Jason
When Batman gave his 'the people of Gotham never look up' speech for the second time to his second Robin, Jason had taken it as profound, ominous, and more than a little judgmental. Now he thought it was a hell of a lot stupider that most Bats had a bad habit of not looking down. It left blind spots, places only Red Hood knew how to worm his way out of, and it put meetings like this on profoundly uneven footing.
Technically, Mother Hubbard's Liquor store was north of Crime Alley and just barely counted as neutral territory, but half the fluorescents leaking from the storefront buzzed on the edge of death and the cracked asphalt of the unpainted parking lot boasted all of one working streetlamp, so it still reeked of home.
More importantly, it was devoid of any tall neighboring buildings and open on three sides, all of which Red Hood had in his sights from the alley across the street.
He was running out of ideas for the potential trap. He'd cleared the best hide spots for an ambush, and his optimal escape routes, and even tuned into the Family frequency to clock the rest of the Bats' locations. Sure, it would be easy to lie over comms if they knew he buzzed in and out, but he cross-referenced with other sources. Only one Bat about in this borough tonight, waiting not-so-patiently for Jason to step out into the halo of the single bulb.
Something was weighing heavily on Nightwing too. Jason could tell even from his distance that the man's shoulders were pushed too low in a mockery of relaxation. His heels were touching blacktop, sure, but his knees were bent as he leaned back oh-so-coolly against his motorcycle (what did he call it again? Wing-cycle? Dork), and his arms were crossed left over right, fingers in easy access to cross-grab his grapnel, a trick he'd taught Jason himself with a wink and a smile. Like it was so clever.
Granted, the open ground allowed a decent running start if Nightwing did take to the skies, but this chosen terrain let Jason keep his bike under him. His predecessor might be a better flier most days, but on the street? Fuck the rest of the Family, Red Hood could outrun the goddamn Batmobile; there was no way they could box him in from here.
And that had to be the point. Single opponent, simple layout; Nightwing was pulling out all the stops trying to tempt Jason into showing up but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. He hadn't broken any Bat decrees that he could think of lately unless Nightwing was here to warn him off further intel exchanges with the Replacement, but he thought they were both extremely clear on that remaining a singular, under the table happenstance. Frankly if Nightwing wanted to pick a fight over it, Jason had plenty of fodder to throw in his hypocritical face.
And there was no way the man had used the guise of a mission to call a rendezvous about their last meeting. There was nothing to talk about, no matter how Jason had read it.
So no, no personal angle. That either left Red Hood being suspected of some breach, and now out-planned and about to take a gut-punch to his pride, or this was all genuine and deliciously shady, about something big enough for the hero to risk trusting Red Hood while alone and out of his element. It was oddly reassuring, seeing the Golden Boy with his panties in a twist, like it gave Jason permission to relax. Whatever this looming conversation was, even Nightwing couldn't muster up optimism for it being anything but painful.
Saved him some time having that go-round again.
He rolled his neck, letting the weight of his helmet deepen the stretch as he released a breath and righted his bike and kicked up into the street, louder than strictly necessary.
Nightwing's gaze didn't shift to the noise until Jason was practically in the parking lot, prompting a flare of annoyance that tempted Hood to draw his weapon and shatter the bulb above him, just to see if he could drive the man into some ridiculous backflip, but he resisted for now.
"Hood," Nightwing straightened and let his hands fall to his sides, open, with no expression tucked into the lines of his features. "Thanks for coming."
Jason kept his helmet oriented toward the other man, but swept his eyes around the low upper ledges of each building in his immediate view. It wasn't worth showing discomfort to do another full sweep, but one advantage of the hood was to hide the telltale shifting of the brow that gave most Bats away to anyone experienced in dealing with them. He let his boots drop to the ground and tried to mirror the posture without giving up his position on his bike, but resting a hand on his thigh mere inches from his primary firearm didn't exactly strike the same tone.
If Nightwing noticed, he didn't show it.
