Work Text:
There was no such thing as a simple drug bust in Gotham. Sure, you could go in thinking it would be easy, or that there would be no major complications, but no matter what the perp would get away, or someone would die, or Robin would end up benched for reckless behavior or trying to juggle the evidence again.
(Not that Dick had ever tried to juggle evidence of any sort. He’d been a model Robin, thank you very much.)
So it was really naivety at this point that had Dick thinking that they could get in, break it up, hand it over to the police, and get out with no issue. He’d been called a ruthless optimist before, but that wasn’t quite true. The sky was blue, the grass was dead, and the world was more ruthless in general than Dick ever had been with optimism. Still, he didn’t think it would be an issue to expect something in his life to be easy for once.
He was wrong.
The evidence had all pointed to this being one of Black Mask’s operations. This had been his territory for a while now, and these men were known to be his. The M.O. fit. The supplier was the same as one that had slipped through the cracks in the justice system, and now that he was back he had returned to his old employer. It was straightforward. It was supposed to be straightforward.
It wasn’t straightforward.
“Well if it isn’t Mr. Child Endangerment and his newest toddler. Hey, kid, don’t ya know what happens to birds that fall out of the nest?”
“Hood,” Batman growled. Without needing to be explicitly told, Nightwing stepped in front of Tim.
“C’mon, baby bird. We’re getting out of here.”
“No way,” Tim said, and Dick resisted the urge to pull out his hair.
“Yes way, kiddo, this is above your paygrade.”
“Listen to big brother, kiddo,” Hood snarled. “Wouldn’t want you to end up like the last one, would you?”
“Leave him out of this, Hood,” Bruce growled.
“So protective,” he mocked. “Tell me, were you protective when the second Robin got blown to smithereens, or were you more like mommy dearest that handed him over to torture and death? Something tells me it’s not the first.”
The air froze, and the world stopped spinning. Dick couldn’t breathe. What?
No. No, it just wasn’t possible. Jason’s mother, who he had been so desperate to meet he had travelled halfway across the world without permission. Jason’s mother, who he had died trying to protect, shielding her from the blast with his little body. Jason’s mother, who he was buried next to. That mother? *That* mother had kickstarted the chain of events that ended Jason’s life? *On purpose??*
“How did you know that?” Bruce demanded, and Dick swivelled to look at him, eyes wide. No.
“Know what?” Hood said, faux causal.
“Know that Robin’s mother betrayed him. That wasn’t in any reports. It wasn’t something you could have known. Not unless…”
Hood just laughed. He laughed, and Dick had never before understood why he had named himself after the Joker when the two were so different.
Standing there, listening to the Hood’s mechanized, sadistic laugh, Dick finally understood.
“I catch your question. Yeah, I was there in Ethiopia.”
“You were involved.”
“You could say that.”
Batman shifted just slightly. To anyone else, he was putting up a perfectly composed front. To Tim and Dick, though, it was clear Bruce was fuming that he had missed something so big. Furious that a man as ruthless as Hood had ever been allowed to touch his son.
Dick could relate. If he’d wanted to break the Red Hood for threatening his brother earlier, then he was going to end him now. And this time he’d make sure there was no Bruce to resuscitate him.
Hood caught on.
“Are you bothered?” he asked, idly twirling a knife between his fingers. “That I was there when it all ended, that is. Does it make you mad? Does it make you want to hurt me?”
Batman stood still as a statue, refusing to show any weakness. Hood chuckled darkly.
“He screamed for you, you know. Both of you. Towards the end that’s all he did. It was hard to understand his begging, his front teeth all knocked out and blood guzzling out of his mouth.”
Dick’s grip on Tim’s arm tightened.
“He was brave enough to spit it at the Joker at the beginning, but at the end all he wanted was for it to stop. Even then he only let himself cry after dragging himself to the door only to realize it was locked and no one was coming to save him.”
Dick heard a pained, feral, vicious cry and it was only when he felt himself move that he realized it had come from himself.
“YOU EVIL SON OF A BITCH!” he cried.
A shot rang out and Dick could distantly hear someone cry out in pain, see Bruce rushing towards Tim, but his vision was locked onto Hood. Some distant part of his brain was telling him that this was going to end with him being led on a wild goose chase, blinded by rage, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything now except making Hood pay.
The regroup at the cave was…. Well. It sucked. Tim’s arm still hurt like hell, even after being numbed for stitches, and his head…
“Why would you bury him next to a woman who had him killed?!?!” Dick was screaming. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?!!!!”
Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It was a detail I only uncovered after the burial,” he explained. “There was nothing to be done about it.”
“You’re telling me the richest man in Gotham, possibly on the East Coast, couldn’t get his son’s grave moved somewhere else than next to his murderer’s?!”
“There are laws about exhuming a body. Disturbing a grave. Moving someone who has already been interred takes court orders.”
“But you could have tried.”
