Batfam Week 2020
Day 1 Prompts: Overprotectiveness | Meeting the Justice League | Meta-Human AU
Red Hood is shooting up a warehouse of sex traffickers and they're falling faster than raindrops on a cloudy day in Gotham. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something. The barest hint of a black cape fluttering in the shadows. He ignores it and keeps firing. But he watches his back as he leaves, expecting a confrontation. It doesn't come.
A few days later, Red Hood is rigging explosives in a meth lab. He happens to glance out the window and sees dark hair and a blue mask watching him from the edge of the roof across the street. He grits his teeth and keeps eyes on his voyeur as he exits the empty building. As soon as Jason's away safely, he clicks the detonator. The bombs still go off. No one confronts him after the fact.
Jason Todd has been back from the dead for two years. He's been back in Gotham for two months. Bruce learned he was alive two weeks ago. It didn't go well.
It's another night in Gotham, and Red Hood is fighting some of Black Mask's crew. There are a lot of them; more perhaps than he should have taken on, but shooting them to death is a more effective method of evening the odds than batarangs, and it isn't long before he's jauntily walking away from a street littered with corpses. A yellow cape dashes around a corner a block in front of him, but by the time he gets there, the kid is gone.
Jason Todd has the sniffles. Nothing too serious, just a runny nose. Not even a fever. Definitely not the flu. He still patrols Crime Alley, stops some muggings, kills some rapists, save a few street kids from sex traffickers. A typical night except for occasionally needing to blow his nose, but cargo pants are good for stashing tissues. When he gets to his safe house, hot chicken noodle soup and NightQuil is waiting on the kitchen counter. But no one's there. The soup tastes homemade.
Jason Todd has been back in Gotham for four months. He hasn't been to Wayne Manor. He hasn't spoken to Bruce since their initial confrontation, which didn't go well. Joker's still alive and well, albeit back in Arkham. No one from the family has tried talking to him again, but they won't stop spying on him. It's starting to piss him off.
It's around six in the morning, and Jason is tossing and turning with a nightmare. The Joker's crowbar is coming down on him again and again and again and there's smoke and his mom and - he jerks awake. By the time he sits up, only the curtains are fluttering in the open window. But there's a cup of hot chocolate next to his bed. It's not from a mix.
The weather's getting colder, and even with his leather jacket, Jason feels it. Zipping it up would spoil his image so it hangs open. The heat in Jason's safe house stops working, but he's lived with worse. It would be manageable except for the fact that he always kicks his blankets off every night as he tosses and turns with nightmares, so he bundles up with extra layers of clothes before going to bed. He wakes up snuggly and warm, tucked in securely under his fluffy down comforter. A thick wool sweater is laying neatly folded on the end of the bed. It's black and has a red bat on the front. He wears it that night over his kevlar and under his leather jacket and he has to admit, he feels much warmer out on patrol.
The Bats are still spying on him. Every night, he sees someone watching. Sometimes it's Dick. Or the tiny Robin. He never sees the Replacement, but he figures even one of Bruce's well-trained minions would balk at following the man who tried to kill him. Most often, it's Bruce himself watching him, his black cape silhouetted by the moon as he stands on a rooftop in the distance. The Bats never try to talk to him. They never intervene to stop him from killing anyone. They just… watch. It's starting to creep him out.
It's another rainy night in Gotham when Red Hood grapples to the top of the Clocktower. Oracle raises an eyebrow as he climbs in through her window.
"Jason," she breathes out, and her eyes look teary, but not scared. He takes the hood off anyway. He always did have a soft spot for Babs.
"I need you to tell them to fuck off, Barbie," he says to her without preamble.
"Tell them yourself," she tosses right back at him, wheeling her chair closer to him. He flinches but doesn't move when she reaches out and wraps her fingers around his wrist, seemingly for no other purpose than to reassure herself that he's solid flesh and bone.
"What do they want?" he asks her instead. She cocks her head to the side.
"You really have to ask that?" she says.
"Fuck yeah, I'm asking it. They follow me around like little lost puppies. They don't join my fights. They don't talk to me. They're acting like goddamn stalkers. What the fuck do they want?" he says in frustration.
Barbara looks at him.
"They want you alive, Jason," she says.
He stares at her.
"That's all?" he asks her in confusion.
"That's all?" she repeats to him, some anger seeping into her tone. "That's everything."
"Oh," he mumbles, taken aback.
"How do you think we feel about you running around without backup?" she asks him, definitely angry now. "When we just got you back! It's like you're trying to get yourself killed again."
Jason opens his mouth and closes it again. He doesn't want to feel guilty - because fuck his family! Fuck Bruce! Fuck the Replacement!
"Are you still fucking Dick?" is what he says, though. Her jaw drops.
"That's what you have to say to me?" she says to him.
"I always thought we had a connection," Jason says, putting his smoothest smile on. "And if Dick's out of the picture, maybe you and me could -"
Babs hits him in the calves with her eskrima sticks before he's even seen her pull them out and he tumbles down to the floor.
"Stop avoiding us," she says. "We're your family."
"I can't avoid you at all," Jason grumbles as he gets to his feet. "That's the problem."
"Come to dinner at the manor on Sunday," Babs tells him.
"When Bruce kills the Joker," he growls back at her. Babs huffs an angry sigh out.
"You know he can't," she says.
"You know he should," Jason snaps back. "For you, if not for me." A blush stains her cheeks before she can control it.
"I don't want him to kill the Joker," she says softly. "For me or for you. Joker didn't take anything from me. I'm not less of a person now than I was."
"Well, he took something from me," Jason snarls. "Or did you forget that I died, Barbie?"