"Well since you asked so nice." In a four a.m. text that only contained an address and the word 'job,' but a sarcastic drawl didn't translate well through his voice modulator. "So 'Wing, with the Bat out of town, I can only assume this clandestine party is being kept our dirty little secret?"
Silence breathed between them while Nightwing's jaw twitched into an uncertain frown that had Jason just itching to drive the nail in further even before the other man opened his mouth to speak.
"And you've even got the brats patrolling the other side of the city, I'm feeling positively schmoozed."
Too far , warned that neglected whisper Jason called a conscience, drowned out by a sense of danger as Dick absently smoothed his hands to either side over the seat of his bike and forced a smile, giving Jason just a glimpse of the strain it took before the damned thing looked just as genuine as every other day. "Didn't know you kept tabs. Maybe I am catering a little. I've got a job coming up, and I wanted to ask for your expertise."
That statement-as-a-question tone needled him. He snorted, the sound mangled through his helmet, purposefully filling up the air around them with something uncomfortable and alien. "And no one less criminally-inclined came to mind?"
Tension drew the lines of the ridiculous logo on his chest a slow notch higher before he scrunched them into a careless shrug. "That won't be a problem, and you're the best marksman."
'Won't be a problem,' what a prick. Just because he hadn't dropped any bodies on the doorstep in a while. "That's nice. Butter me up some more, maybe I'll consider sharing intel."
"Less intel, more infiltration." Now it was obvious Nightwing was making a choice not to hear the sarcasm but he didn't show any sign of knowing about the exchange with the Pretender either as he casually held up three fingers and counted them off: "We won't have any backup, almost all of our intel is outdated or next to useless, guns are preferred and you can blow the whole place sky high when we're done if you want."
Well damn. That was a well-tailored checklist. Which meant he'd thought way too hard about how to sneak in the catch. The way he'd blown past the suggestion of working together only made Jason more sure of the fact that worse was coming, but he didn't have to reveal that Nightwing had already listed a deal-breaker; he was curious. "Still listening."
"It's outside of Gotham." Dick made it sound like an admission but he looked damn pleased with himself. "A favor I'm doing, and I get that that's nothing to do with you," he tacked on quickly "but there are people going missing. Kids."
"Favor for who?" Manipulative shithead.
Jason was left to listen to the sounds of the city while Nightwing shifted his gaze to a plastic bag rolling across the asphalt like a tumbleweed, trying to soften the revelation and evidently unable to find a safe avenue. "Zatanna."
"No. No way." Jason returned his grip on his handlebars, watching in disbelief as Nightwing's hands turned outward in supplication but Jason cut him off. "Call in somebody else. You've got people." And Nightwing knew how he felt—how he'd always felt—about any level of mystic bullshit. Had to know.
"Friends, Hood. They're called friends." An icy edge slipped into his tone for just a second before he seemed to remember he was the one making the ask. "And she suggested you."
"Bullshit."
Nightwing ducked his head and rocked his shoulders in a little 'sorta kinda' motion. "So she listed a few qualifications, but you're best for the job and I was hoping for some advice on iron and salt-based weaponry. Just take a look? I've got paper copies of the police reports, witness statements, and dossiers of the victims on me, more coming if you're interested."
Victims. Kids. Paper copies, meaning even Oracle couldn't sneak into his systems and wreak havoc to slow him down— he'd still check for uninvited tech first, it wouldn't be difficult to slip a tracker into a thick enough file. Jason kept looking for the angle, but every detail screamed how hard Nightwing was trying to make every concession he could.
Were they trying to get him out of Gotham for a few days? Why? If the Bats also knew about the turf war brewing in his territory, they could be trying to keep him away but even they had to see that Red Hood managing affairs did lead to less collateral damage, and they couldn't anticipate exactly when it would break; even Jason couldn't predict it with accuracy unless he kicked it off on his schedule.
"Thought the intel was no good."
Nightwing relaxed a fraction and Jason's fingers itched on the grips of his bike. "It's not great for prep work, but it paints a picture, gives a timeline. That's only what's officially out there, I'm looking to find more on what we're actually going to go up against."
