AN: I know I should be working on A Reason, but this was stuck in my head and wouldn't get out. Anyways it is only a one-shot. This takes place after Under the Red Hood….
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice, Batman, or anything with an affiliation to DC comics.
He knew where he was. The similarity to the place where he lived and died and, well, lived again could not be denied. Every building placed perfectly where he remembered it, every street labeled, as it should have been. The air still stank with pollution and the pavement still littered with trash. This wasn't his Gotham though. This place was too nice.
This Gotham looked the same, but it couldn't be the same. The petty crooks that ran around did not as frequently as they should have. The drug dealers did not frequent places filled with children. The suppliers seemed to be out of anything that had a definite chance of causing a fatality. The policemen actually looked to be patrolling rather than just letting Batman do their job. He couldn't see henchmen regulars trying to find the meeting place for the next big criminal heist. Where the hell was he? This was definitely not Gotham City.
He tried to remember how he got to this place. His memory needed to take him back to when he was in the evil clone of this fairy tale Gotham. A criminal had been trying to steal something in his territory, a clock or some shit. That had to be how this had started. His name was Wrap…. Wrath…. Warped…. that sounded almost right, maybe it was Warp, yeah, that was it.
That gold and black colored idiot that would not stop ranting about time and fate, Jason was going to deck the mental case. Warp tried to play with some equipment, something that Jason learned a long time ago should never be allowed. The Red Hood efficiently took out his glock and aimed for the device on the man wrist that he was fiddling with. That had been the last thing he remembered before he woke up with a pounding headache on his back and thankful that his helmet was still secure in this freaky Twilight Zone version of his city.
A newspaper all, but smacked him in the face from his position atop the roof. Shit, that's pathetic he couldn't dodge a fucking floating piece of paper. He was ready to take his frustrations out on the ink filled sheets until he saw it. The date stamp was the same as the one that he remembered, but the standing in line with a team of spandex wearing losers was his ex-partner.
Bru- Batman would never let a picture be taken of him, let alone take a picture with a team of heroes. He was the brooding loner type that didn't need help from anyone. Half of his Gotham was still convinced that Batman was an urban legend meant to scare away villains. With the amount he actually saw the man since that second night with Joker he sometimes thought that too.
The paper talked about the Justice League, what a fuckin' original name, saving the day once again from some ugly ass alien, from what the second picture looked like. All Jason could do was stare at the photo. Of course it just had to be his luck that he got thrown in a world with a Bruce that actually played well with others. How the hell was he suppose to make him feel guilty for not killing Joker when, by the looks of the gossip page, he still had Dickie-bird as his sidekick? Damn, knowing that fucker it didn't matter what dimension he was in he would still be killing innocents.
Jason watched the sunset over the skyline. He didn't know what to do. If he was Dickie or that replacement kid Bruce would have been tracking him down within an hour or he could have at least asked the Justice Friends for help. He wasn't, though, he was Jason Todd, Zombie Extraordinaire, Kick-ass Anti-hero, and Ex-Robin, heavy on the 'ex.' He was on his own.
The problem with being seen as a criminal was that no one had your back. Ever. Every once in a while a team up would happen if no one has gotten away with anything in awhile, but even that was pulling teeth and left a lot of room to get stabbed in the back. Villains were greedy. He didn't really have a right to point fingers; he would probably have his head hunted by half the heroes in the world if Bats didn't have a thing about outsiders in his city. Ha, even as a criminal he felt more love from Batman than he did as Robin…
His flight from rooftop to rooftop stopped as what he had just thought hit him. Anger and sadness blossomed in his chest. Bruc- no, Batman didn't get that he was never after revenge. No, he just wanted to be shown that his life valued above that sicko. Jason wanted to know that a person, who killed innocents, who killed men, women, and children, who killed him, was not placed above him in what Batman thought was the most important. The Red Hood just wanted to know that his fath- guardian loved him enough to take the psychopath named the Joker out of the world because he took Jason away from him. He just wanted to feel wanted.
He tried to dispel the train of thought from his mind. It worked for the most part, but it never went away, never fully. It was a constant insecurity that nagged the back of his mind wherever he went. It was the question that would always haunt him.
