Title: The Lost and the Ones That Don't Want to be Found
Words: 2,527
Category: Friendship? I guess
Rating: T for cussing and smoking and mentions of drinking.
Pairing: None, just Jason and Roy bonding.
Summary: YJ Headcanons number 267, submitted by poisonousstrawberries: "Roy never told anyone that even though he never found the original Roy Harper, he did find Jason Todd. Nor did he tell them that Jason Todd didn't want to be found."
A/N: For youngjusticeheadcanons monthly fanfiction contest over on tumblr. Dick is currently Nightwing and Tim is currently Robin. And what's this, two new stories in two days? What is the world coming to when you can't even rely on me to write as infrequently as possible?
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Roy was exhausted. Physically and mentally.
It had been a long week. After not getting any new leads on the real Speedy for months, he'd resorted to looking for homeless red heads with blue eyes. Because perhaps Cadmus had erased the original Roy's memory and he'd been wandering around on the streets all this time. Sure, that seemed rather implausible, but Roy was desperate. He needed to find the original Speedy, for his own sake.
Roy had gotten a hit on a nameless redhead with blue eyes in none other than the sparkling city of Gotham. The archer had been rather reluctant to go to the Dark Knight's city, but this lead had looked promising. A John Doe with red hair and blue eyes had been taken to Gotham General after receiving injuries in a nasty bar brawl. The patient had been placed under arrest, but had to stay in the hospital to get a large shard of glass removed from his upper arm and stitches. He'd been handcuffed to the hospital bed overnight. The next morning, the handcuffs had been unlocked and the patient was gone.
That sounded suspiciously like a person with vigilante training. Getting into lots of fights was something Roy was famous for, and he hoped that held true for the first version of him. From his memories, Roy knew that one of the first things he'd learned as Speedy was how to pick handcuffs, so the original would have that knowledge. It seemed very plausible that this John Doe could be Speedy.
So Roy had started by asking around the hospital as Red Arrow; trying to find out if any of the doctors or nurses had seen the patient around before. None of them had, since most of the hospital employees lived in the better area of town. Roy had disappointedly left and tried his luck by asking people on the streets, even though he knew that wasn't likely to yield results. Nobody really had anything.
Roy was on his way when he was pulled into an alley by a mysterious gloved hand. A gun was pressed underneath his chin, cool metal raising goose bumps on his skin. A man wearing a red helmet glared down at him.
"What are you doing here, Red Arrow?" The man spat his name like a curse.
Roy raised his hands in a placating gesture and wondered if he could reach for an arrow before the guy could shoot. He decided that, no, he couldn't. "Looking for someone. If I may ask, who are you?"
"The Red Hood. You're looking for the original Speedy. Well, he's not here, so get off my turf, hero," Red Hood said viciously.
"How did you—" Roy spluttered.
"I know a lot more than you think, Harper."
Roy stared into the white-out lenses of the man holding a gun underneath his chin in shocked silence. The Red Hood's grip on the gun relaxed minutely, and Roy took advantage of the opening. He swung his leg out, trying to knock the other man's feet out from underneath him. Red Hood was prepared, though, and easily jumped over Roy's leg. But in order to do successfully complete the jump, Red Hood had to take his gun off of Roy. Which was exactly what Roy wanted. The archer jumped back, putting a good six feet between them.
Roy pulled an arrow from his quiver and notched it as the Red Hood pulled out a second gun and leveled both of them at the redhead.
"Tell me how you know so much about me," Roy ordered.
The Red Hood gave a short, sharp laugh. A memory echoed in Roy's head but when he tried to grasp it, the image dissolved. "I'm not telling you anything, Roy. Instead, you're going to tell me why you're in Gotham."
The blatant use of his real name unnerved the archer. He decided to play it safe, and lie. "Batman—"
"That's bullshit, and we both know it. Batman stopped helping you with your search for Speedy years ago. The only plausible reason that you could be here is if you thought Speedy was here."
Roy had to give this guy props; he knew his stuff. The search had gotten much more tedious after Batman had withdrawn all of his sources. Batman had told him that it'd been too long—Speedy was most likely dead after all this time. He'd told Roy to give up, and come back to the League. Roy had refused, obviously.
Roy sighed and lowered his bow, slipping the arrow back into his quiver. Red Hood grudgingly holstered his guns, but still looked wary and ready to attack at a moment's notice.
