A/N: School is kicking my ass. Don't expect much for a few months, it was a struggle to get this in by Saturday.
It was officially 5:57 in the morning. Cultists, apparently, did not have quite a keen sense of time or punctuality.
Dick felt like he could have made a pun out of that if he tried a little harder. He was tired, sue him.
Jason was doing fairly well, down there. McDonwald seemed extremely desperate, and very willing to overlook the sketchy things about this situation. Namely, all of it. What was it Bruce said? Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot?
Dick snorted to himself around a mouthful of pocket granola. Bruce was a goddamn asshole, and anyways, one could also argue that he was superstitious as fuck. He dressed up as a bat and punched people in the face. There wasn't even the excuse of precedent, like there was with him and Jason, he just up and decided on bats and punching.
Weirdo.
Anyways, 5:57 AM. It wasn't deserted, and one could feel the civilization at 5 AM, but it was quiet. Nobody had shaken off the shroud of sleep enough to make noise, so silence reigned. Nobody payed attention to the old white dude walking off with a small latino kid. Nobody looked up and saw the figure running after them, greyed out in the morning sun.
Jason was doing surprisingly well. He was Robin, after all. Well, not really. He's Bruce's Robin, but he's not Robin Robin.
Dick didn't really know how to feel about that. Fuck Bruce, 'cause he knew, knew where the name came from, but, well. Jason didn't. At least, he hoped Jason didn't.
Still, it wasn't a coincidence that Dick refused to call the kid Robin. It's not Jason's name. It's not his title. It's not his history.
It's Dick's.
McDonwald takes Jason through the formulaic gridlocked streets of Bludhaven, going faster and faster the quicker the clock ticks down.
Maybe he's aiming for 6, now that the ritual was postponed due to a pesky little thing called natural progression of time.
Dick jumps from building to building, refraining from using his lines. The area was suburban, or as suburban as Bludhaven got, and so the houses were squashed together in a definitely non fire code compliant manner.
Jason and McDonwald didn't appear to be talking, and nothing was coming through his comms. McDonwald kept glancing about, checking his phone in his pocket constantly. Dick couldn't tell if he was checking the time, or if he got messages.
"Why's he checking his phone?" he asked Jason.
"Why're you checking your phone?" Jason repeated robotically.
Dick groaned, and thanked the gods that McDonwald wasn't particularly concerned with how strangely 'Alfredo' acted.
Finally, they arrived at a park. Bludhaven parks weren't much different from parks across the nation. They smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, had benches full of couples making out, and were full of patchy, more yellow than green, grass.
This particular park was more or less empty. There were about eight others loitering in the area, probably graveyard shift workers from the local hospitals and 24/7 fast food places.
Except, they were all separated into pairs. And they were all converging to the centre of the park. And that was Macy Duff.
Oh, Jesus shit. They were doing this ritual in a public park? He would never see parks the same way ever again.
Dick had to admit, however, it was a smart choice. There weren't any nearby buildings, and it was isolated in the middle, streets all around. If someone were to approach, they would be spotted immediately.
"Malcolm!" Macy called, striding over. Now that she escaped the shadows cast by the trees, Dick could see that her pair wasn't another cultist, but another child.
"I thought you were bringing your nephew!" She asked, jerking her own child into view. She was yelling loud enough for it to reach Dick, both naturally and echoed through the comms.
Oh shit. They weren't just sacrificing one kid today.
"This one's actually fifteen," MacDonwald smiled, manhandling Jason in front of him. "Figured it'd be better."
"Mm," Duff smiled, leaning over the girl she was with. "My girl's fifteen, and today is her five month anniversary."
Dick got the feeling that Duff was a bit competitive.
"Can we get started?" A tall Puerto Rican man said. Rodrigo Desdemona, Dick recognised him from the files. Pity. He thought the guy was innocent, back when everyone was thinking 'serial killer'. He had smile lines, for christ's sake. Everybody trusts smile lines.
Apparently, so did the kid he was with. Small, dark-skinned, and her features looked middle eastern. Nobody in his family was adopted, so Dick assumed he just grabbed her off the street.
That seemed a bit imprecise.
The other two adults showed up, Emilia Cassi and Bianca Montano, with their young sacrifices in tow. He couldn't quite tell from this distance whether the kids were related or not, as all four were white, and all white people looked alike to him.
"We will begin," Duff said, so quietly that Jason's bug barely picked it up, "when we are FUCKING READY."
Dick wasn't going to have hearing in that ear for a bit.
Visibly collecting herself, Duff turned to the east. The streaky yellows that heralded sunrise had risen above the treeline, rendering it in silhouette. The sun itself was neatly situated atop the skyline, crowning the buildings of Gotham.
"Formation," She said, thankfully at a normal volume this time. Immediately, each cultist took their separate child and faced outwards in a circle, with Duff at the head. "Knives out," She said, and they obeyed.
"Oh thank god," Jason quipped. "You weren't just happy to see me."