Jason picked up speed again. He enjoyed the few seconds that flew through the air with each jump. His military boots beating on the surfaces below them. The familiar press of his guns and knifes strapped to his body. It felt like nothing could touch him there. He knew this to be untrue, but the security of being in Gotham, on his rooftops, gave him comfort that could not be shaken by thousands of unnerving situations.
Jason was glad he wasn't spandex clad like Dickie or he would have had to steal something because he didn't have an emergency dimensional travel fund stuffed in his jacket. He would have to rethink that. Anyways, stealing in Gotham was pretty much a big "come here and lock me up, Bats," that was not a good idea.
His biker-like uniform came in handy in this case. If he took the helmet off, then he just looked like a tough guy, which in Gotham everyone was trying to be. This wasn't his Gotham, but he doubted it turned into a pansy city like Metropolis, where the heroes were boy scouts that saved cats from trees, over night.
Once or twice Jason thought he saw a sign of the Batman. Any time that he even had an inkling that the man was near, he turned tail. He need to get a read on the situation in this world better before he started confronting major heroes, even if it was Batman.
The sun was rising. He had spent the night roaming the tops and everything was in the place he had left it, but nothing was the same. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Be an anti-hero, here? That made no sense. His whole point of doing what he did was to convince Batman that criminals needed to die and he couldn't do that with this Batman. Just looking around this Gotham he wondered if criminals really even killed anyone in this world.
He could try and get back. How would that work? His contacts were only his contacts because he had a gun in his hand and it was usually aimed at their heads. Asking other criminals would just not work see above for why. Anyways what would he say, "Hey, I'm trying to kill you in another dimension, so could you help me get back there? You know so I can torture and kill you for the purpose of showing Batman that he needs to be the one killing you." Yeah, he didn't think so either.
It seemed like his options for getting home were slim. Home? Was that what you called his run down apartment? It was empty. It's not like anyone actually wanted him alive in that world. No one would welcome him back or even known he disappeared in the first place. Was it even worth trying to get back there?
He waited until people started to fill the streets on their way to work before he finally came off the roofs by fire escape. His helmet in his right hand with his cowl stuffed inside. His black hair with the gray streak matted to his head from sweat and pressure from his helmet. It had been a stressful night he had smoked through an entire pack of cigarettes over the hours from sunset to rise. This world irritated his nerves, not really because he was stuck here and need to go back, but because he didn't know what his purpose was here.
He had one before. Always did. Whether it was surviving or putting scum away in Arkam or showing Batman what the people really needed. Right here, right now he did not have one. He just had himself. It was weird. He was always alone, even as his years as Robin because Batman could never be called good company, but this was different, right now, he was empty.
Hunger, from hours without food, finally hit him. He had around ten dollars in his jacket, enough for breakfast for one. Two bagels with cream cheese were bought from the Dunkin Donuts on the corner. Jason ripped into them as he continued his wandering around. Jason would have sat a table with in the store, but he felt like if he stopped moving, then he would never start again.
He finally stopped when he saw a help wanted sign. It was at a garage and the black lettering on white screamed at him from its perch on the window. The black haired male could only stop and sigh. He did not know what he was doing or where he was going, but he knew that he would need money no matter what. He opened the door to the office of the shop.
"Hello?" God, he hated his voice at the moment. He never sounded so uncertain in his life.
A muscular, but overweight man stepped out from behind the backroom door and said in rude voice that was native to Gotham, "What do you want?" Jason sure as hell didn't look like a customer.
Jason's confidence returned. This was still his town and he still knew how to handle people in it. "The job. You know the one you have a sign for outside. That's what I want." Insults danced on his tongue, but he swallowed them down. Right now, this man controlled him.
The older man eyed Jason up and down. "You know about mechanics, boy."
Oh, how he loathed being called 'boy.' He could not respond back with his true comment, so instead said, "Yeah, I know about them. I can fix just about any hunk of metal you put in front of me."
It was true none of the simple machines here could hold a torch to fixing up the bat-mobile or any of the machines stashed in the bat-cave.
"Fine, fill out the employment form on the counter and we'll see." He gestured over to a small stack of papers on the counter, one of which Jason grabbed, and walked away.
