"I can't believe you're letting her do this." Dick shook his head and leaned over Barbara's chair to watch her protégé stroll through the halls of Arkham with a half-empty ice-cream carton.
"Shush you, I'm keeping an eye on her." Babs gave him a fondly condescending look, the bluish glow of the screen making her green eyes pop in an almost supernatural way, made him kind of wish she wasn't wearing her glasses so he could see it better. "He's not stupid enough to hurt her with his next hearing in a few months."
"Hey, she's your responsibility, not mine." Dick threw up his hands defensively, a smile still playing on his lips as he took a few steps back. "I just don't know what she's trying to prove here."
"On the surface they're pretty similar…" Babs paused at his derisive scoff and rolled her eyes at him. "On the surface Dick, she's not going to start killing people anytime soon. It's natural for her to be curious about how he got there. You have to admit, you'd be too."
"Yeah, in the way I'd be interested in watching a burned out sewage plant."
Babs minimized the window showing the cell at Arkham and Dick turned away to continue the pre-patrol equipment check he should have been doing at the cave and not Barbara's newly rebuilt clock tower.
"Burned out sewage plants aren't all that dangerous." Babs adjusted her glasses and spun her chair around to face him. 'I'll talk to her again tonight, but I'm sure she'll give up on it herself when she gets whatever she wants out of this or realizes she won't. There's nothing to worry about."
"Like I said, she's your protégé, you know her best." Dick smiled down at her. "I'm not worried."
o
o
o
Dick was worried.
Breakouts at Arkham were always messy, and with many of the heavy hitters currently locked within the asylum, they'd all been expecting some kind of trouble for a while.
Four people dead, and another six in hospital, guards and various other staff as well, was a small number considering how high the death toll often rolled, but that didn't make it any easier for the families who had t bare the loss.
And Jason was gone. Dick wasn't sure how he's hacked the surveillance feed, or gotten his hand s on explosives while according to all sources he's been comatose, but finding out 'how' he'd done it wasn't nearly as pressing as figuring out where he'd gone and what he was doing.
The problem was that Todd didn't have any obsession they could track. Not like Dent or Nygma. There was no telling what he was going to do until he did it and people ended up dead.
All Dick 'could' do was shorten Tim and Damian's patrol times as much as they would allow and make sure there was always someone watching them when he couldn't.
Stephanie, she persisted in scouring the asylum no matter what they tried to tell her. At least it kept her off the streets and away from any retaliation he might have been planning.
Dick pressed a balled fist against his mouth and glared at the glass case displaying its Robin suit innocuously to the side as always. He was tempted for a moment to put that fist right through the glass. Instead, he turned and stormed off to the Batmobile.
He'd have to find out from Arkham exactly what drugs they had Jason on and how they would affect his behavior before they wore off, and 'when' they'd wear off.
With Bruce on the other side of the world, it was Dick s responsibility to get everything ready for a potential attack, but he didn't even want to think about what Jason was doing right then.
o
o
o
Something dark and cold and 'sick' had settled deep inside of him when he'd entered the room and refused to leave no matter what he did.
Watching the tapes, grainy, old-fashioned footage of what had happened down there only caused it to sink even deeper.
Jason's face as he pulled away from the needle betrayed more fear than he'd thought the other man was even capable of producing anymore.
Arkham was talking. Asking about Gotham's vigilantes, detailing how he'd figured out that Jason knew all of the information the Doctor wanted to know.
Jason would talk, Dick knew he would, and once Arkham knew…
The doctor removed the gag from Jason's mouth and he made a show of stretching his jaw, licking his lips where the fabric had chaffed. When it he spoke, it was too soft for the recording software to pick it up, apparently neither could Arkham.
He leaned in and Jason grinned, then pursed his lips before spitting a wad of pink stained saliva into the doctors face.
Jeremiah growled, livid and drew back a hand as if to hit Jason, but caught himself and calmly raised the syringe of reddish liquid instead.
Jason didn't have time to pull back before Arkham was pushing down the plunger, flooding his bloodstream with the contents in seconds.