“I could have tried so much harder at so many different points in time,” Bruce snapped. “What’s done is done.”
Dick scoffed. “Fine. But I’m defacing her grave the next time I visit.”
“Moving on,” Bruce said pointedly, “Your behavior today was reckless. Tim is lucky the bullet only grazed his arm- he could have been killed. You cannot abandon our most vulnerable member for a mission to get revenge.”
Dick looked like he wanted to argue until he actually looked at Tim. Tim was fully aware that he looked like shit, but it was another to see it reflected on his brother’s face.
“Ah, geez. I’m sorry Tim. I never should have left you alone like that.”
“It’s fine,” Tim said automatically. It was a little not fine, but he could manage.
“You’re not off the hook either, Tim,” Bruce said. “We specifically told you that if the Red Hood became involved in any of our cases, you would have to leave. You disobeyed orders today as much as Nightwing. The responsibility for this outcome is shared.”
“I’m really not a baby, I can handle-”
“No, you can’t.” Dick interrupted.
“Agreed,” said Bruce. “Robin is to be benched until the situation with Hood is taken care of.”
Tim’s mouth dropped open. “Are you kidding??” he demanded. “That could take ages!!!”
“Please, Tim. Better safe than dead.”
Tim sighed. He couldn’t say no to Dick when he gave him that face.
What he could do, though, was disable the trackers on his suit and go investigate himself. He waits a week to let his arm heal as courtesy to Alfred’s handiwork, pretends he’s been convinced to stay put, and spends his time working around the suit’s built-in alarm that goes off if something happens to the trackers.Once he got past that, it was only a matter of time before he was back out there.
He’d been thinking, and nothing about what had gone down the night he got shot made any sense. Hood’s words in particular rang through his head, and he needed to have a talk with Gotham’s favorite crime lord to help the pieces come together.
He leaped from rooftop to rooftop, slinking though the shadows all but unseen, making his way closer and closer to the edges of Hood’s territory. He made himself known then, let himself be seen, then tucked himself away and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. He ducked before the knife could hit him.
“Well if it isn’t the boy wonder. I thought I made myself clear: no Bats in the Alley.”
“Hood,” Tim said very calmly for someone with a gun pointed at his head. “I’d like a word.”
“Gladly. What do you think of going somewhere more private?”
“Pass,” Tim said, but Hood was already charging him. Ah, fuck. If he didn’t end this soon, he was going to wake up dead in a river somewhere. Or… not wake up. Whatever. He reached into his utility belt, pulled out his bo staff, and buckled down for a fight.
“Hey Bruce?”
“Mmn?”
“Where’d the 24/7 trackers on Tim’s suit go?”
Dick and Bruce both looked at the monitor for a moment
“...shit.”
Tim awakened slowly, and quickly came to the conclusion that he was very uncomfortable. He was cold, for one, and didn’t seem to have a blanket on him. He tried to reach around with his foot to see if he’d kicked it off in his sleep. He did that sometimes, and it was a pain in the ass whenever he did it in winter. He was one of those freaks that needed to sleep with his window open no matter what time of year it was.
There was no blanket to be found. There was no blanket to be found because Tim couldn’t move his foot. Or his arms. And he seemed to be sitting upright.
Tim’s eyes snapped open.
He was in what appeared to be a dingy, unfurnished apartment. The only light came from the street lights shining through the window, where there was an old torn sheet hung up so no one could see inside.
Oh, and the Red Hood was staring at him from where he sat three feet away, facing him while sitting backwards in a chair. He was twirling a knife with practiced ease, the same way he had in the warehouse. Something told Tim that if someone was going to lose a finger, it wasn’t going to be Hood.
“Sleeping beauty awakens,” Hood drawled, noticing Tim was awake.
Tim opened his big mouth and spoke.
“Is this a safehouse? Is this what all your safehouses are like?”
“You’re not really in a position to be criticizing the venue, Tim.”
Ah, yep, the confirmation that he knew who Tim was. Likely to cow him. But Tim already knew that, so he just kept talking.
“Yeah, but I feel like the floorboards are going to collapse out from under me and bring the building down on top of me. Is this place abandoned? Is this safe?”
Hood stood, pulling out one of his handguns. “It won’t matter for much longer.”
Ha ha. Tim was in danger.
“Ok, but if you’re going to kill me I have some questions first. Because your story doesn’t add up.”
Hood cocked his head and his gun at the same time. “How so?”
Tim took a deep breath. If he managed to stall long enough, throw Hood off his game, he could wait for a rescue.
Here goes nothing.
“The problem is that you knew about Sheila. You knew that Jason’s mother was there. You knew that Jason died trying to shield her. But most importantly, you knew that she betrayed Jason.”
“So what?”
“So even Batman didn’t know about that part until after he’d already buried them next to each other. He didn’t amend his initial report. He let that part die, because the thought that a parent could do that to their own child- to his child- was too much for him. No one should know about it unless they were there firsthand. That proves that you were in Ethiopia, and moments before the death occurred you were in the warehouse where Jason and Sheila died. By your own admission you were there.”
