Chapter Text
Bruce had decided to go talk to joker. As if that psycho could ever be reformed. Anger bubbled in Jason’s gut as he thought back to what had been done to him. Joker deserved to be dead.
Deep breath in.
The anger always resurfaced whenever he thought of what Bruce had failed to do. Kill the man that had killed him.
Hold.
He was trying to accept that his father could never get himself to kill. Not even the joker. Not even the murderer of his so called ‘son’. The bitterness would never truly fade. He knew it. But he had also come to accept it. He would never be a true part of this family. He was not one of them.
Breathe out.
The realization yet again left a dull ache in his heart. Filled the void, he refused to let anger occupy anymore.
“Jason come in.” His eyes snapped to the Batcomputer. He had totally not been too distracted to pay attention to being on comms. And it was totally not because he was brooding. He suppressed a groan. Why did everyone else have to be busy tonight?
“What up Old man?” He muttered.
The urge to just grunt had been a second of horrifying correlations he was one hundred percent never going to think about. He was not brooding. And he was definitely not brooding like Bruce.
“Joker’s gone.” A chill ran down Jason’s spine. Had this same urgency colored Bruce’s voice when it had been Jason he was after… “Do a sweep of the whole perimeter. Check all the security cameras in and around Arkham. I need his coordinates now.”
Jason fingers clacked along the keyboard. The voice echoed too loudly in the cave. He could feel the sweat along his brow. This wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t like any of the other times Joker had escaped since he’d come back. Something was wrong. He could feel that realization settle along the curves of his bones, weighing him down.
He checked the trail of security cameras. Nothing…
Nothing…
Nothing…
Until… there!
Jason’s eyes scanned the screen. He froze. Why was he in a residential area…
His heart sped up. His eyes fixed on the name the house was listed under. Curses spilled out of his mouth. He did not have time to freeze right now. “I’m sending the coordinates. He’s in Gordon’s house. I’m closer. I’m going there.” He muttered quickly into his earpiece.
“Jason don’t do anything rash-”
He scoffed at that. As if he was letting the fucker pull any more shit. He was out of his seat before Bruce could even finish. His anger arose, yet again, but he did not have time to push it back. Helmet. He needed his helmet. And keys.
He was on his bike within minutes, hitting the throttle so fast it jolted into motion. The speed meter read higher and higher. The sounds of the streets faded into the constant rev. Jay didn’t care if he was going over footpaths or skipping lights along the way. He had a bad feeling about this. Something was so inherently wrong. He had felt something similar before…once…a time he could not recall…that sharp tug in his gut that made him ride twist the throttle even further. Something was wrong. He could not let anything happen to Babs or the commissioner.
He sped up further.
He was in the doorway... Time felt…blurry.
Joker was there.
He had a gun.
To Barbara.
He was going to shoot her. Everything stopped. The details on his face were vivid in that one second before everything was going to shit. That smile…every centimeter of it stretching too wide, Jason’s head spun. He felt that sharp tug in his gut again.
He couldn’t move.
No…
No!
He had to move. He couldn’t let Barbara lose something to him. He could see the glint in Joker’s eyes. He was going to go too far again. He wanted to prove a point.
He felt that same sharp tug in his gut. Somewhere in the hollow of his twisting innards he felt it; the need to move.
He felt another in his heart, pulling him in the other direction. He felt his very being revolt at the thought of moving.
Yet, he listened to his gut. He ignored the frantic beat of his heart. He ran. He ran for her. He tried to push Joker away, deflect, anything. But he was too late.
Jason’s fingers wrapped around in the crook of his elbow and he tugged. But the gun went off.
The crack seemed louder than a normal gunshot, as if the very fabric of the world had been ripped by that tiny bullet, now tearing through the flesh of his pseudo older sister. Thunder cracked outside as lightning illuminated the room. Blood. Her blood. On the floor. He could not look. He saw a different wooden floor. His own blood. The crowbar. He heard the cackle, his breath speeding up until it hurt.
He decked the stupid clown as hard as he could. It hurt so much. Why did it hurt? The world seemed to shift. He heard that cackle reverberate through his very being. He was dying. Again. And batman would be too late. Again.
“Jason…” A bloody hand reached for him and he shrunk back. His back his something solid… There was nowhere to hide. He was tied to a pillar again, blood running down his face. Was he? He didn’t remember the ground being this close last time… it didn’t make sense…
His head throbbed. The hand reached. He was going to die again. The breath whooshed out of him on a sigh, eyes drifting half shut. It was too late anyway.