Dick could have almost brought up a thought about Jason being too cocky, not knowing when he was beat and being reckless about it.
Then he was gagged again and the convulsions started.
For the first few minutes, Jason screamed like he'd been dipped in fire. The mechanically distorted sound burst from the speakers suddenly enough to have Dick reeling back from them in surprise. Bruce had tensed up for a second but was otherwise unmoved.
The screams died out before the convulsions, and by the time Jason was limp, but for the occasional twitching of his bare feet and hands, Arkham had left and returned. Dick recognized some of the men he'd brought with him as the victims of s string of 'accidents' that had befallen a slew of Arkham's staff before they slipped on grotesque pale masks.
Arkham questioned Jason again, getting a weak go fuck yourself as his only answer. Jeremiah produced a second syringe, the liquid in this one lighter in comparison to the other.
It calmed the final shakes in Jason's body, glazing over his eyes as the men approached, each armed with a long metal rod. Some information from Harley, Jeremiah said.
Dick turned away, sent Tim and Damian out when Bruce was too focused on the screen to either notice or care how his charges would react to the violence.
Eventually the first syringe made another appearance and the cycle repeated.
Dick wanted to reach through the screen, shake Jason until he stopped antagonizing his captors, stopped laughing off Arkham's threats and lobbying his admittedly creative insults at everyone else in the room.
After a week they concluded that Jason wouldn't have survived, even the sudden burst of strength it would have taken for him to run off as Stephanie had described would have been just that.
When that adrenaline died down, without immediate care, so would Jason.
He never answered a single one of Arkham's questions.
Nobody could tell if finding Scholz had been a blessing or curse.
If they should be hoping it was a lie, and Jason was dead, or somehow his captors had kept him alive, but in the same state as he'd been down in Arkham.
There was only so much any man cold take before…
Dick knelt before the glass case, carefully replacing the old, discolored skittles with fresh candy that with fresh candy that was still bright.
It was almost his birthday. If Jason were alive, he'd be twenty in a week. Only twenty. That wasn't even old enough to buy a beer. Dick was reminded of the first time he'd spoken to the nearly resurrected Jason and he'd wanted to go for a drink. Had Jason gone on his own after they'd parted?
The skittles fell from Dick's fingers and he went from crouching in front of the case to kneeling slumped against it.
If Dick had accepted the offer, sat down someplace and 'talked', would it have come up in the conversation at all? How 'young' Jason was? Could Dick have reminded him that there were other ways of doing things before the boy had gone so far off the deep end?
If he'd gone back for Jason before one half of the Peirce twins had blown up, would that have convinced the boy that there was enough reason to try and make a home with them?
Dick took a few minutes before he slowly, painstakingly forced himself to gather up the pieces of candy that he'd dropped, arrange them to spell out Jason's name as they had before.
If Jason was still alive, it meant there was still a chance to fix things, make them better. He stood and rested his hand against the case, muttering apologies he hoped Jason would hear someday, and if not, that he could heat wherever he'd ended up.
o
o
o
None of them took the news of a new Red Hood well. After the initial shock, it became obvious through grainy footage and rumors and the testimony of a certain meth supplier who'd thrown himself into the arms of the GCPD, admitting to a rap sheet as long as Dick's leg and begging to be arrested.
The new Red Hood was too bulky, Jason couldn't have gained back that kind of weight so fast, and even if he could, the new guy was way too short.
Beyond physical differences, their operation methods were too dissimilar. Where Jason shot those he'd deemed unworthy of living, this one had every drug lord he could nab doped up on the same highly addictive product he made them sell, killing them off only when they were too far gone to be of
It couldn't be Jason, and Dick felt a rush of guilt for considering the option at all.
Bruce wasn't as convinced and Dick could concede that someone had to prepare for the worse outcomes, he was just glad it wasn't him.
They'd tried to pry more information from Scholz, but the former Arkham guard had remained close lipped and smug as ever.
For hours, Dick could think of nothing but wrapping his hands around the sleazy bastard's neck and squeezing the answers out of him. He made the mistake of admitting as much within earshot of Damian who disappeared not long after.
o
o
o
Babs tracked him to the prison. Bruce was in the middle of a one-man sting operation on yet another bunker filled with the dealers unfortunate enough to have become frenzy test subjects.