“That’s right.”
“But you would have had to be aligned with the Joker to be in that warehouse and get out alive.”
“....Right,” he said, warily hesitant.
“....You hate the Joker.”
Hood snorts, but it falls flat. “You sure about that? I’m using his name. ‘Joker fanboy’, isn’t that what the Bat called me the first time we met?”
“Yeah, and from what I hear you were so offended you let half your operation slide trying to kill him for it. No, there’s something else going on here. You use that name to piss him off. To get his attention. The Joker did something to you.”
Tim watched the muzzle of the gun as it shook ever so slightly. Hood adjusted his grip, and the tremor disappeared. Tim continued.
“He… took? Something from you? So now you want to take something from him… is that right?”
“Shut up,” Hood said.
“And for some reason, you feel the same way about Batman. It even extends over to Nightwing.”
“Shut UP!”
”But it doesn’t make sense! Why the obsession with Joker and Batman? Why make them both pay. For… Jason’s death? It all comes back to Ethiopia for you, doesn’t it?”
“I SAID SHUT UP!” Hood roared, pressing the muzzle of the gun into Tim’s forehead. Still, Tim continued unfazed.
“There were only a handful of people there that day that would have known what you know. A few guards, maybe, who were privileged enough to be in the same room when the great Robin was murdered. The Joker. Sheila Haywood. Jason. But you hate Sheila, too, don’t you?”
“I’m warning you, kid,”
“In fact the only person in that warehouse you didn’t hate was… “
Tim suddenly looked up at Hood, horror and understanding blossoming across his face like an ugly bruise.
“…Jason?”
There’s a large pause while they both absorb what Tim now knows. Tim can see nothing in Jason’s emotionless mask, but his entire posture has now changed. He’s brought himself to full height, shoulders opening up and tension seeming to have left him.
“Jason?? Is that you???”
Jason lowers the gun. “You should have listened when I told you to shut up, kid.”
“Wh-?”
Tim couldn’t even finish the first word of his sentence before Jason pistol whipped him, cracking the gun against Tim’s temple and putting stars into his vision. Before his vision could clear he was being dragged, chair and all, backwards.
“Ja-”
Jason used the opportunity to shove what tasted and felt like a dirty rag into his mouth and duct tape it in place.
Oh, fucking gross Tim thought, followed up by I might have miscalculated. This might be how I die.
A prickle of fear found its way up his spine, and Jason very inconsiderately blindfolded him. Tim decided to speak up.
“Mrrhggh mm mn mfrg!” Tim tried.
“God, shut up, shut up! Do you ever stop talking??”
Tim shook his head. There was no point in being dishonest about it, he was a known talker.
“Eeuuugggh, kill me now.”
Tim could feel himself now being methodically untied from the chair in a way that still bound his limbs together. Great. No opportunity for escape. He was lifted up over what felt like Jason’s shoulder, which was an objectively weird thought because 10 minutes ago Jason was supposed to be 15 and also dead. Now he was a grown man who could hold Tim over his shoulder. Wow. Tim didn’t care for that much.
Jason apparently didn’t care as much as he did, and the cold air of the night let Tim know they were now outside. Tim gave more muffled sounds punctuated with a question mark and hoped his question got across, but Jason didn’t answer. Wow. Rude. Looked like he’d just have to wait and see where they were going for himself.
Nightwing and Batman zipped through the city with an efficiency usually reserved for a manhunt on a specific criminal.
“I can’t believe he’d disable his trackers like that. How long do you think they’ve been off, huh? I mean, we don’t actually know that this is the first night he’s been out, you know? And I don’t get what made him think we wouldn’t notice at some point. He’s smart, he has to know that they stay on even when the suit is packed up, right? We’d find out about it if we even glanced at its status like we did tonight. All this does is make him less safe, right?”
“Teenagers aren’t known for their flawless logic. Do you see anything?”
“Nada,” Dick said, scanning the street before him and moving on to the next. “How about you?”
“Negative.”
Dick looked over another street and made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “There’s nothing here either. Let’s try-”
Something caught his eye, just then. Something in the road that was a bright yellow and made Dick’s stomach sink like a heavy stone.
“I think I’ve got something,” he said, leaping down into the street.
Upon closer examination, Dick was now sure what this was, and he didn’t like it.
“Nightwing?”
“It’s his emergency distress beacon,” Dick said. “Did- did you get an alert from it? It’s all smashed”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “No,” Bruce said, not sounding happy about it. “I didn’t.”
And that…. Was not good. Because the emergency distress beacon should have gone off the moment that kind of severe damage was inflicted upon it. Not only that, but it was normally integrated into the utility belt of his costume. It should have also gone off if it was removed in any way. No one should be able to disable that response.
