Author's Note: Thanks to Wombo Combi (*grins and rubs hands together like an evil mastermind*. Hopefully this should be very good!) and soccernin19 (Thank you so much!) for reviewing the last chapter! I own nothing.
The newest apartment complex to the Narrows rose up and drew the eye to it like a shiny penny on a grimy street. Jason all but flew through Gotham's rapidly darkening streets, hoping to catch the Joker there. Provided that Ralph had been telling the truth, the clown was planning on blowing a building sky high. Hopefully Jason had picked the right one. This was the obvious choice, a sign that might warn off the approaching National Guard, but there was a possibility that the mad man had chosen another location. This whole thing could be a wild goose chase. Jason hoped not but he was determined to hunt the Joker for as long as it would take.
The wayward vigilante stopped the bike and was heading for the gleaming front door of Hanover Apartments when he noticed the sewer cover. It had been lifted and dragged aside to reveal the dank and hungry maw of Gotham's sewer system. Bingo. Jason grinned under his helmet as he approached. He'd just found the clown, and from the looks of things, it was going to be just him and the Joker. It was like Christmas.
His helmet filtered out much of the stench and the infrared vision allowed him to see well enough in the dark to navigate. That was how he discovered the explosives. Their extra long fuses had been spliced together like some kind of mad science experiment gone wrong. The arrangement would allow the Joker to light just one fuse and set off the whole set. There was enough explosive material to sink Hanover Apartments into the ground and then some. Jason followed the mutated fuse but soon enough all he would have needed to find the Joker was the singing.
"London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London bridge is falling down, my fair lady." The mad cackle that followed the singing made Jason grind his teeth together in blind fury. "Count with me!" his memory mocked him with crazy cheer. "Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five...Come on, count!" For a minute phantom pains flared across his back and side, blazing like he'd been lit on fire. Jason shook it away with sheer, stubborn will power and reached inside his jacket for one of his loaded guns.
The Joker was skipping around the fuse like a diabolical kindergarten girl, grinning with maniac glee. Something sour and dark twisted in Jason's gut. For a moment he tasted copper and salt on his tongue and he could hear the sounds of his own pained screams echoing in his ears. Then the Joker laughed again, giggled really, and the sound bounced off the tunnel walls before clearing his had. Jason's finger carefully removed the safety. He pulled the slide back almost automatically, the click an almost comforting sound. Then he lifted the gun and fired.
Damian stepped onto Gotham's streets, a hand clenched in the material of a black duffel that was almost as big as he was. "I'll drop the rest of your things off at the manor," M'gann called after him. The boy lifted his free hand in acknowledgement. The bioship rose silently to vanish into the dark sky above and Damian made his way down the street. Gotham was quieter than he ever remembered it being. Wind whistled down the street, making him shiver. It carried with it the sound of maniacal laughter. The boy shivered again, this time not because of the cold, and began following the sound. He had just reached the open sewer cover when the laughter became a scream.
Damian scrambled down a slimy ladder and into the shadows below. He slipped off the last run and landed with a clatter, duffel smacking hard against his side, almost throwing him off balance. He winced and shook a little, listening carefully. The laughter started up again and Damian followed it, footsteps as silent as smoke. He rounded a corner to see Jason looming over the Joker. The mad clown was bleeding from a bullet wound in his shoulder and laughing despite the blood blooming as if it were a flower. There was a fist sized bruise growing on the maniac's jaw. To anyone who didn't know the truth about what the Joker had done to Jason, the scene might have been horrifying. Damian found it immensely satisfying instead. He liked Jason, despite his best attempts to the contrary. He turned back to cut apart the fuses on the explosives.
The boy returned a couple minutes later, explosives no longer a danger to anyone. The Joker had been shot in the left foot during the time when Damian was gone. Blood was now staining the concrete and dripping into the murky sewer water. The trained assassin calmly stepped around the corner, careful to make his footsteps echo. Jason spun around, gun raised and finger on the trigger. When he saw who was standing there, the older boy relaxed slightly. "Oh. It's you," he said, a hint of something dark in his tone. "I as wondering when one of you was coming to stop me. Did they pull you out of Hong Kong then?" Damian shook his head in response. Then he considered the situation before him. At last he nodded slightly, as if he'd come to some satisfying conclusion.
"Actually I'm not here to stop you."
"Oh really?" Jason questioned, tone skeptical.