Tim was following a lead on Talia, and Dick didn't want either Cass or Steph getting too close to Scholz if he could help it.
He was on the other side of the city when he got the call, and by the time he found Damian the boy was being restrained by Selina after doing a very thorough job of trying to pry more information out of the man.
Anyone else and Dick's empathy would have kicked in with a vengeance, but he found himself too tired to care beyond the anger he had to drag to the surface for Damian.
"This is yours…" She looked past the boy to wrinkle her nose at where Scholz was cowering as far from them as he could get. "I think." She released Damian with a grimace and stepped away.
"Thank you, Catwoman." He grabbed the struggling boy – tired from the effort he'd put into going at his victim with the many tools that still laid scattered around the cell, they were going to have to have a talk with the warden about security very soon – and dragged him passed the whimpering mess of a man in the corner. Damian at least had the sense to stay quiet for the time being.
"If you don't mind me asking..." She stopped Dick's retreat by resting an arm on his shoulder. "This…" She waved her other hand in a vague gesture encompassing the whole situation. "Is it something I should expect to keep happening?"
"If you had had the sense to talk that frivolous insult to Batgirl's cowl into accepting another route them 'I' would not have been forced to resort to such…"
"Robin, shut up!" So much for keeping his mouth shut. Guilt burned in Dick's chest at the startled look on his partners face, but pushed it down. That…!" He pointed at the cell they had just left. "Is not what we do! Not ever, and especially not because I won't let you try and pay Batgirl to…"
Selina cleared her throat and toed one of the metal tools on the floor, letting it clatter towards Scholz with just a hint of a satisfied smile. "So, that's a not a yes on me having to deal with this again?" she rested an arm on her hip.
If she was disturbed, it wasn't so much at the scene as it was the fact that Damian had been the culprit. Bruce had been doing something terrifyingly similar increasingly often as time went by with no new leads that pointed them towards Jason's fate. Selina, being who she was, would have seen the fallout many times over already.
"Not from him." He tightened his hold on Damian's arm in a way that would have been painful if not for the body armor, and Dick could tell from the boy's near murderous glare that he was in for a lot of trouble as soon as they were out of earshot. "Thank you Catwoman."
o
o
o
Tim liked typing, the sound of the keys clicking while he imputed information into h computer, just typing up his case notes. It was soothing, didn't take much brain power and let his mind rest for a while without making him feel unproductive.
As emotional as a case could be, seeing it in rows of black and white usually made putting things into perspective easier.
With everything crazy as it was, he needed a little break from focusing on work and only work, but watching the words appear on screen didn't make his thoughts shut down like they always did. It only sped them up.
I few feet behind him and to his left he heard what could only be called a giggle from Cass, and he paused his typing to shoot the girls a half-hearted glare before going back to his notes.
They ignored him, much like they'd ignored him when he'd tried to tell Steph off for 'not' going to Dicks penthouse for protection the last time Talia had shown her face in Gotham. She'd gone to a 'friend' she's said. Because it was nearer and she'd seen more of Talia's people waiting around on the way.
That didn't explain why she hadn't told them that before he'd shown up at the penthouse to find she'd never arrived. When Talia was out for blood, hunting down anyone even remotely connected to Jason's stay at Arkham.
At first it had just been guards, people who'd seen her personally entering the place or knew she'd been there. But it didn't take long for her to branch out. Chefs, janitors, his therapist on the night of his birthday.
Whether scrubbing records to use him for something else if she found him before they did, if she already had him – that was another possibility that he added to his notes.
Another giggle interrupted his thoughts again and he turned to look at the girls again. Both were bent over Stephanie's cellphone, taking great joy in harassing whatever friend of hers at what would have been an ungodly hour of the morning for most civilian people.
Judging from their reactions to the replies, the friend agreed.
"Send the other frog." Cass urged, gently nudging her friend's shoulder. Steph grinned deviously as she complied. There was a few seconds of quiet, then the screen lit up at the reply and both girls erupted into laughter.