The chilling touch broke him out of his hysteria. Weak. The touch was so weak. Shaking.
Barbara!
He was already on his knees by the doorframe, he crawled closer. His hands covered in her blood as he turned her on her back. She said something to him. He didn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear right now. His mind felt foggy. Barbara was dying. Just like he once was. He was failing.
He could not fail like Bruce had. He wouldn’t. He had to snap out of it. He applied pressure to her wound. The bullet had gone straight through. It had missed her spine and he could tell it didn’t hit anything vital. But she was far from safe. He had to get her to a hospital. He picked her up while trying to keep up the pressure on her wound. It was not working. He had to run. There was a hospital close by. But he had to run.
And so he did. His legs felt like they were burning. He couldn’t breathe. Everything seemed to be trying to stop him from getting there, from saving Barbara. He still ran. He ignored the strain. He ignored the sweat on his brow, the way his heart pressed too tight against his ribs. He would not fail. It did not matter what force of nature would try to stop him. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
He had defied fate once and he’d do it again for his family.
He rushed into the hospital looking like a man possessed, sweat dripping, panting and in armor everyone outside of crime alley flinched from. He didn’t hear his next words but everyone else sure as hell did, “I need a doctor here! Now!”
Jason didn’t know quite clearly what had happened next. He felt her weight disappear from his arms. He remembered feeling a bit of that same weightlessness in his own body. He was sitting now. Sitting in some random waiting room in a hospital. He didn’t know which room they had taken her to. He didn’t know where he was supposed to go now.
A buzz in his ear.
A more insistent buzz in his ear. He reached up a heavy arm, clicked the comm.
The joker had taken the commissioner. Batman had saved him. Joker was back in a fucking cell, alive, waiting to get the urge to prove something some other day. Jason felt numb through it all. Every piece of information. Every good news. Every bad. Gordon had been rushed to the hospital. The same hospital his daughter was in. Barbara Gordon had been stabilized just in the nick of time. The bullet had missed her spine by barely an inch. An inch Jason had given her. She was safe. He had saved her. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt off. Jason himself felt off. His soul felt spent. It felt like he had used the all-blades for hours. He knew what a price paid felt like and he knew what the pettiness behind consequences felt like. This was both. It was ugly and cruel and he knew this was a presence he had felt before.
He had broken something else to save her. The order. The balance was no more. The fates had been defied. The world was not the same anymore. And it would never again be so. But Jason did not know that. He wasn’t supposed to.
——*-*-*——
The room somehow got even colder.
Nico did not know why his life was this way.
Actually, he did.
Thank you, father!
He ducked behind a different pillar as another ray of ice hit his previous hiding place. Why did it have to be a supervillain? Why couldn’t his life ever just be simple?
He tried yet again to peek out at the villain. He pulled back barely in time as another ray shot right past his face. That was close. Too close. How was he supposed to kill this guy if he couldn’t even see him? More importantly why was the idiot so set on trying to freeze an unassuming teenager? He hadn’t even done anything this time!
The constant attacks finally halted. He was tempted to peek but a sudden sharp tug in his gut stopped him. He froze. It wasn’t supposed to be that strong, that tug…
This is new…
He had been noticing more and more often this strange feeling overtaking his senses, guiding him away from certain things. He needed to ask Hades about that.
“What is it now, snow cone?” A strange voice asked too loudly, as if the guy could not take anything seriously.
“I think it’s one of the Batman’s protégés…without a mask…” Ice guy answered smoothly.
He heard an almost maniacal cackle from behind the pillar. “You think one of Batsy’s would make a mistake like that?”
They thought Nico was Batman’s protégé?!
Had he really ended up in Gotham??
He would have groaned at the realization had it not risked making his situation worse. Why did his father not tell him that he was being sent to Gotham of all places? He dared another peek from behind the pillar, his eyes catching sight of a man with clown makeup. That must be the infamous joker, then. The smile painted on his face seemed rather disconcerting as his usual deranged smirk did not accompany it. Their eyes met and the intensity of the madman’s gaze seemed to burn into Nico’s senses. He snapped his head back as another ray of ice missed me by an inch. Great. Just great.
“He got in without triggering any sensor or trap. Luthor said this facility is as safe as it gets. If anyone can infiltrate it, it has to be one of the bats.” ‘Snow cone’ said.