Dick shook. Someone had taken his baby brother. Someone had gotten close enough to Tim, while he was unable to stop them, to disable a feature that was not meant to be disabled. Someone had laid his hands on his baby brother-
“Batman? Nightwing?”
“Oracle. Report.” Batman said.
“It’s not looking good,” she said. “Robin had a ton of sightings skirting around the edges of Crime Alley- Not going into Hood’s territory, but deliberately getting close,” she said.
Dick’s heart froze. No, he begged the universe, anyone else. Anyone but him .
“It… looks like the trajectory of Robin’s last sighting intersects with the trajectory of the Red Hood.”
And Dick’s world shattered into shards of helpless rage.
Personally, Tim thought it was very rude for Jason to turn on the lights at the same time as Tim removed his blindfold. It was also pretty rude of him to handcuff Tim to a utility pipe going from ceiling to floor. Jason was turning out to be a very rude person.
When Tim was done blinking the light from his eyes, he was surprised to see a worn but fully furnished apartment. There were bookshelves against the wall with books, a kitchen with pots and pans hanging from a ceiling rack and a tea kettle on the stove, and Tim seemed to be sitting on an old but comfortable couch. There was no television.
“Is this your actual apartment?”
“No,” Jason said, “I keep decorative bookends in all my safehouses.”
Great! Jason was a smartass. Tim sat back and sulked. “So what’s your grand plan? Gonna chop my head off?”
Jason scowled at him. “I’m going to force Batman to do what he should’ve done from the beginning. I’m going to make him kill the Joker.”
“Uh. What?”
“An ultimatum,” Jason said. “I’ll reveal myself as his downed little bird just in time to make him choose: my life or the Joker’s. He can only save the Joker by killing me, and I’ll only put the gun down if he kills the Joker.”
Tim considered this for a moment. “Ok, so. No offense… Your plan sucks.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stupid from top to bottom,” Tim elaborated.
Jason’s face contorted into an ugly snarl. “He didn’t avenge me. He let that maniac, that killer run loose after what he did to me-”
“Oh, boo hoo bitch boy, get therapy like the rest of us. If you want the Joker dead you should do it yourself. Leave your daddy issues out of this.”
Jason stood up, and for a moment Tim thought that he’d changed his mind and would kill him right here in the middle of his apartment.
“You know what? I’m just gonna keep you here.”
“Ha ha,” Tim said, “What?”
“That’s right,” Jason said, “Hunker down, idiot, because you’re staying on that couch until I figure out what to do with you.”
With that, Jason walked towards what Tim assumed was his bedroom.
“Wh- Jason, you can’t just keep me here! I’m not a hamster! Jason!!”
No response.
Tim rattled his handcuff against the pipe. “I’m gonna gnaw through my arm like a trapped fox and getcha!”
“What’re ya waiting for, hot sauce? Man up and get chompin!”
Tim sunk into the couch with a heavy sigh. It looks like he’s going to be here a while.
Two days passed. Two days of searching in shifts, making excuses to the school, and scouring every inch of Gotham to no avail.
“When we find that kid, I’m going to never leave him alone again. You hear me Bruce? I’m going to get him microchipped if these are the kind of heart palpitations he’s determined to cause.”
“We’ve eliminated most of the North end of the Alley. None of Hood’s men seem to know that anything has happened other than that he’s been laying low for a bit. Oracle, do you have anything?”
“Nothing yet. I’ll try reviewing the street cams again and make another sweep through the servers. From what it seems though, no one has seen head nor tail of Hood since the night Tim went missing.”
The three of them sat in silence for a moment.
“I’m going back out,” Dick declared. “Keep me posted.”
“Dick,” Bruce called. Dick turned to face him.
“Stay safe, son.”
Dick smiled. There was no warmth to it. “I will,” he said. “Just as long as Tim does too.”
Jason placed a bowl unceremoniously on the coffee table in front of Tim. “Here’s your mac and cheese, dipshit.”
Tim looked at it unimpressed. “Excuse me sir, this isn’t what I ordered. I ordered a Big Mac, no onion, large fry, and Oreo McFlurry?”
“Ok here’s your mac and cheese.”
“Cool, thanks,” Tim said. Jason handed him a glass of water and Tim set it down immediately.
“Geez, use a coaster, will you? What are you, an animal?”
“I’m not drinking that,” Tim said.
“What? How come?”
“Besides that it’s obviously drugged? Your tap water is harder than a rock.”
“Calcium builds strong bones, Timmers.”
“So you don’t deny that it’s drugged.”
“You need to fucking sleep,” Jason defends.
“No, sorry, I don’t do that.”
“Take the sedative Timberly.”
“I’d rather dry swallow it if it’s all the same to you,” Tim deadpans.
“Dry swallowing is bad for your esophagus y’know.”
“Well your tap water is bad for my stomach!”
“Well that’s just too damn bad!” Jason yelled in a heavy southern accent for some reason.