Tim sighed and, curious despite himself, walked over to see what had them so enraptured.
"What's going on?" He asked, trying to Step around Cass and get a look at the phone as well, before he'd gotten more than a glimpse, Steph pulled back and Cass wedged herself between them.
"Never touch teenage girls phone Tim." Cass said, holding up one sagely finger.
"Yeah Tim, it's very personal, and private, and stuff." Steph's serious tone of voice was seriously at odds when the phone went off again and both them hurriedly bent over to read the very private text message.
Tim let out a huff, throwing up his arms in exasperation.
"Girl stuff." Cass gave his head a few patronizing pats, prompting another laugh from Steph, who went on to tuck behind her one of the hairs that had fallen from the loose bun at the back of her head.
The loose bun that was kept in place by an ornate, expensive looking hair stick. His eyes narrowed minutely at the new information, and he looked at the way the girls were focused on the phone again, picking out replies together, the way her face lit up when the message tone chimed.
He blinked up at them in silence for a few seconds, before Cass noticed and sent him a questioning look. Tim just shook his head and dropped back into his seat.
He'd been mostly pleasantly surprised when Steph had been the first one to bounce back after they'd lost Jason at Arkham, seeing as she'd arguably put the most effort into finding him. He'd chalked it up to her not spending as much time around the rest of them as she used to, not letting their anxiety and borderline depression rub off on her.
Sure, having her avoiding him hadn't felt great, but he couldn't blame her for distancing herself from their 'family' drama. That didn't make her any less social, and she'd find other people to spend time with, other people that actually had the time and energy to keep up with her.
He picked up one of the battered books sitting off to the side of the computer console, the books filled with notes that every adult member of their team had taken to reading religiously whenever they had the time.
Tim hadn't paged through them before, didn't want to see in them whatever the others did that made them so emotional, that made them grieve for someone they'd made no secret of having less than no fondness for before.
Tim fingered the pages, curiosity picking up a little at the little pieces of notes Jason had penciled in. Were they some kind of confession? Apology? A heartfelt attempt at poetry that would make Tim think Jason has been some kind of martyr?
Would it settle Tim deeper into the gloom that had swallowed his whole family?
Tim dropped the book back on top of the others, refusing to keep on thinking about it.
He wasn't going to pretend he had known Jason, that he was devastated at the loss beyond what he would have felt for anyone else in that situation.
Jason had made his choices, becoming a mass murderer, shooting a child and stabbing Tim through his chest with his own batarang when he'd gone to confront the man. Tim was under no obligation to forgive him, even if he found evidence that Jason in any way regretted those decisions.
And Tim shouldn't have to feel guilty for not being more upset that someone for who there was a very real possibility of doing something terrible to his family might have been gone.
Stephanie giggled again just as Tim tried to continue his typing and he heard the roar of the Batmobile entering the cave at speeds that weren't strictly safe. Dick and Damian's arguing was loud enough to reach the teens before they'd even come up the ramp.
"Welp, that's my cue to get outta here." Steph hopped up and shoved stuffed her phone into her pocket. "Bye Cass." She hugged the other girl and, who seemed disappointed to have lost her source of entertainment.
Tim looked away and was met with surprise when he felt her arms close around him from behind too.
"Don't brood too hard Tim." She gave him a blinding grin and a wave, then strolled off to her bike, speeding up when she passed Dick and Damian who were still shouting at each other about acceptable methods.
"That's not how 'you' do it." Damian screeched in a tone that implied he'd repeated the same thing multiple times already. "We could have finished this even before they'd moved him from Arkham. Even 'Fatgirl' knew what was needed when she beat her way to that room."
"And put Jeremiah Arkham in a coma before we could get anything out of him." Dick said, getting a sharp flinch out of the boy. "What did you think would happen tonight Damian? That you'd actually get something out of that man? Charge in by yourself and find Jason on your own and what? You don't even…"
"I thought things would be normal again!" Damian shouted over Dick, his trembling fists balled tightly at his sides. "I thought if I found Todd, then Father would make an appearance at breakfast, and Pennyworth would cease reading those damn books and you would…" Damian turned away to hide his reddened face.