"I've been looking for homeless kids matching Speedy's description. I got a hit on a John Doe with red hair and blue eyes who received treatment at Gotham General from a bar fight before escaping police custody. I've been asking around about him, but nobody's been able to give me any information on him."
The Red Hood snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. "That's because you're asking around as Red Arrow. People in Crime Alley don't take too kindly to heroes."
Roy narrowed his eyes. This guy knew something about that John Doe, he could tell. "What do you know about the John Doe?"
"I know that he has a record, and that he's not a good person to mess with. And I know that he isn't Speedy."
Roy decided he was getting nowhere with this Red Hood. "I'm sure you'll understand that I don't take your word for it," Roy said as he walked out of the alley and back onto the street.
He didn't notice the Red Hood laugh quietly and shake his head before disappearing farther into the dark alley.
Roy had, though, taken the Red Hood's advice on questioning the people of Crime Alley. He'd changed into civvies and gone to the bar where the patient had gotten into the fight.
After questioning the bartender, he had more information than he'd started with, but not enough to confirm or deny that it was Speedy. Apparently, the John Doe had been coming to this bar regularly for over a month. He never spoke to anyone, but tipped generously and had a surprisingly high tolerance for hard liquor. He'd gotten involved in the fight when two large men had been threatening a young woman.
Roy was about to leave the bar when he mentally slapped himself and asked the bartender the one question that could've easily confirmed whether or not the John Doe was Speedy.
"Did the man look a lot like me?" Roy asked as the bartender filled a mug with beer for a customer.
The bartender frowned before shaking his head. "No, not at all."
Roy sighed as he left the bar. Another dead end. He'd wasted an entire day in Gotham for nothing.
Large drops of water hit the warm pavement. Roy looked up at the dark sky above him and decided to find somewhere to stay for the night. He'd move on in the morning. From what he'd heard from Nightwing, Gotham storms were the worst.
Roy didn't have enough money for a motel room and absolutely refused to go to the Bat Cave to ask if he could sleep there. No. He really didn't want to face Batman and Nightwing and the new Robin. Looks like squatting it is, Roy thought bitterly.
Roy walked around Crime Alley for around half an hour before finding an abandoned apartment building. He circled the building several times, finding that all of the ground-level entrances were boarded up. But, fortunately, he found a fire escape. Roy's eyes zeroed in on a broken window several floors up. That would be his entry point.
Roy scaled the fire escape silently. It was pretty sturdy, considering how old it must have been. Roy ducked carefully through the window, avoiding the jagged edges from the broken glass. He was almost completely through the window when he realized there was a light on in the room he was entering. And there was a person in the room, too.
Roy cursed himself as he heard a distinct click and a gun was trained on him for the second time that night. Adrenaline pumping through him, Roy's eyes flitted around the room. After noticing the bright red helmet in the corner and how the man holding the gun was wearing the same clothes that the Red Hood had been wearing earlier, Roy knew exactly whose place this was.
"Red Hood," Roy greeted, holding his arms up in surrender. Red Hood wasn't wearing his helmet. He had rust-red hair and a white patch of hair hanging down over his forehead. And… His face was—
"Did you follow me here?" Red Hood asked emotionlessly.
"No, I was just looking for some shelter," Roy explained. The other man narrowed his eyes, as if he was deciding whether or not to believe his excuse. Eventually, Red Hood flicked the safety of his gun on and lowered it.
Blue-green eyes pierced Roy's light blue. "Get out," he ordered, voice sounding hostile and tired at the same time. Finally Roy's mind supplied him with an image to match the Red Hood's face to. How he couldn't have instantly recognized those eyes, Roy didn't know. Even though his hair was a different color.
"Jason…?" Roy breathed. He'd learned of Batman's identity when he'd let him use his resources to search for Speedy. Which meant he also found out Nightwing's, and, at the time, the second Robin's civilian ID. Last time he'd seen Jason, the kid was in a coffin.
Jason grunted and flopped down on the threadbare green-brown couch. He set the gun on the small coffee table in front of him as Roy tried to accept the fact that Jason was right in front of him.
"You're-you're alive? And the Red Hood? Does Bruce know? And why are you a redhead?"
Jason kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. "Yeah, I came back. Hip hip hooray, and all that crap. You leaving now?"
"How?" Roy asked, dumbstruck. He really hoped he wasn't hallucinating. That would suck.