Tim stared. Jason narrowed his eyes. “You’ve never seen Holes, have you?” he asked, disgusted.
“Nope,” Tim said, popping the p.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get you the book.”
Tim groaned loudly. “Nooooo no more books! I’m so sick of reading!”
“You want something to do? You get books,” Jason said, turning away.
“But Jane Austen suuuuucks!” Tim reared his hand back to bean Jason in the back of the head with the book.
“You throw that and I shoot you in the dick,” Jason said, then turned to face Tim again. “You know, at first I was going to kill you for stealing my gig. But now I’m just going to do it for the disrespect you show to Ms. Austen.”
“But it’s true!” Tim protested in a stunning display of no self preservation. “She’s flowery and pretentious and nothing interesting happens in the entire length of the book. It’s boring. You’re boring. Get me something not boring, please”
“Alright, then, you literary critic, what kind of stuff do you read?”
“Ray Bradbury,” Tim answered immediately.
Jason narrowed his eyes. “No.”
“Wh-, come on! I need my science fiction fix!”
“Get some better science fiction. Mary Shelley, Ursula K. LeGiun. Hell, Douglas Adams. Just… god, Ray Bradbury? Seriously??”
“What’s wrong with Ray Bradbury!” Tim cried.
“Well, for one thing, he hated technology, progress, and anything a 12th century peon would label witchcraft.”
“Wh- That’s not true!”
“Oh yeah? Fahrenheit 451, where he criticized TV and fast cars for bringing about laziness that caused the downfall of society itself? The Veldt, where he again decided that technology was the devil and would make your kids kill you so they could have their TV fix?”
“The Veldt was a cautionary tale about not raising your kids yourself and leaving them to raise themselves with the cheap substitute of entertainment! And Fahrenheit 451 was an allegory for censorship and the government! And not reading enough, which is, ironically, what you’re forcing me to do all day!” Tim defended
“Well he also opposed political correctness on the grounds that it was ‘censorship’ and opposed higher education because it was ‘very dangerous’ and ‘professors were snobbish and opinionated’,” Jason countered.
Tim’s mouth dropped open. “There’s no way that’s true. A guy who was that obsessed with books was anti-higher education?”
“It’s true,” Jason said, “I did a paper on him in sophomore year. Guy was a nutcase.”
“Huh,” Tim said, considering. “So… tell me about the other authors?”
“Ok, so Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy…”
They got a lead that was a bust. They’d found a few men willing to talk, but it only led them down dead end after dead end. They finally found themselves in a warehouse down by the docks.
“This isn’t going anywhere!” Dick growled.
“We have to follow through all the way. We don’t want to miss anything.”
Dick scoffed, but suddenly something caught his eye.
“What is it?” Bruce asked.
“The containers are all labelled in order,” Dick said. “All except that one. The numbers are off.”
They looked at each other, then scrambled over. Upon determining it was safe to open, they took off the lid. Bruce sucked in a breath. Dick balked, then swore.
Inside was the Robin suit, neatly folded for them to find.
“How about a mystery? We got Agatha Christie and… well, we got Agatha Christie.”
“Pass,” Tim said, exceptionally bored.
“What did Agatha Christie ever do to you?”
“The mysteries in those kinds of novels are always too obvious. They may have been fun to figure out when I was 7, but at this point if I’m going to be reading Poirot I might as well watch an episode of Blue’s Clues.”
“Don’t you go dissing Blue’s Clues now,” Jason warned.
“C’mon, just- give me something that isn’t reading!”
Jason thought for a moment. “...I got Scrabble?”
“Yes! Yes, oh my god, please, yes.”
“Scrabble it is!”
Forty five minutes later, this proved to be a mistake.
“I’m sorry, I just-”
“It’s not a word!” Tim yelled. “I’m not letting you steal a triple word score on a fake word-”
“-I’m just struggling to process this. You’re 16 with the IQ of a grad student.”
“And I’m calling bull, I challenge this, you get the dictionary right now-”
“How do you not know that yeti is a word?” Jason asked. “This is a genuine question. How have you never heard the word yeti in your life?”
“Because it’s not real!” Tim hollered.
“It is!” Jason insisted.
“Ok then, what does it mean?” Tim tried to cross his arms before realizing that he was still chained to a pipe.
“It’s like, this abominable snowman that lives in the Himalayas.”
“Ohohoho, now I KNOW you’re making it up.”
“I am NOT making it up!” The dictionary landed on the coffee table with a thud. They flip through the pages until finally Jason points. “See! Right there. Abominable snowman.”
Silence fell over the room as Jason sat triumphant and Tim examined the dictionary.
“...You are fucking unbelievable,” Tim said at last. “You did this on purpose, you knew no one ever uses the word yeti and you intentionally bamboozled me-”
“Ok, that’s enough Scrabble,” Jason said, sweeping the pieces off the board. “No more scrabble, you’ve lost your scrabble privileges.”