"Uh huh. And when you say up against, aside from blowing the place sky high, what are we talking?"
Dick sighed and looked away again, this time without drifting trash to distract from the discomfort. "I need you to promise not to laugh in my face."
"Fuck no." Jason was thankful when a smile tried to slip onto his face that no one could see him contend with his wildly inappropriate reaction to Dick's hackneyed attempt to be endearing.
"We'd be going into a condemned property to help keep interdimensional spirit monsters at bay while Z performs some sort of cleansing ritual."
The words spilled out so quickly that Jason had to check off a list to find the humor. Condemned property, ritual, spirits was a weird way to phrase it… It took a beat, but it definitely punched a short laugh from his gut. "You're going to a haunted house to play ghostbusters?"
Nightwing gave an embarrassed little smile and leaned back against his Wingcycle, hands stretch out along it again, but relaxed this time. "Minus the vacuum cleaner backpacks but yeah, that's kinda what it sounds like. Interested?"
"Still fuck no." But he rocked back in his seat and extended a hand. "Gimme the files." It wasn't like he couldn't use a good laugh in his off-hours; imagining Nightwing backflipping through a Scooby Doo episode would definitely make for interesting reading.
The grin that lit up Dick's face curdled something inside Jason. A wave like heartburn washed up from his chest to leave a sour taste on the back of his tongue. He missed the second the other man took to retrieve a thick manila folder, presumably from somewhere on his bike, before zeroing back in on the weight of it as it was passed along. The break went unnoticed, but Nightwing took too quick a step back when Hood's fist clamped down and ripped the whole package back.
The hood hid the flare of his nostrils as he tried to take a deep breath without letting his shoulders rise. His gaze twitched back to the hero, reading a renewed blankness in his expression and a slight bend in his knees, feeling the look behind those lenses rove over him like he was assessing whether an animal was going to bite.
Good.
"What qualifications did Zatanna list?" The sound from the modulator was the same, though Jason's throat was drier. Mission, he told himself. Focus. He forced the anger to dissipate.
"Non-meta, a good shot, unspookable."
"Because you want to walk into a literal horror movie."
"Because I want to walk into a literal horror movie." Nightwing confirmed with a cocky grin back in place, pointing back at the documents in Jason's hands. "Not just any old haunted house either."
Jason pulled out the papers. Fuck if he knew why.
"Grisholm Asylum, middle of West Virginia. There are plenty of records of ghost sightings going back to its abandonment in the fifties."
If he were a superstitious man Jason might have believed the shivers running up his spine were footsteps on his grave, but he knew for a fact no one visited there anymore. "An asylum." He deadpanned, eyes scanning past the last-known-whereabouts to the rest of the top sheet. The missing girl's paperclipped photograph looked out of time with the shine of a new print, digitally enhanced, wearing clothes decades old. It was a candid shot the parents must have given to the police, bright eyes behind round glasses, braids swinging around as if caught in motion, a toothy grin that spoke to a long holding of the word 'cheese.'
Not exactly Victorian-era ghost child material.
He was used to fighting things that wore different faces but this was… was why Dick was asking for him instead of the brats. Because he would never ask them to put a bullet in a little girl through the gap in her front teeth.
He held his breath, trying to drown out the rolling nausea by peeling back the cocooned rage that always sat in his chest. For all Dick's big talk about coming back to the family, he sure as fuck didn't think much of Jason if he believed he could just—
"Yep. The sightings are mostly personal retellings, but I included the ones that seemed credible with the actual police reports. It's all in there." Nightwing confirmed.
All along with the picture of a dead girl. "Guns, shitty intel, can't imagine how you got this clusterfuck sanctioned by daddy Bats." Jason chose his escape route and ground his teeth against the urge to cut and run. He'd consider taking on Stay Puft if it got him out of this conversation any sooner.
"It isn't."
He said it with such a careless shrug. Like Jason was supposed to feel honored to be caught up in the dying embers of the Golden Boy's rebellious streak. Not bothering to growl out a response, he shoved the files away and sped out of the lot and back to the Bowery.