Title: Alive
Word Count: 3000+
Rating: T for swearing, violence, and minor gore
Universe: DC Comics Universe, modern day Gotham City. Levi is Nightwing/Dick Grayson, and Jean is Red Hood/Jason Todd.
A/n: I've been very prominent with this AU on tumblr, so I figured, why not post it here? This one fic in particular is long anyway. If you're familiar with DC Comics, specifically with the Batfam, then this fic will definitely make more sense to you. If not, then it may not make too much sense. Either way, I hope you enjoy the fic. Feel free to leave a review and tell me what you think!
When he was a boy, his favourite feeling was flying. To spend night after night soaring on a trapeze, entertaining audiences as he flew through the air was one of the only parts of his childhood that he could look back on fondly.
It ended quickly, more hastily than he expected; but that didn't mean that Levi stopped soaring.
He continued to fly, but this time, with more purpose and more duty. His audience changed over the years. He wasn't flying above cheering crowds any more, as grumbling thugs would have been more like it.
With his tights and shorts traded in for kevlar and escrima sticks, Levi carried on a new title when he flew. He was Nightwing; former Boy Wonder, and the current and only guardian of Bludhaven's underbelly.
His small stature helped Levi out greatly. It allowed him to move faster; twisting his way out of a bullet's path, or flipping back to dodge a crook's punch. And despite Levi's smaller height, it definitely did not mean that he ever held back on a punch or kick.
Levi aimed a jab towards one crook's face; and when his reflexes caused him to lean back from another's punch, he grasped their arm as tightly as possible and lugged them right into a wall.
"2 down, 3 to go, Oracle," Levi said into his radio.
From the other end of the link, the woman professionally known as Oracle, but casually known as Petra, responded with a confirming hum, "Thanks for the update, Wingnut."
She wasn't a trapeze artist, but lord knew how well she could aid Levi on his nightly outings. Even if she was sitting behind a computer monitor several cities away.
"It's been half a decade already, Oracle." Levi scoffed as he ran towards a wall. Dodging a knife slash with a well-timed wall spin, he threw a shuriken from his belt at the knife-armed crook. When they were disoriented for a long enough moment, Levi finished them off with a side kick to the stomach. " The joke's getting old. It's Nightwing now. Do I have to spell it out for you?"
Petra chuckled, "No, no, no, I got it. Maybe I should try saying it 5 times. Nightwing. Nightwing. Nightwing. Ooh, I just found a new tongue twister."
Levi groaned, but not just because he heard a gun cocking behind him. "You're lucky that I can tolerate you, you know that?" Lunging straight at the armed punk, Levi performed a quickly roll on the ground to avoid a bullet's path. Once he sprung himself back up, he used a tactic he was far to used to using to disarm his foe. He punched them straight in the face and took the pistol.
"I know," Petra mused. "How's the fight going now, Wingnut?"
Levi unloaded the bullets from the pistol and tossed the now useless weapon aside, "I'm almost done, Oracle."
Behind him, the final crook stood behind the masked vigilante, a crowbar in hand and a mean look on their face.
The street lamps above the alley way lit up a faint shadow onto the concrete. When Levi saw the outline of someone approaching him, he knew exactly what to do. On reflex, he turned around and kicked the final crook in the face.
"OOOF!"
Instantly, the thug was taken down. They fell to the ground with one blow, down, out, and defeated.
With the five thugs on the ground, and their stolen loot now untouched, Nightwing spoke simply on his next response to Oracle. "Finished."
"Oooh, 5 guys in 4 and a half minutes," Petra noted. "You beat your old record."
Levi pulled out a special tool from his utility belt made to deal with the specific situation at hand; handcuffs. "I have a record?" he asked as he started to cuff up the crooks.
"You've got a new one now," Petra explained.
"Good for me," Levi claimed in a flat voice as he continued with his task. He never did like cuffing the criminals after he defeated them, not even as a child, and definitely not as an adult. The next words he said were not to Petra, but to the 5 stooges at his disposal, "I can't say that I expected more from guys who could afford desert eagles, but I did."