"I woke up in my coffin and clawed myself out. My brain was mush, but a quick dip in the Lazarus pit cleared that up," Jason looked exhausted with dark bags under his eyes. Maybe he should leave and let the other man sleep… No. Roy needed to know what happened.
"You were put in the Lazarus pit?" Roy asked, alarmed.
"Yep. By none other than Talia al Ghul. Ra's was pretty pissed, though."
Roy was panicking over the fact that the Jason had spent time with the League of Assassins, but then something dawned on him.
"You're out to get revenge, aren't you?" Roy said suspiciously.
"Well, what do you expect, Roy?" Jason snapped. "The Joker murdered me, and Bruce didn't do a thing about it. And then he went and got a new Robin. How many more kids is he going to condemn?"
Roy could tell how absolutely furious Jason was.
"Bruce doesn't know you're back, does he?" Roy asked cautiously, not wanting Jason to kick him out before he got answers.
Jason sucked in a deep breath through his nose and pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table. He stuck it his mouth and lit it with a lighter he pulled from his jacket pocket. Jason took a long drag before speaking. "Not yet," he admitted. "It's a process. And I'd like it if you didn't go and tattle on me."
"So… You kill people now?"
"Yes," Jason said curtly.
There was an awkward silence after that as Roy tried to reconcile the punk kid Jason that he knew with this angry and vengeful Jason. Roy decided to change the subject.
"So, what's with the red hair?" he ribbed. "Jealous of Wally and me?"
Jason snorted and exhaled a puff of smoke. Roy knew that Jason had been smoking since before he'd become Robin, and that it was calming for him. Roy had been bribed back when Jason was Robin to buy the kid several packs after Alfred had thrown away all the cigarettes in the Manor.
"Nah. I wanted to stay under Bruce's radar, so I figured a change in hair color would make me less conspicuous." Jason paused before adding, "I was your John Doe, by the way. That's how I knew you wouldn't find Speedy." He patted his upper arm and winced a little bit. Roy assumed that was where he'd gotten impaled by that shard of glass.
Roy recalled what the Red Hood had said about the John Doe and laughed internally. "Subtle Jason, subtle. And what's with the white streak? Decided to go emo?"
That earned Roy a full-blown laugh. It reminded him of the month that Jason had spent with him as Robin, helping him look for Speedy. Batman had left on an extended JL mission and he hadn't let Jason join the team yet. Originally, Jason was just going to be grounded from being Robin for that month. But then Roy heard and had volunteered to take Jason on his search for Speedy while Bruce was gone. Bruce had been reluctant at first, but after Jason had talked to him he had grudgingly agreed. They spent an entire month driving around the country and sleeping in cheap motels, sometimes going out as Roy Harper and Jason Todd and sometimes going out as Red Arrow and Robin. To be honest, it was one of the best times in his life. Jason was sarcastic and prickly, and one of Roy's favorite people to be around.
Roy was snapped out of his memories when Jason replied, "It's a piebald streak, you jerk. Y'know, from blunt force trauma to the head." Jason's voice was light-hearted, but Roy could hear the pain underneath it. "Dye doesn't really work on it, for whatever reason."
Roy nodded. He wasn't really sure what to say next. How did you talk to your formerly dead friend who was hell-bent on revenge? What could you say that wouldn't get them mad?
Jason took one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it into the ash tray on the coffee table.
"You can sleep on my couch for tonight, Harper. But you better be gone by the time I wake up."
Roy opened his mouth to thank him, but Jason just held his hand up.
"And if you tell anyone about me… Let's just say there won't be anyone left to look for Speedy," Jason threatened. He actually sounded pretty scary. But, still, Roy knew Jason. He raised his eyebrows, unimpressed, and Jason rolled his eyes at him.
Jason got up from the couch and disappeared through a rickety door on the other side of the apartment. Roy lay down on the lumpy couch and stared up at the ceiling, smiling faintly.
Instead of finding a lost archer in Gotham, he'd found a lost Bat. No, Jason wasn't lost—it was more like he didn't want to be found. Not yet, at least.
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A/N: Next I'll be working on a couple drabbles for Nesting Robins, and then the next chapter of Reconciliation. I feel terrible that I haven't updated the latter in a month. But hopefully it'll only be a little bit longer? Perhaps this can tide you over until the update. :)