Her eyes fill with tears this time that start to overflow and she chokes on a sob before she turns her chair away from him. And now he feels like shit. And there's a lump in his throat that he can't swallow away and he doesn't want to but he hates to see Barbie cry, and she's crying because of him, so…
Jason bends down and hugs her shoulders from behind. She sniffs and starts to cry harder and hangs onto his arms with her hands and he's hugging her tighter and kissing the side of her face and praying that her tears will stop because they're getting all over his face, too; that has to be why his face is wet, and then he's sobbing into her neck and he loses track of who's holding who.
"Are you seriously still trying to get with my girl?" he hears from behind him. Jason starts to turn around but before he can he's wrapped in a giant bear hug from behind like the one he's got Babs tucked into and then it's his cheeks that are getting kissed and Dick's cheeks that are getting wet.
"Come home, baby bird," Dick says to him some time later.
"I can't," he says.
"Joker's still alive," Babs says dryly. Dick sighs.
"Does Bruce have to be perfect to love you?" he asks Jason. "Or for you to still love him?"
"So you admit killing the Joker would be the perfect solution?" Jason says with a hint of a smirk on the corner of his lips.
"I admit that Bruce is a fucked up mess," Dick says. "But we all know that already," he adds. "And he made a really grisly memorial for you in the Batcave, if that helps." Jason snorts.
"Yes, Dick, a memorial totally makes up for leaving my murderer alive."
"Jaybird, you know he can't cross that line," Babs says to him gently. "He can't. So are you going to stay away for the rest of your life? The rest of our lives? We already lost you once. We can't stand you being back but still lost."
"Come home," Dick says again.
"I can't," Jason says flatly and picks up his hood to leave.
"Can I at least put a life meter in your hood?" Babs asks him. He hesitates. "Please?" she begs. He wants to say no, but it's Barbie and he made her cry and… he shoves his hood out to her and she takes it in her lap before wheeling herself over to her workbench.
Jason sighs and now it's awkward, sitting there with Dick while Babs works. Dick glances over at him.
"I need to implant some trackers in you." Jason frowns and starts to argue but Dick cuts him off.
"Would you rather I tell you upfront and do it now, or would you rather we sneak up on you and do it when you're not expecting it?"
"Fine," Jason growls out in an excellent approximation of Bruce's sulkiness. Dick puts in not two, not three, but four.
"Holy shit, Dick, overkill much?" Jason snarks at him.
"Avoid getting killed is more like it," Dick says back.
"That was weak," Jason snorts. "You've lost your touch. That wasn't even a pun." Dick smacks the back of his head. It feels kind of good, to be bickering with his brother again. But Jason doesn't want to admit that.
"Thanks, Barbie," he says instead when she hands him his upgraded hood.
"I linked you in to my comms, too," she says. "In case you ever need anything."
"Ok, ok," Jason says. He hesitates, but he gives her another hug and a kiss on the cheek before turning to leave. He side-eyes Dick but Dick attacks him with another bear hug and more cheek kisses anyway. Jason's display of disgust is mostly for show.
A few mornings later, Jason wakes up to a tablet propped up next to his bed. The sticky note on it reads, "See you at Sunday dinner." Curious, he taps the screen and hits play on the queued up video. He inhales sharply. It's a video of the Joker in his cell at Arkham.
Jason hears the quiet chirp of a silencer and the Joker's brains explode into the wall behind him.
Jason's jaw drops. His hands start to shake. He replays the video. He replays it again. And again. And again. It looks real. Is it real?
Jason opens the browser and goes to the Gotham Daily News page. Holy shit. The top headline reads "Joker Murdered." The whole front page is full of articles and theories and the bottom line is, the cameras were out and there is not a scrap of evidence as to who did the deed.
Bruce wouldn't… he couldn't… not with a gun, never with a gun. Even if he was going to cross that line, he wouldn't use a gun. What the hell?
Suddenly, he realizes that he smells coffee. And bacon. Good and disoriented now, Jason stumbles out of bed and into the kitchen to find Alfred at the stove.
"Ah, Master Jason," his elderly friend says with pleasure. "I trust you've seen the news."
"Al…" Jason says slowly.
"Yes, Master Jason?" Alfred says calmly, meeting his eyes without hesitation.
"Who did it?" Jason says. "I know it wasn't Bruce. And you can't tell me that any of the other Bats would use a gun if they were going to do it."
"I imagine they wouldn't," Alfred muses.
"Alfred," Jason says. There's a plea for answers in that one word, and a vulnerability that he hopes the old man doesn't hear. But of course he does.
"Did I ever tell you," Alfred says peacefully as he turns the bacon, "about my time in Her Majesty's Secret Service?"
Jason stares at him. Tears start rolling down his cheeks but he doesn't feel them.
"Why… why?" he asks Alfred. "Bruce should have - "
"There are some burdens that a father needs to carry for his son," Alfred says and at first Jason doesn't catch his meaning. When he does, his eyes widen.
"Has it been Bruce stalking me?" Jason asks him suddenly.
The corner of Alfred's mouth turns up in a tiny smile.
"You couldn't imagine how many Batsuits that man has," he says. "Such a chore to keep track of them all."
"Alfred," Jason says again, and his voice breaks as he walks towards his grandfather.
"I'll expect you at Sunday dinner," Alfred says primly before Jason squeezes the breath out of him in a giant hug, and then it's Alfred holding Jason as sobs wrack his resurrected body.
"Come home, Master Jason," Alfred says as he rocks him gently in his arms.
"Ok, fine," Jason mumbles against his shoulder.
Bruce stumbles and nearly falls to the floor when Jason walks in the front door of the manor on Sunday like he belongs there. But it's not Bruce who Jason goes to first.
"Welcome home," Alfred murmurs in his hair as Jason hangs onto him like a life raft.
"Thanks, Al," he whispers.
The End