Most of it was easy information to fill out, birthday, parents, education level, etc. When he got to residence, he just put a slash through it. Asshole didn't need where he lived or well, didn't live. He repeated the same steps for contact numbers. He handed it to the man when he finished.
The slimy ass took a few seconds to look it over before saying, "You a Crime Alley Kid."
Jason saw no point in denying it, "Yeah, what of it?"
The man looked him up and down again. "Boarding will be taken out of your salary. You'll be staying in the apartment above the shop. If you can actually fix anything, Crime Kid."
Wow, even kindness was given rudely in Gotham.
"I already told you I can fix anything that comes through that garage and the name is Jason. Get it right." It wasn't polite to say thank you here.
"Yeah, yeah, I got it Jay. Just call me T." Grayson use to call him that. The reminder just didn't sit well with his nerves.
"Can you not screw with my name?"
"Nah, it's either Jay or Crime Kid." He didn't like the reminder, but no one called him a criminal except himself. Jason couldn't beat that into his new boss's head, so he had to make do.
"Fine, stick with Jay."
"Welcome to the Auto-shop, Jay."
The apartment had three rooms. One was a kitchen/ living room/ dining room. The appliances were years out of warranty and the water took a minute to start flowing. A small, unstable table and two plastic chairs sat closer to the kitchen area and a beat up couch was placed farther away. A small T.V. stationed itself in front of the couch.
The bedroom passed his cleanliness inspection, but this was coming from someone whom lived on the streets for years in Gotham and then again after he was brought back to life in other places around the world. Anything with some comfort and protection passed his inspection.
An immediate scrub down was put on his schedule for the bathroom as soon as he got some supplies. Jason refused to put his bare skin anywhere close to that color especially when it use to be white. He would demand an early paycheck for that.
The Red Hood walked back through the apartment and placed his helmet and jacket on the rickety table. A few of his weapons were already stashed away from public sight in strategic area around the apartment. The rest stayed strapped to body in ways that were hidden by the clothes he wore. His first sift started in five minutes.
It took him less than an hour to fix the only car in the garage. The television in the corner, which T sat in front of, played the news as he tapped away on his laptop. Jason cleaned his hands from grease with a rag as he made his way over to T. His boss gave him a small nod before Jason took the plastic chair next to him.
Jason spared a glance at the TV. The reporter was saying some shit about this being the sidekicks' first step towards joining the league. He watched as the camera did a pan over the spandex clad teens. He scoffed. Yeah, right, like Batman would ever trust a bunch of kids to do his missions. Robin was the only exception because the Bat had learned from Grayson and him that birds don't like to be caged. It was either let them out on a leash or let them loose. B chose the leash quickly.
That night after he grabbed a spar pair of clothes from T and scrubbed down his new bathroom, he stood on the roof with his Red Hood uniform on. His cowl and helmet were in his hands. He did not know if he should put them on. What was he suppose to do here? Save people? Kill people? Blow up shit?
Jason looked up and saw the bat-signal shining in the night sky. On the rooftops he was confronted with his problem once again. What was his purpose here? No one wanted him in the other dimension. No one wanted him here. He wasn't a hero and would probably never be again. Their morals just didn't appeal to him after the Joker killed him. He wasn't a villain either. Jason wanted to protect, just in a more permanent way than the heroes, but he wasn't going to purposely flip the switch on his sanity. It was just bent, not broken.
He could go back to his anti-hero stick, but seriously whom was he going to try to convince now. This Bat was not his and that just didn't feel right to bring his problems from another universe here. The Red Hood did not know what to do. He had lost his reason.
Jason sat on the rooftop till sunrise before deciding to get some sleep before his sift. That started the cycle. Everyday work, sleep, stand out on the roof, then repeat. Jason Todd did not know what to do, so he would continue until he did. Here he was alone, here he did not know what to do, and here he realized just how lonely he had always been. An old newspaper clipping from before his death stayed in his leather jacket. Reminding him of what he had turned his back on.
I read a story where Jason was transported to the YJ Earth before and then I was just like well if he figured out he was in a different dimension before then he probably would not know how to get back. Jason never wanted help nor needed it, but in this he does and he has no one to turn to. Hope you liked it! Please, review!
~Just Wait And See