"Damian…" Dick reached for the child, but Damian sidestepped it and marched for the elevator.
Dick sighed and raked a hand through his hair before dropping into the nearest chair, the heavy bags under his eyes standing out even more under the harsh lighting of the computer monitors.
"You're not going after him?" Tim asked, and Dick jumped like he hadn't even realized they were in the cave.
"I'll give him some time to cool off before he has to look at me right now." Dick said, his head lolling back as he massaged the corners of his eyes.
"I'll go." Cass patted Dick's shoulder and walked passed him to the elevator.
Tim went back to typing listening as his brothers breathing slowly evened out and he was asleep. He'd just gotten up to find Dick a blanket to help him sleep better in the dampness of the cave when his cellphone vibrated in his pocket.
'Steph: 4got homework. cn u put it away 4 me till 2morrow?'
Tim draped a blanket over Dick before he gathered up the heavily edited pages she'd left scattered all over one of the forensic work surfaces when she and Cass had gotten distracted by her phone. The red-inked edits one of her friends had made in blocky letters covered just about every free inch of space, and Tim felt a rush of negativity again.
He looked up at the red helmet at the foot of Jason's case as he shoved the pages into a drawer.
'This is all your fault.' He accused it and went back to work besides his sleeping brother.
o
o
o
"What?" Jason didn't need to look up to know that she was staring at him again.
"Nothing." She grinned, wide and bright, and for some reason his lips curled up slightly in response. He gave his head a light shake and went to continue scrolling through the information of the tablet Talia had left him.
"Whazzat?" She leaned closer to be heard of the racket that was The Dive on a Saturday night, the heat of her body making the already warm air a little harder to pull into his lungs.
"Bounties." He angled the device so she could see the screen even though she likely wouldn't understand much of the script. "Checking if there's anything on me, can't believe people think this asshole is me, look." He showed a clip of the guy wearing what had been Jason's getup not too long again.
The man could barely shoot, walked like he'd watched too many action movies, and spoke like he was doing a bad robot impression. Jason shook his head at the image derisively.
"That bruise your big bad ego?" She asked, sneaking a fry from his plate and totally ignoring the one on her side of the table.
"Yes." He groaned and grabbed a couple of 'her' fries, he shoved them in his mouth and washed it down with his soda. "Look at that." He played another clip. "Please tell me your friends know better, or I'm gonna dig up my suit and…" She was staring at him again. "Okay, what the fuck is it now?"
"Sorry I uh, freaked out on you the other night." She toyed with the hem of her shirt as he spoke, and the motion of her hands distracted him from understanding what she meant right away.
He could almost feel the phantom tears soaking through his shirt and the warm weight in his arms as she slept.
"It's fine." He hurriedly turned to look out the window and brought a hand up to his face. "You keep all that crap bottled up and it screws with your head." She smirked sideways at her. "Trust me."
"Yeah?" She picked at another fry and chewed on the end, looking at his just out the corner of her eye. "So you're not mad?"
Jason scoffed and snatched the fry out of her hand. "Pissed that ya keep takin' my fries when you got a whole plate of your own." He pulled his plate towards him and shielded it from her reaching hands with his arm.
"Everyone knows stolen fries taste better", she tried to maneuver her hand around his arm, but he slid out of reach, then brought up a hand to her face to hold her off. "Share!"
"If I share they aint stolen." He pushed his fried to the opposite side of the table, where she usually sat so he could use both hands to keep her from twisting away and grabbing them. A bottle broke against the back of their booth and when he turned to flip the guy off, she managed to reach around him and grab a handful of fries.
"Victory!" she raised her prize into the air, then almost immediately let out a high bitched shout and ducked low to avoid another bottle that would have come just close enough to clip her had it hit.
Jason smother his laughter in his fist and she turned a glare on him that might have been more threatening if her scowl weren't quickly becoming a smile.
"Karma!" Jason took a fry. "S'what ya get for keeping me up all night."