Geez. Who knew the kid was such an idiot?
The atmosphere in the cave was beyond bleak. No one spoke, knowing that it could shatter with the slightest sound. Alfred’s attempts to give them comfort food sat untouched.
Suddenly, Oracle spoke.
“I think we have a lead.”
Bruce’s head snapped up. Dick’s did not.
“Report,” Bruce ordered, his voice hoarse.
“Two possible locations. One by the North end of the Alley, one by the South. You’ll have to search the entire block, I couldn’t pinpoint an exact building. It’s all we have, but we have to at least try.”
Bruce thought for a moment. “We’ve already searched the North end, so the South is the more likely location. I’ll take the South, Nightwing will take the North.”
“We’re not splitting up,” Dick protested.
“You’re going to have to,” Barbara said. “It’s unlikely that the Hood would keep Robin in a single location for a prolonged period of time. He could move the second he hears that we’re onto him.”
Dick rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t like this.”
“We head out now,” Bruce declared.
And then they were off.
Chess did not prove to be a better game option.
“How are you doing this,” Jason demanded as Tim reset the board.
“Dumb luck I guess,” Tim shrugged.
“That is not dumb luck. We’ve played 7 games of chess in a row and you’ve beat me every time.” Jason wasn’t even bad at chess. He had even managed to beat Bruce on occasion. “How are you doing this? How do you cheat at chess????”
“I’m not cheating, I’m just better than you!”
Jason’s eye twitched. “Aaaaaand that’s it for chess! No more chess.”
Tim stretched. “So what’s next?”
“Those are the only two board games I got.”
“What?” Tim asked sharply, “Are you serious?”
“Does this look like party central? I got Scrabble and chess and that’s it! What’d you want, chinese checkers?”
“At least you’d stand a chance at chinese checkers.”
“It is not too late for me to kill you,” Jason said, pointing at Tim.
“Do it, I dare you.”
“Here,” Jason said, tossing something to Tim. “Use this. Knock yourself out, I’m taking a nap.”
Tim looked down to see what he had been offered. “The funny papers? Seriously?”
“It’s got puzzles, see? The crossword and sudoku.” And with that Jason went to his room and shut the door.
Tim looked down again at the funnies. “Jeez, grab me a binky and some fruit snacks while you’re at it, will you?”
Dick slipped in through the window as quietly as possible. He could only hope that he’d disarmed everything properly, but he didn’t have high hopes. He needed to be in and out as quickly as possible.
Dick surveyed the apartment. It seemed to be just a normal apartment, though lacking a TV. That didn’t bode well. If Hood had brought Tim to his real apartment, then he didn’t intend for Tim to ever leave.
Then his heart stopped.
Tim was on the couch, asleep with a book on his stomach, as if this were the library at the manor and not an insane murderer’s apartment. Tim, who seemed miraculously unharmed. Tim, who was miraculously alive.
Dick made his way over and immediately zeroed in on the handcuff- which actually looked like it was two sets of handcuffs with a length of chain in the middle to allow for greater reach? That was… uncharacteristically generous of Hood. He made quick work of it though, and when the soft click of it unlocking sounded he felt as though he could cry.
There was another, sharper click from behind his head, and Dick froze.
“Hood.”
“Wing. I wasn’t aware we were doing nicknames now.”
Dick’s blood boiled at the use of his little brother’s nickname coming out of this monster’s mouth. “Don’t call me that,” he spat. He moved to turn but the muzzle of the gun was pressed into the back of his head.
“Don’t,” Hood said, “You won’t live to regret it.” Dick slowly straightened, hands going behind his head and his mind going a mile a minute. The gun retreated from its spot in Dick’s hair.
“Anyone ever told you it’s rude to poach another man’s kill?” Hood taunted.
“Anyone ever told you it’s rude to kidnap a man’s brother?” Dick hissed.
The gun clacked as if a fist had tightened around it. “You’re gonna do exactly what I say so the kid doesn’t get hurt, alright?”
“His safety is my priority”.
“Good.” Hood didn’t have his helmet on. The unmechanized voice gave it away. He’d be more vulnerable this way, he probably didn’t usually pay as much attention to protecting his head in a fight…
He looked around for anything that could give him a leg up in this fight. Bookcases could be pulled over on top of people. The kitchen he’d seen earlier, now behind him, was bound to be full of useful items for Hood to use, so he should keep the fight away from there. The window-
The window. With the curtains now pulled to the side from Dick’s entrance, Dick could see Hood’s reflection in the closed half of the window. He was pointing the gun straight at the back of Dick’s head, as predicted. In his other hand, he had a pair of handcuffs.
“Who knows you’re here?”
“Batman,” he said, “I haven’t checked in yet. He’s on the other end of Crime Alley right now, checking a lead on Robin.”