"Yes," Damian confirmed. "First of all, the Joker is scum and the League would have done away with him years ago had they been in control of Gotham. Secondly, and more importantly, had I been tortured and brutally murdered by some lowlife criminal, then revived by the Lazarus Pit and we happened to catch up with whoever killed I would want to kill them too. And you would have let me." Damian's green eyes met Jason's covered ones with no hesitation. "I will extend the same courtesy to you." Jason did not move, as if waiting for the catch. The Joker had finally fallen silent behind the older boy and was beginning to look a little worried. "Do what you need to," Damian told his older brother, unflinching.
Jason removed his helmet then and Damian stared, wide eyed, at his brother's genuine smile. "I knew there was a reason I liked you." That said, Jason spun around on his heel. The Joker had only a moment to look afraid before Jason smacked him hard with the gun. The clown collapsed, unconscious, while Jason tucked the gun away. "Come on kid," he said. "This city needs Batman."
"And Robin," Damian added, trying to sound more certain than he felt. More certain than he'd felt when Tim had shoved the duffel into his hands and told him what was inside it. He grabbed the older boy's helmet while Jason shoulder the Joker's limp and still bleeding form.
"Oh really?"
Damian turned a shy grin on his brother and lifted the duffel a little. "I've got permission."
Jade couldn't sleep. She had tossed and turned, the baby kicking out a drum beat on the inside of her stomach, before finally rising and stumbling blearily into the living room. That was when she found out exactly what was happening in Gotham. The newscaster on the street looked into the camera with wide, frightened eyes as she reported that the Joker was running wild, the National Guard had been called in, and Batman was nowhere to be seen. Instantly she felt wide awake.
She scrambled out of the room while a new newscaster safe inside a broadcasting building droned on behind her. She searched desperately for her phone and once she found it she was dialing immediately, hands shaking. She paced in the living room as the phone rang and a new reporter came on, this one talking about some car accident no one cared about. "Yeah?" Roy's calm voice was a balm to her frayed nerves the instant she heard it.
"Are you okay?" she asked, not bothering to disguise the frantic worry in her voice. "I saw the news."
"Dick insisted Ollie and I stay in as soon as he got the news," Roy replied. "We're not allowed out until the clown has been brought in.
"Good." Jade let out a little sigh of relief. "In that case I'm calling to let you know that I am going to kill my co-worker and since I'm pregnant you're going to have to come help me dispose of the body."
"Melinda again?" Roy questioned with a laugh. Jade grinned at the droll looking newscaster on the screen before she realized what she was doing and glared at him. Melinda Carr was a fellow retail worker at the secondhand thrift store Jade had been working at since she'd left the League and informed Roy she was pregnant. The other woman was loud, bossy, and talked with a stuff British accent that turned into her natural, flat Midwest one when she was tired. In short, she drove Jade absolutely crazy.
"Yes!" the former assassin hissed. "Today she was lecturing me on how to properly fold shirts. I've known how to fold shirts as per store requirements since I was twelve. Furthermore all our shirts are supposed to be on hangers." Roy laughed again and Jade swore at him cheerfully in Vietnamese. "Don't laugh at me! This is serious stuff."
"Of course," her boyfriend replied, laughter still evident in his tone. "This is a matter of life and death."
"Jerk," Jade told him, rolling her eyes. Roy started full on laughing again and the baby kicked. They fell silent for a few minutes, content to listen to each other's breathing. Then Jade asked, "Have you told Oliver about me yet?"
"No," Roy said, voice going soft.
"Why not?" Jade pressed gently. She was six months pregnant but Oliver Queen still didn't know that she and Roy were together. In fact, Jade wasn't sure Queen even knew she existed.
"It isn't that I'm ashamed of you," her boyfriend quickly reassured her. "I love you Jade and you're the most amazing girl I've ever met."
"Then what is it?"
"Ollie and I argue. A lot," Roy told her. Jade nodded and muted the television so she could focus only on her boyfriend. "And every time it's the worst experience I've ever had."
"And he doesn't normally approve of your choice in women?" Jade guessed.
"Exactly," Roy replied, sounding disheartened. "And things have been going well between us lately. I just don't want to lose what little family I have left." Jade could understand that. Her father, Lawrence Crock, rarely showed any interest in his daughters beyond teaching them to kill and her mother disapproved of her life choices. Artemis was the only person Jade really considered family anymore and the older girl would do just about anything to keep a good relationship with her sister.
"What if I came to Gotham to help you explain everything? Then if something does go wrong you won't be on your own." Jade kept her voice, not pushing because she loved Roy and didn't want to drive him away.
"You would do that?" Roy sounded hopeful and a little bit awed.
"I'm packing right now," Jade told him, smiling as she headed for the bedroom. She hesitated a moment and then added, "I love you." It was one of the most truthful things she had ever said.