Nico figured trying to talk himself out of a situation with a lunatic and a ‘hit first ask questions later’ guy, would not go down quite so well for him. He was so screwed. If he left without finishing the mission, he would not be in a much better predicament considering his father’s mood these days. His mind raced through the possibilities. His father had told him this was a time sensitive mission. He did not have the option to retreat and come back later. He closed his eyes.
Deep breath in.
He felt the chilly air burn through his nostrils. He focused on the slight discomfort. There was nothing that connected him better with the realm of his powers. He let his senses flow through the nearest shadows of the ‘facility’ as ice guy had called it.
Nothing.
No shadows in the room to retreat to—not with any sort of a vantage point anyway. There was no easy way out of this. But he could not reveal himself so blatantly either…
He had to think of something and he had to do it soon. He would have said a prayer to Khione to keep him safe from the ice but from what he’d heard from Jason, he’d be better off without her attention on him.
“Come out! Come out, little batty!” Joker cackled, apparently back to his usual self. Batty? Seriously? Nico had been called a lot of things from the same genre but somehow that pinched more. They said it so dam seriously?
“I’m not a damn bat!” He yelled back. That silenced them.
“Ah! So the little brat speaks…come on out and we can play…” He rolled my eyes at the very obvious move from the clown. That dude was so monster coded. Monsters still looked better though.
“Who are you?” A much harsher and colder voice snapped. Fitting for ‘snow cone’.
Maybe calling him the Grinch would be more fitting…
Nah, the Grinch was a pretty fine character. Misunderstood introvert. Maybe Nico was the Grinch.
Does that mean ‘snow cone’ is Santa?
Not. The. Time.
He tried to think of what Percy would have said in a situation like this, only to…come up empty.
Percy would have gotten out already…
Dammit did the only thing they have in common, have to be bad luck? He peeked again, taking in his surroundings yet again trying to see what the meagre shadows in the room could not reveal to him. His eyes drew towards the only door, more importantly the shadow underneath that door. Thunder cracked at that exact moment as that shadow became evident to the others in the room. He reached out to that shadow. Not a shadow. A person. Two persons… The lights suddenly cut out.
A slow smirk spread over his face. This was his domain now.
He silently thanked the fates, ready to will his ring to turn into the sword. Maybe his luck was better than Percy.
Now I just have to be quick enough— His thoughts were interrupted as he was suddenly yanked out of the shadow of the pillar before he could dissolve into it.
He came face to face with the joker, sinister smile and all. “Go on Batsy! I have the kid! Never seen this one before? New here?”
“Let the kid go joker…” The deep voice sent a sudden chill down Nico’s spine.
His luck had officially lasted ten seconds.
Thought too soon…
He looked up at the man towering over Mr. freeze’s unconscious body. His eyes locked on the white eyes of the cowl on his face. No emotion betrayed whatsoever. Not a single twitch. Something was off. Something was off with these people. He could not get caught up in the middle of this.
Before he could swing a kick at his captor, something— someone— jumped on the clown. A kid in a yellow, red and green costume was on Joker. Joker swung. He winced at the crack that echoed through the now dingy hall. The kid must’ve been thrown at least a good few feet away. But the kid just got up, attacking again, now with twin Katanas.
But batman’s focus stayed on Mr. freeze.
This was too much of a mess. Nico couldn’t deal with this alone.
The mission was already compromised.
Nico had to take the one chance he had gotten because of all the chaos. He ran as fast as he could.
Nico heard him call out to him. Batman. He should not have been seen. Especially not by him. He had to get away. He had to disappear. So that’s exactly what he did. As soon as he was far away from the building, he hid in an alley and let his shadows run through the surroundings. He checked the rooftops around him. He was finally alone. He let the shadows wrap around him. He sighed as the familiar feeling of the cold power enveloped him. The comforting cold. It welcomed him in. He was a part of the shadows. He floated through the familiar feeling of weightlessness. Of not being, while being everywhere. He felt himself drift into the soothing, welcoming cold. Focus. He stepped out of the shadows. He sighed as a heaviness settled over him. The urge to be shadows was getting stronger the older he grew. He wished he could talk to Will about it.
Stop.
He could not let himself think about that again. He could not go back to camp. He sighed yet again. His shoulders slumped. He could also not put off the meeting with his father.
He had failed.