"But Cass was having so much fun." She said it a tone that was meant to make her sound wistful, but set off an internal alarm in Jason that she was up to something.
"No." He said preemptively, picking up his tablet to continue scrolling through the refreshed feed of information.
"No what?" She threw up her hands and frowned at him.
"At whatever you were gonna ask."
"She's lonely in Hong Kong all by herself most of the time." She rested her chin in her palms and slanted her body towards him.
"Hey look, there're hits on Batgirl." He said, tapping on the tablet.
"Just so she can practice texting, I'm in school most of the time she's up." She brought her hands up in a praying gesture in front of her face. "And I gave her a fake name and everything."
Jason groaned and put the device down to scrub a hand over his face.
"You can just talk about memes and stuff, you love memes."
"I had nightmares about frogs, so thanks a whole fucking lot for that by the way."
"And she won't let anyone see, or anything, text friends are sacred you know." She blinked up at past her hands.
"Fine, but if I get sent to another nuthouse I'm blaming you." He drew his soda closer to take a sip but one of the arms she'd suddenly wrapped around his head obstructed his access.
"Thanks Jay." She half whispered, and he left her in place for a second before dislodging her.
He sipped at his soda and she went back to stealing his fries in, both of them deflecting the occasional projectile sent their way in silence for barely half a minute before she spoke again.
"So, there's really a hit on me?" She asked, leaning closer to look at the tablet.
"Couple really, but they're mostly small deal, no one's gonna risk crossing Knightbat on Elm Street for this kinda payday less they're desperate. Fucker had half the assassins on the planet thinking he's a paranormal…" One of the entries on the list caught his attention and he paused his scrolling. " Fuck it, this one's got me a little cons…" His eyes shifted from the tablet to her. "Stop that?"
"What?" She asked, gaze still locked on his face.
"That staring shit." He smoothed down his jacket. "You wanna look; you gotta at least buy me dinner first."
Her face reddened and she laughed nervously, covering her mouth with her hands then pressing her face into his bicep.
"No, you insulted these muscles; you don't get to hold them." He wiggled his arm out of her grip as her body shook with her chuckles.
"I said I was sorry." She threw her hear back against the plush lining of the booth.
"Sorry don't mean shit." He turned pointedly away from her and picked up his soda, finally getting the straw into his mouth. He should have expected something when she kept quiet until he'd actually gotten some of the drink into his mouth.
"So, does one card still get you shirtless?" She asked leaning into his field of vision, then ducking out when the soda he was drinking abruptly went the wrong way and made a u-turn right back through his mouth.
Jason coughed and sputtered, trying to catch his breath and ease the burning in his throat and nose while Stephanie pulled back to avoid the sticky mess.
"I'm sorry!" she laughed and slammed her hand down on his back then pushed her own soda up to him, foregoing the straw and pushing the rim of the glass against his mouth. "Here drink!"
"I don't want more of the stuff I'm choking on." He wheezed out and slid the glass away from him. "Shit, you're gonna kill me." He coughed a few more times and wiped the excess soda off his mouth, unable to get rid of the stickiness.
She was doubled over in laughter besides him, her face pressed into his back. "I'm taking that as a no then." She rubbed the tears from her eyes.
"Shut up." He threw an arm over his face, forcing her to move too.
She pillowed her face on the arms she'd folded across the table and continued laughing until she'd worn herself out. She let out a high-pitched sigh before she turned her grin on him again. "I love this."
"Yeah sure Sunshine." He shook his head smudged some of the soda that had spilled across the table on her face earning him an indignant shout when she lunged at him.
o
o
o
Bruce made it back to the cave just as the sun was peeking through the Gotham skyline, dripping on his way to the medbay. If he could have helped it, he would have been out longer, but he wasn't as young as he had been, and his bodies limits were growing more apparent every day.
He passed by the case, still with that damned helmet at the foot and the childish arrangement of skittles. Still, he paused, brushed his hand against the glass wincing at the bloody smudge he left behind before going on.
Stitches , three hours sleep and he'd head out again. There was no time for anything else when every second could potentially be his last chance.