was utterly useless. Looking at his body in the dim light of the sewers – light coming from god knows what in the distant tunnels — he saw he had been stripped of his armour.

He had been left in his underarmour: a simple black long sleeve workout shirt and leggings.

No gloves. No kevlar. No helmet. No tracker.

No hope in the bats finding him any time soon.

“NO YOU IDIOT,” the tell-tale sign of metal hitting metal, broke Joker's sentence. “It needs to be perfect, HAHAHAHA.”

There were a few anxiety ridden moments where the tunnels fell into silence. The footsteps started advancing toward him.

As the figures advanced towards him, their bulking figures were illuminated from behind. Making it so only their black shadowed silhouettes contained the detail of their forms.

They were both of similar build but with one standing four or five inches taller than the other.

Their footfalls were out of sync as they walked towards the bound Hood.

The hulking figures stopped a pace away from his restrained ankles. The taller of the two is just a smidge behind the shorter. He tried to make up for his short stature by menacingly hitting the palm of his hand with the baseball bat he held.

“Look at you” Joker called out, his silhouette further down the tunnel. “My little, lost bird. But, don’t you worry. Uncle Joker helped make you my dear. Lets see what happens when you get even more of my influence HAHAHAHAHA!”

As the Joker broke out into his screaming cackles his goons began their assault. The shorter whacking hit upper body with bone crunching force, as the taller — seemingly pulling a crowbar out of nowhere – began his own assault on Red Hood's legs.

0o0o0

He had refused to give Joker the satisfaction of his scream when he had been a child, that stubbornness hadn’t faded with age.

He had been enduring their torture for hours, maybe longer. It was probably morning by now. They were now on their third round of changing locations. They couldn’t stay in one place for too long or they would risk the Bat’s finding them.

As the goons held him up, they splashed forward. The rancid liquid splattering their bodies more and more with each step.

Two shattered ankles, a broken femur, ribs that were either cracked or pulverized under his skin and his right shoulder was dislocated – being stretched even further as they carried him.

Jason hung limply between them, head down, barely conscious. Ahead, Joker all but skipped down the tunnel. The beam of the flashlight bouncing off the walls with the madman's erratic movements. The stray rays of light reflecting off the water, giving more light to the closed cavern as they trudged further into the deep dark below.

“Almost there kiddo!!!” Joker sang from ahead. “You always were one for theatrics, you get that from me dearie” Joker said, turning around to throw a hand over his heart in a mock gesture of affection.

As he turned back – Jason having not even lifted his head, his neck too injured from the bat – Joker loudly rejoiced “I hope you remembered your lines!”

About a mile east of their location, on the street level, a manhole cover was pried from its home.

Batman dropped into the darkness.

Chapter 3 Summary:

tick tick boom

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

They couldn’t find Jason. Joker had found and removed every locator in his suit and left it in a random abandoned building.

Combining through what they could find from every source — recent events, Joker’s history, security cameras of the area, police reports of other rogues and the environment around Jason's gear — and had found nothing.

It was like they had disappeared.

Then Bruce noticed a scratch on a manhole cover.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

0o0o0

He didn’t know how long they had carried him. He had either zoned out or passed out along the way, resulting in him having absolutely no idea where they were now.

Why had no one come to rescue him?

Were they even trying?

Or was history doomed to repeat itself?

Each of Jokers taunts now we're being accompanied with a hit from the crowbar, for “old times sake.”

He knew the clown was mocking him, but his ears were ringing too loudly for anything to be audible. With each impact of the crowbar the black spots that had been dancing around in his vision would grow.

Almost like they had a pulse.

Growing and shrinking with the swing of the metal tool.

It was almost hypnotizing.

It was hard to feel the pain now.

Last time that had resulted in Joker leaving. Guess it's not fun to beat something to death if it stops trying to stay alive.

Last time….

Then, Jason blinked.

0o0o0

“Hello Batsy” Joker sang as he pointed a camcorder at his own face. The only source of light coming from a few flashlights shining on the curved walls behind him.

“Batman, we have confirmation Joker is in the sewers” Oracle reported as the broadcast was transmitted to them. How Joker had managed to hack into the Batcave's systems — overriding Oracle and Red Robin's code work without anyone noticing — was a problem for tomorrow.

“I just thought, since you missed it last time” Joker paused to giggle at his own antics. “That I should make a little home movie HAHAHAHAHA. That way, you can watch it over, and over, and over, and over, and over HAHAHAHAHA.”

As Joker controlled his own insatiable laughter he put the camera down, with the movement they caught a glimpse of what looked to be an alarm clock at 3:00. The camera was angled to a form lying on the ground, half lying in the sewage in a puddle of their own blood.

“We have visual” Oracle stated as the click clack of her typing increased over the comm link.

“He’s still breathing, but there is a bomb,” Red Robin informed everyone. Batman had bailed almost immediately to search for his lost son. Nightwing had barked out all of their stations, falling easily into the role he had been forced to take many times.