He subdued them more easily by interlocking all of their handcuffs, making escape just a little bit tougher than it had to be. Levi glared at one of the punks in particular, the 4th one he had taken down. "Point-blank range and you were still too slow."
BANG!
Levi flinched in surprise. It was a sound he knew too well, gun fire. When he recoiled back and looked around, Levi expected to feel pain in his body. Or find blood, or anything.
Levi did, but not on him. When he looked to his 5 accomplices, one of them was lying dead. Their head hung limply on their neck, and blood streamed down everywhere.
"NO!" Levi exclaimed loudly.
Panicking, Levi hurried to protect his other 4 accomplices.
But another BANG! brought them down to 3.
BANG!
Then 2.
BANG!
Then 1.
BANG!
And then there were none.
"ORACLE!" Levi yelled, looking around the area frantically.
Petra's responses were just as panicked, "I heard it over the radio, I'm doing my best to triangulate the shooter's position."
"I have an idea to start," Levi noted, looking straight up at the alleyway's buildings. Knowing that he would have to get to the top, he started climbing the fire escapes as quickly as possible. "Call an ambulance! Now!"
Levi scaled the structures with ease, getting to the roof in no time. Pulling himself up, Levi found that the roof was supposedly empty. But looking down, he found small little pieces of evidence that would no doubt help him out in his task. Bullet casings laid on the ground, 5 of them scattered around the tar.
Kneeling down, Levi picked one of them up to get a better look, "They shot with a handgun, Oracle. Unless sniper rifles take these kinds of casings now. Looks like a 9mm to me. Whoever shot these, they were good."
"They shot 5 times, so they may have one left," Petra added onto the conversation. "Be careful, Nightwing."
"I've handled worst," Levi claimed. Glancing forward, he saw nothing much but an empty roof and nowhere to go. But when he noticed a small moving blur of red in the Bludhaven atmosphere, Levi quickly decided that following that blur would be a great place to start.
"Someone's escaping the area," Levi announced as he broke off into a run. The streak of red was running at a notorious pace, something that both impressed and intimidated Levi as he followed. "Maintain radio silence, got it?"
"Got it," Petra confirmed. "If you need me, you know what to do."
Leaping off rooftops never phased Levi at all, and he would never hesitate to jump from ledge to ledge, gracefully moving like the acrobat that he was. When he jumped, he knew that there would be something to catch him. When it be a horizontal bar that he would have to cling to and swing on, or another piece of flat roof he would have to roll on to lessen the impact of his fall.
With every swing and leap, the red blur got clearer and clearer, proving itself to be part of someone's costume.
Levi started getting a better look the closer he got to the person. They were clad in biker garb, from the rugged looking pants and top to the brown leather jacket upon their torso. The red aspect of their costume that made the original blur was not in the jacket or pants though, but in the hood placed on the person's head.
Chasing the red hood faster and faster, Levi knew they would have to stop eventually, as a dead end would pop up soon. In moments, a dead end did come.
When faced with an open intersection with no other buildings close enough to jump onto, the red hooded fellow ceased their running and stopped in place.
Levi took it as a sign to stop as well, as the only way for the red hood to go would be through him.
"There's no where else to go," Levi announced.
"That's unfortunate," came the voice from the hood. They turned around, revealing that the red hood of theirs covered the face as well, and that on their chest piece, a certain symbol was placed boldly.
Straight on the torso was the only other streak of red on the costume. But out of every possible marking in the world, that streak of red was a bat-symbol.
"You've got one more bullet in that pistol of yours," Levi pointed out. Defensively, he reached backwards towards the straps on his back and released his escrima sticks from their holds. "I'm surprised you haven't shot me yet."
"Shoot you?" the red hood proposed, only to put down the possibility in a heartbeat. "Wouldn't dream of it, Levi."
His expression softened instantly. The red hood knew his name, but how?
Levi didn't go around flaunting his secret identity every day, and he surely kept his masked life away from his civilian one well enough, so how would they know who he was?