Hood reached for Dick’s comm. Dick let him take it. Hood started to disable it, and- there! Hood had removed the gun from the back of his head in order to disable the comm, obviously not realizing that Dick could see his blurred reflection in the grimy, dark window.
Dick struck out immediately. He went straight for the temple, hoping to knock him out, but all it did was knock him to the floor. The comm clattered underneath the couch. Hood kicked out at Dick’s legs, but he jumped to avoid them and landed in a crouch to procure the gun that had been dropped to the floor. In a few seconds the gun was unloaded, but Hood was back on his feet.
Tim, on the couch, startled awake. “Whazhappenin?” Dick glanced over at him, then back to Hood, who had apparently done the same thing.
They moved at once, Hood towards Tim, and Dick towards the bookcase. Dick tore the bookcase down on top of Hood.
“Whoa!” Tim yelled, but Dick tuned him out. As Hood recovered, rolling onto his back with a furious snarl, Dick located a hand and moved to stomp as hard as he could.
Wrong move. Hood pulled him down by his leg and they both rolled, grappling with each other in a flurry of grabbing and kicking. Dick had half a mind to bite Hood just to get him off. So he did. He bit down and bit down hard, using the shock to allow himself to get on top of Hood.
He had him down, now, one knee on the floor and the other digging into his chest as hard as he could. His escrima sticks sparked. It was time to make this creepy, murderous, child-abducting sicko pay for daring to touch Dick’s family. This was going to hurt.
“HEY!!” someone hollered at the top of their lungs, and Dick belatedly recognized it as Tim. He turned to look and something hit him square in the face. He looked down to see a copy of Holes on the floor, pages bent.
“Stop fighting,” Tim demanded.
“WHAT did I say about throwing books?” Hood said, and Tim, to Dick’s horror, flipped Hood off. Hood… didn’t try to retaliate?
“C’mon, Dick, get off of him,” Tim said, annoyed as if he were breaking up a catfight and not asking his brother to let his captor go.
“Robin, he’s been keeping you captive,” Dick reasoned.
“Yeah,” Tim agreed, “fucking rude of him. I tried telling him that I needed more enrichment in my enclosure and he didn't even do anything about it.”
“You’re the one who couldn’t play Scrabble right.”
“Scrabble?” Dick looked between Tim and Hood confused. “Robin sucks at Scrabble.”
“That’s what I just said, Dickface.”
Dick recoiled backwards. “You don’t get to call me that.”
In his head, Dick had always pictured Hood as somewhere between 35 and 45. Now, after hearing his unfiltered voice and seeing his face, Dick would be surprised if Hood was out of his 20s. He had to be around Dick’s age, give or take a few years. The thought made Dick angry, for some reason.
“Give me one reason I shouldn't run enough electricity through you to light up your entire beloved alley,” Dick grit. Hood said nothing.
Tim chose then to speak up. “Dick, it’s Jason.”
Dick went rigid. “Shut up, brat,” Hood said.
It had been a tickle in the back of Dick’s brain. Why does this voice sound so eerily familiar? Why was his face like someone he should know but doesn’t? He reran Hood’s voice through his head. Shut up, brat. Good. WHAT did I say about throwing books? That’s what I just said, Dickface. He looked at Hood’s face. The jagged curve of a many times broken nose. The curl of his hair. The shape of his green eyes.
Dick was brought back into himself. Green. Green eyes. Jason’s had been blue. Jason’s eyes had been blue, his teeth knocked out and his lungs black because Jason was dead. Jason had died at the hands of a crowbar and smoke and a maniac who put it all together, and he was rotted away in a box 6 feet underground, and Dick would never see him again.
“You aren’t Jason,” He said. “You aren’t my little brother.”
“Disappointed?” Hood sneered.
“Jason is dead!” Dick yelled, tears threatening to prick at the corners of his eyes. “He’s dead and by the time I figure out what you said to Robin to make him think this, you’ll wish you were too.”
“Mourning him like a model big brother,” Hood sneered. “Where was that model behavior when he was alive?”
“Jason, if you could help your case for one second instead of making me look completely insane, that’d be great,” Tim said.
“You’re not the insane one, Tim. This piece of shit is the insane one for holding you hostage-”
“You’re really caught up on that, huh?” Jason said.
“-and impersonating a dead 15 year old,” Dick finished.
Hood opened his mouth to dispute that and an escrima stick was pushed hard against his throat. Wow, ok then.
“Dick,” Tim said carefully, and Dick hated that he recognized it as Tim’s Put Down The Gun And We Can All Go Home voice. He wasn't the one who used guns here. “I don’t know how he’s back. I don’t think he knows either. But somehow-”
“Tim,” Dick pleaded.
“-somehow he is. That’s why he’s so angry- he’s angry at you and Bruce for not avenging him, angry at Sheila Haywood for betraying him, he hates the Joker because he- well, you know.”
Dick shook his head. “Tim, this is impossible.”