Red Robin was to report back to the cave with Robin. He was to aid Oracle in finding as much information as he could as Robin prepped the med bay for treatment with Alfred.

Spoiler was to inform the GCPD as well as get the Batmobile prepped for advanced life support should they need it.

And he had descended into the sewers to help find his Little Wing.

Tim had synced up their comms to the broadcast, so those searching would be able to hear immediately if Jason gave them any clues.

If he gained consciousness that is.

They all had strict orders to follow their roles, giving updates as soon as they got them.

Tim had seen Nightwing like this once before.

That had been a long time ago.

When Joker had taunted him about Jason’s death.

0o0o0

He was alone.

His wrists tightly bound with zip ties and… nothing else. The rest of his body was unbound. Just lying on his side, his legs submerge in the waste water.

Trying to sit up just resulted in his head feeling like a gusher under too much pressure, moving just the tiniest bit more and SPLAT.

Instead he lowered his head back to the rank cement, taking the closest thing his body could to calming breaths before he reopened his eyes. Slowly surveying his surroundings made his heart begin to rabbit away in his chest. His breath hitching had nothing to do with his collapsing lung.

Just on the other side of the biohazardous water was a metal pipe sitting on top of a wooden crate with a cam-corder pointed at him and a device…

A pipe bomb.

Shining bright red in the utter darkness of the sewers the count down read 0:56.

He tried to struggle, to sit up, but he couldn’t. Everything in him was damaged. The flesh of his body was a rotten smoldering thing as the blown blood vessels saturated his muscles. He didn’t have enough blood pressure to handle sitting up. The motion caused his heart to race, vision blacking out again as all of the blood rushed out of his head no matter how slowly he moved.

It didn’t matter.

Even if he was able to sit up he wouldn’t be able to leave.

He couldn’t walk, couldn’t crawl.

He was doomed to the fate set before him by a mad clown.

It was happening again.

Why did it always have to be him?

He didn’t want to be Prometheus. The only thing he had ever done was try to help the less fortunate. To save kids from living the same childhood he had.

He didn’t deserve this.

Didn’t earn this punishment.

He had died the first time from not being wanted. From Bruce not believing him. He hadn’t killed Garzonas.

But that didn’t matter.

He had paid for it with his life either way.

Once again, he was dying by Bruce's main rogue for nothing.

And he would die alone.

Forever alone.

There was a rattling sound that echoed through the cavernous system with him.

His chest was burning, hitching with each breath he tried to take.

He was crying. The rattling was his body reacting to his inability to inflate one of his lungs. His tears leaving clean streaks upon his cheeks as he wept.

Once again he would die alone and unwanted.

No one had come to save him.

He had been caught in a storm of violence, fate and flawed systems his entire life.

He held his breath, causing the burning to swell just that much more as he forced himself to calm his breaths.

He had already died once, he knew what to expect.

In.

Hold.

Out.

0o0o0

Jason was lying still, motionless besides the minute rise and fall of his breath.

The light was fading as Joker and his goons left Jason alone.

When an audible click had sounded Tim had started his own countdown for three minutes.

As the light faded – before the camera had the chance to switch to night vision – the red light from the countdown illuminated Jason’s battered body.

He wasn’t moving.

Babs and Tim couldn’t find him.

The signal was hidden behind so many firewalls that it would take too long for them to dismantle them all.

They were going to run out of time.

They only had a minute left.

The only sound that was coming from the comms was Bruce and Dicks ragged breathing as they raced against the clock through the sewers.

At 1:24 seconds remaining Tim informed everyone that Jason was awake.

He looked groggy, weak in his attempt to sit as he all but fainted backwards onto the cement of the pipe.

At 56 seconds remaining — when Jason noticed the count down — a gut wrenching sob was heard.

Their blood ran cold as their ever stoic brother began to sob, the delirium mixing with the dread of the bomb detonating looming over his head.

0o0o0

In.

Hold.

Out.

He was not Prometheus. He hadn’t acted out of defiance.

He was a Shakespearean tragedy. He had bled like a saturated sunrise with his empathy. A good heart that had been twisted, growing cold with grief and betrayal from circumstances out of his control.

Like Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello – he wasn’t evil, he was broken.

He had been betrayed by the world, doomed by the narrative. His downfall an amalgamation of vulnerability, idealism and the failure of those who were supposed to protect him – keep him safe.

He had tried to save his mother.

He had tried to be a perfect son for Bruce.

But in the end, he had come back wrong. Twisted by the acrid waters of the Lazarus pits.

It was almost comedic.

This life had started in acrid waters and it would end in pungent waters.

His crying had tampered down into a hiccupping mess. His spasming diaphragm caused his pulverized ribs to grind together, further eviscerating his flesh.

Tilting his head slightly he looked back at the count down.