But he knew he couldn't show too much surprise now, especially with the red hood's current body count of 5.
"Don't wanna shoot me? Fine, your choice," Levi decided. "But what about them?"
"Who?" the hood mused. "Those crooks back there? What does it matter to you? They were drug dealing dicks, I wasn't gonna fluff up some pillows before I took them out."
"But that's not how I do things around here," Levi claimed dutifully. He pointed to the symbol on the red hood's chest. "You're a murderer, and you don't deserve to wear that symbol."
A painful laugh was heard from the hood's mask, "Au contraire, Levi." Hands moving up towards his mask, he pressed something on his hood. Hissing noises were heard from the device as locks released here and there. The mask's hold on the person's face lightened, and soon, when he leaned his head forward just slightly, the hood fell off with ease.
"I think I earned this symbol just as much as you did."
Levi thought that the red hood knowing his name would be the most surprising thing of his night, but he was wrong. Because catching the sight of the man under the red hood left him utterly astonished.
"… Jean? Jean Kirschtein?"
Jean smirked, his hazel-green eyes lightning up in amusement underneath a scarlet domino mask. "In the flesh."
"I… how?" were the only things Levi could say. "How are you here? How are you alive? You were-"
"Dead?" guessed Jean, scoffing. "No shit, Sherlock."
It was definitely Jean, as it could not have been anyone else. Only Jean Kirschtein could be that sassy and snappy on a rooftop's edge. He was taller now, towering above Levi with ease. His once skinny and underfed figure was replaced with muscle, plenty of pounds of it on every bone on his body.
Despite the things that had changed and the things that had stayed the same, there was one thing about Jean that changed the most was his eyes.
Hazel-green orbs that were once filled with honesty and pride were empty, and had been replaced with laughter, pain, brutality, and rage.
"Dying ain't so bad, to be honest," Jean claimed in a casual voice. "You know, minus the beating, the bleeding, the broken bones, and all that jazz…"
Tension built up in his words when he let his words stretch out just a little longer than necessary. Levi could see the joking tone fading away in seconds.
"No kid deserves to endure what I've suffered, Levi," Jean stated with sudden anger in his voice.
Levi knew exactly where the conversation was going, "Jean…"
"So why'd you and Erwin let me?"
"Jean."
Like built-up pressure, Jean's rage exploded right there. He lunged forward towards Levi, unsheathing a knife from a utility belt around his waist.
"WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME TO DIE, LEVI?" Jean swung at the shorter hero, who dodged it with a backwards lean. "IS THAT WHAT YOU DO IN THIS FUCKED-UP, TIGHT-WEARING FAMILY? YOU GIVE LITTLE SHITS LIKE ME ENOUGH TRAINING TO GET THEM KILLED BEFORE SENDING THEM OUT ON THE STREETS TO ACT AS BAIT?"
Levi swung at Jean with his escrima sticks, which the taller boy could only block with his hands. He seemed tougher, more durable, able to withstand anything Levi threw at him.
"WHAT COULD WE HAVE DONE, JEAN?" Levi retorted back boldly. "THERE WAS NOTHING WE COULD DO. NOT BACK THEN, AND NOT NOW."
Jean seemed offended at such an assumption like that. His temper started to boil, evidenced when he swung his knife at Levi harder and stronger. "Nothing? Are you telling me that there was fucking nothing you could have done?"
Jean's anger started paying off, because when he jabbed at Levi with his knife, he managed to make impact; right on Levi's side.
"Ahh!" Levi exclaimed in pain, feeling the sensation sear through his body.
Jean performed a roundhouse kick to Levi's side while he was distracted by the pain. Levi was knocked to the side, sprawling out on the tar roof. Jean had a knack for channelling his anger. When he fought calmly, his odds of winning were average. But when he fought angrily, while there was no guarantee, Jean's chances of victory always seemed to soar higher.
Jean looked down at Levi in pity, almost feeling ashamed to himself that he actually idolized Levi when the older man was Robin and he himself was just a mere street kid. "Kenny Ackerman's still alive, Levi."