“Look at his eyes, Dick. That’s not normal green. That’s a side effect of the Lazarus pits. Somehow he came back to life and he healed up in the pits, but he’s not got a great grip on things right now.”
Dick didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to see. He didn’t want to agree.
He looked, and he did.
Dick raised his head to look at Tim, to see if this was some sort of a prank, but then his eyes caught on a book thrown to the floor off the cheap bookcase he’d thrown on top of Hood. Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen. He still remembered Jason reading it for the first time; he’d been so enthralled with Pride and Prejudice that he went to read the rest of her works in order of publication- starting with Sense and Sensibility.
He could see now other favorites of Jason’s littered on the floor- Emma, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and various Greek Myths- secondhand only. Jason liked to feel like he was giving the books a second chance at life. He could see a well-loved tea kettle on the stovetop and canisters of loose leaf tea on the counter, because Alfred had taught him that bagged tea was for camping trips and those who didn’t know better. Even the blankets that now lay on the floor next to the couch screamed Jason because they were the shitty no-sew fleece kind that he used to tie together with his mom.
It suddenly occurred to Dick that he had been staring at his surroundings for a good while and Hood hadn’t tried to kill him or even get up. He looked down at the man and slowly moved the escrima stick away from his neck.
“Jason?” he asked, voice barely present.
Hood swallowed. “Sup, Dickhead?”
Dick recoiled a little, getting off of him. Hood sat up.
“Listen,” Hood began.
“The first time I took you out to go train surfing,” Dick said, “Where’d we go?”
Hood snorted. “Nowhere. I was too much of a lil bitch to get on the train. The first time we ever actually went anywhere, though, we were planning to go across the river to New York. I took a break to get off and take a piss, but the train started moving again so you hopped off to look for me”
Dick swallowed. “And where were you?”
“I got back on the wrong train,” Hood said. “Went the opposite direction and ended up halfway to Harrisburg.”
“Tell me about your first gala.”
Hood’s face turned stormy. “I threw punch all over that bitchy socialite’s dress who implied my ma had done a good thing and given me a shot at a better life by dying.” Hood huffed. “At every gala after that she demanded to speak with me like I was the manager or some shit, and you’d respond by pretending you were me even though you were 18, not 12”
“Final question. Which is better? Sour cream on a chili dog or artichoke hearts on a pizza?”
Hood’s mouth dropped open in horror. “Ok, alright, fun times are over. I’m gonna kill you just for implying that either of those combinations is ok, I-”
Dick flung himself at Jason and Jason scrambled for a moment before realizing that Dick was hugging him. Dick’s shoulders began to shake and Jason was suddenly seized with the horrible realization that his brother was crying. They stayed like that for a while, collapsed in on each other.
Tim clicked his tongue. “Man, I wish I had my camera. You just can’t recreate these kinds of touching moments.”
“Can you not be creepy for five seconds,” Jason snapped.
Dick pulled away and wiped his eyes. “We’re going to have a long talk later about acceptable responses to being resurrected and whether murder and kidnapping is included in that. But… I don’t care right now. I can’t. This is the best day of my life. My little brother is alive.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here, Dickiebird… don’t have a heart attack over it.”
Tim cleared his throat. “Not to break up the touching reunion,” Tim said. “But, listen, I kinda want to leave. I’ve been chained up on that couch for six days with nothing to do but read.”
“Now that’s not true,” Jason said, “I gave you sudoku.”
“I’m not going to do sudoku, I’m not fucking six. What’s next? Coloring pages?”
“Adult coloring books are a great way to reduce stress, actually,” Dick said.
“See Timbit? I was trying to reduce your stress.”
”You kidnapped me.”
“You’re welcome,” Jason said.
Tim threw up his hands. “Oh, gee, how fucking considerate of you! I’m using your Shakespeare collection as kindling and dancing around the flames.”
“Ooooohkay, that’s enough,” Dick said. “Tim, I know you want to go, but would you mind staying a little longer? I haven’t seen Jason since,” he choked up a little. “Since forever, I guess.”
Tim looked at the two of them for a moment. “Fine. Fine. But I’m not reading, or coloring.”
“That’s fine,” Dick said. “Jason, have you got anything to do?”
There was a silence for a moment as Jason and Tim remembered the banned board games.
“...I got cards,” Jason offered, heading over to a shopping bag and pulling out a new deck.
“Got any fours?”
“Go fish.”
“You little liar, you got my four like 5 rounds back!”
“I lost ‘em.”
“To who?!”
“Not me.”
“That’s it, where’d my gun go?”
“The Red Hood doesn’t hurt kids!”
“I’m about to!”
“I feel like we’re forgetting something,” Nightwing wondered out loud.
A shadow fluttered in from the window. All three brothers looked up. The Dark Knight sat perched on the windowsill, still as a statue. He stared. Tim stared. Dick stared. Jason stared.
“Oh,” Jason said. “Heya pops. You want us to deal you in?”