They were going to have a talk about dark one-liners when this was over.
McDonwald jerked the little brat again, and Jason's bug caught the other kids mutters and whispers and sobs. Dick had a moment of sympathy- it was hard to concentrate on the job when civilians were breaking down around you. It stressed you out.
Carefully, he dropped from his rooftop to the alley behind it. Now, the shop hid the park from view, and he only had the faint audio of Jason's bug to guide him. Carefully, he crept around the side of the building, back to the wall. They were all facing outwards, maybe to prevent something like what he was about to do from happening. However, they also each had a child in their arms, all of them breaking down in some way or another.
"Jason, be distracting for me."
Jason started screaming. Not words or anything. Just one really long high note.
Kid could probably sing that Whitney Houston song if he wanted.
Dick took the opportunity to-
(He threw a stick.)
(It's an eskrima, and you know it.)
(Yeah, but you know what eskrima means? Stick fighting. I googled that specifically for this argument.)
Dick took the opportunity to throw his eskrima at Cassi, smashing her in the head. Jason grabbed McDonwald's arm and then smashed his elbow right in his face, breaking what may have been his nose.
By that point, Dick had caught up to the park, running onto the soft, dew-covered grass. Jason's jacket had been shredded (but not subsequently mourned), and was hanging on by his left shoulder, exposing the R symbol.
The grass was slippery and wet, and Dick didn't quite feel like falling straight on his face, so he opted to just punch Montano in th-
Jason just screamed.
Not like before. Real. Jason just screamed.
Dick whipped around, and Jason had a knife in his shoulder. A kid was under him, wild-eyed and frozen, hugging the ground.
Jason took a knife for another kid.
Dick hit the button on his wrist, the one that sent his current location to every number associated with the BHPD. Then he threw the second stick.
Desdemona fell in a terrible heap, but Dick didn't really notice or care. He had already looked back to-
Duff was holding her knife to a child's neck. Her teeth were bared, like a snarling dog. It was the little middle eastern girl, unconscious. The others had run away during the commotion but- there was blood at her temple. She hit her head? She was hit?
Duff was trembling, and a red line was carving it's way into the girl's neck. She didn't try to stop it.
Dick couldn't get the-
There was a batarang buried in Duff's hand. It wasn't there before. Duff let go of the knife, clutching her hand to her chest.
Dick ran and grabbed the girl. He registered Jason in the corner of his vision, running to Duff. He was focused on the little girl's neck.
He couldn't hear anything anymore. None of the screams or struggles. He couldn't see. Everything was dark. But he could feel.
She felt like a person who was dying. She felt like someone he killed. She felt-
She wasn't dead yet.
"She has a pulse! She's got a pulse!" Dick yelled, trying to be heard over… something. Wasn't there screaming? He remembered screaming. It was faint, a thumping in her wrist beating out at- 50 beats per minute. She looked… fifteen probably. She should have a BPM of- he knew this. He should know this.
There. He heard it. Sirens, that's what he was shouting over.
They got here fast this time. That's good. Where's Jason?
There. Out by the ambulance. He found himself a mask? He has bandage- right, he got stabbed. No, not stabbed. There was Desdemona's knife, and it was-
Dick walked over and sat down beside the kid. He was staring down at his hands.
"My hands are bloody."
"Yeah, Jay. Generally, that happens in a fight."
"Do you know Lady Macbeth?" Jason asked suddenly.
"What? Yes," Dick said, unsure of where this was going.
"She, she didn't kill the king. Not really. But she was involved, she's why he's dead. And then, and then the guilt drives her crazy. And she keeps trying to clean her hands. Keeps trying to get the blood off them."
"This is the nerdiest way to admit you're fucked up. I just ran away, but you gotta bring Shakespeare into this?"
"Shut up! This is serious!"
"Yeah, okay. Listen. Why don't you, you know, tell me what you did. So, I can be a little less clueless about what's going on?"
"I… There was this guy. He was nasty, and scummy, and… He was a bad person. I didn't like him. And we were alone, and then he fell. And I guess, I guess I could have saved him but… I was too late. And maybe, inside, maybe I didn't want to save him? But I was the only one who could have, and now his blood is on my hands."
"Jay, I killed people."
"What?"
"Yeah. I… it's part of the reason why Bruce threw me out. Or, I ran away. Well, both. I left, because, well, because Bruce can't get over shit. He feels bad about shit, and he tries to make everyone else feel like shit then, because he feels bad."
Jason scoffed a little, dropping his hands. "He told me you were the perfect Robin. It's why… it's why I came here, I guess. I wanted to see how the golden boy performed. Wanted to… I don't know, close the gap?"
"There isn't any," Dick grinned, reaching over and ruffling the kid's hair.
Jason was a good kid. Dick got the feeling that his parents wouldn't mind.
"You're Robin."
A/N: Wanna talk, exchange headcanons, or send me prompt? I'm always down for social interaction at my tumblr, dreampunk.