"Well, no shit," Levi grumbled.
Kenny Ackerman was a crime lord back in the city of Gotham. Brutal? Yes. Violent? Of course. Insane? Most definitely. Alive? Guaranteed.
Erwin Smith had put Kenny into full body casts many times before. Levi himself had only broken single bones before; same with Jean, and even Petra from time to time.
But breaking bones was as far as any of them were told to go. It was all they were trained to do; shatter bones, bloody lips, and send the maniac off to prison. There was nothing more they could do, and while escaping Blackgate Prison became something easy for Kenny Ackerman to do, the protectors of city were more than ready to send him straight back.
The knife was still inside him as Levi laid on the roof. When he pulled out the switch blade, all Levi could do was toss the blood covered switchblade to the side.
Swiftly, Levi rolled himself backwards as quickly as possible, gaining some distance between him and Jean, and pulled himself onto his feet. "Killing's not in our code, Jean."
"Why not?" Jean inquired with genuine curiosity. "Listen, when you kill a rabid animal, or a deadly bug, is it murder?" Jean knew the answer already, "No, it's not. It's putting something down; putting something down that happens to be a menace to the society that it tries to thrive on."
"There are other ways, Jean," Levi offered. For once, he put down his escrima sticks in an attempt to show Jean that he didn't want to hurt him. "Let us help you."
Jean paused in his words, his eyes glaring Levi so sharply that they could cut through steel.
"The last time I called for help, no one heard me."
His glance was on the ground, eyes peering at the tar roof. His attention was brought to his discarded red hood, which was laying by his feet. Innocently, he kicked it forward. "It's too late for me anyway, Levi."
The metal that made up the hood made a crinkling noise again the tar as it rolled. It stopped at Levi's feet, to which the hero glanced down at it.
Like he had dropped the title of Robin to carry the title of Nightwing, Jean had done the same. But Jean hadn't a chance to drop the Robin mantle. The title was taken from him by force, ripped from his grasp with the crowbar swing of a maniac. The new title Jean held was something else, but perhaps his title didn't lie in the scarlet bat-symbol he bore on his chest, but on the red hood he wore on his head.
Glancing back up to Jean, Levi wanted to squint at him in anger. But instead, he could only look on with pity.
There in front of him stood an old friend of his; an old friend who was ripped from the world way too soon, but was forced back just as quick. Whatever brought Jean back to life had side effects to it, and Levi knew he would have to find out soon.
As Levi looked at his friend in sympathy, he was a bit confused to see that Jean's ever so serious glare had turned into an amused grin.
While thrown off at first, Levi soon discovered the source of the grin when Jean raised his hand up, revealing a small detonator in his gloved grasp.
When Jean clicked the button, the red hood by Levi's feet started to beep.
"Oh shit…" were the last words Levi said before running off backwards and ducking for cover. He leapt into the air and hit the ground just as hard, the tar scraping him just as the helmet exploded.
BOOM!
The smoke was thrown into the air, causing a cloud to erupt from the roof top. The flash from the explosion disoriented Levi's vision slightly.
But through his blurry sight, Levi saw one recognizable thing, the figure of Jean Kirschtein running off from the roof top and back into the Bludhaven night.
Ears ringing, Levi grumbled as he pulled himself up. "God dammit, bastard got away…" Sighing as he stood on his feet, Levi touched the radio on his ear, "Oracle?"
Petra's voice on the other end was compassionate and worrisome, like it usual was when Levi had gotten into a tough scuffle or an explosion was heard from the radio. "Nightwing, are you okay?"
"Yeah, just a flesh wound," Levi winced. He found feel the warmth of his blood staining his uniform as he pressed his hand to his side. He hated dealing with blood on his costume, especially when it was his own. "Minor, nothing fatal."
"What happened over there, Nightwing? Who did that to you?" Petra's voice inquired.
"It's Jean, Oracle," Levi announced. "He's alive."
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Disclaimer: I do not own a thing.