Daedalus and Icarus

Two Years Ago…

"Enough! All of it ends tonight!" His mentor, no his adopted father's voice screamed in his ears as his feet slammed into Kevin's body. "You say you want to save Gotham!"

"To kill a part of it so it can survive!" Kevin staggered back as he was viciously struck him in the face, blood sprayed from his mouth. "You say you want to be better than me!" A viscous head-butt to the face. "But that won't happen!"

Kevin raised himself off the ground as the blood dripped from his face. Kevin pulled out a gun from the place he had put it and pointed it at the man he had once admired but now hated.

"I know I failed you. But…I tried to save you Kevin. I'm…I'm trying to save you now."

"Is that what you think this is about? That you let me die?" he asked, the domino mask on his face had partially fallen off, revealing part of his eyes. "I don't know what clouds your judgment worse. Your guilt or your antiquated sense of morality."

He looked at his father's masked face; the expression was grim and serious.

"Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me," Kevin told him, he looked at the imposing figure in front of him.

His adopted father, Batman, the great Dark Knight, bastard, hypocrite.

"But why—why on God's Earth—is he still alive?" Kevin kicked in a nearby door, revealing a badly beaten Joker, tied to a chair.

"Woo hoo! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Now we've got ourselves a party! One big happy—all together again!" Joker exclaimed gleefully. "Gotta give the boy points, he came all the way back from the dead to make this shindig happen!"

"Who's got a camera? Dracula, you must have a digital picy-poo on that hardware store you wear around your waist," Joker couldn't help but be happy, it's not every day one of his murder victims came back from the grave to try to kill him and show up old Batsy.

"Get one of me and the kid first. Then, you and me. Then the three of us. Then one with the crowbar."

Kevin hit him across the face out of spite and rage, pointing the handgun at the Joker. "You'll be as quite as possible or I'll put one in your lap first."

Joker just kept on grinning, "Party pooper. No cake for you."

"Ignoring what he's done in the past, blindly, stupidly disregarding the entire graveyards he's filled…the thousands who have suffered…the friends he's crippled…I thought…I thought by killing me—that I'd be the last person you'd ever let him hurt."

Kevin did not rein in his emotions.He had to tell Bruce what he really felt. "If he had been you he had beat to a bloody mass. If it was you he had left in agony. If he had taken you from this world…I would have done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, death-worshipping garbage…and sent him off to Hell!"

"You don't understand. I don't think you've ever understood," Batman looked at him.

"What? Your moral code won't allow for that? It's too hard to 'cross that line'?" he asked.

"No…God Almighty, no. It'd be too damned easy," Batman looked at him. Kevin returned his gaze, so he did understand after all. He was just too cowardly to finish off his nemesis.

"All I've ever wanted to do is kill him. For years, not a day has gone by where I've envisioned taking him…and spending an entire month putting him through the most horrendous, mind boggling forms of torture. All of it building to an end with him broken, butchered and maimed…pleading—screaming—in worst kind of agony as he careens into a monstrous death."

"Aw, y'see, I've thought about that too…" Joker piped up with a smile on his face.

"I want him dead—maybe more than I've wanted anything. But if I allow myself to do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place. I'll never come back."

"Why?" Kevin asked him, he had to know the answer.

"What?" Batman didn't seem to understand his question.

"Why do all the cub scouts in spandex always say that? "If I cross the line there's not coming back?" I'm not talking about killing Cobblepot and Scarecrow or Clayface. Not Riddler or Dent…I'm talking about him. Just him. And doing it because…because he took me away from you."

"I can't," Batman told him. "I'm sorry. I just can't."

"That is so sweet," Joker said sarcastically. He was having too much fun here.

"Well, you won't have a choice." Kevin bent down and scooted one of his handguns across the floor; it skidded to a stop at Bruce's feet.

"This is it. This is the time you decide. If you won't kill this psychotic piece of filth…I will. You want to stop me? You're going to have to kill me. You're not going to wimp out on me like Tennyson and say that I'm not worth it."

"All you've got is a head-shot. I'm going to blow his addled, deranged brains out—and if you want to stop it…you're going to have to shoot me. Right in my face!"

A single tear slipped down his cheek. If Bruce had really loved him, he would have done whatever it took to avenge him. If Bruce had been killed instead, he would have made sure to make the Joker pay for it, and not let him live to kill others and destroy families and ruin lives.

"This is turning out so much better than I thought…" Joker continued grinning. The fun was about to start. There was no way he was going to die tonight and if he got to kill Boy Blunder number two again, it'd be even better.

"Stop this…" Bruce pleaded. He had tried so hard to help Kevin, he thought that making him Robin would help him be a better person; he had no idea how to help him through his emotional problems.

"It's him or me. You have to decide."

"Please don't…"

"I'll count to 'three'," Kevin told him. He prepared to squeeze the trigger. Vengeance would be so sweet, and after this was over, he was going after Tennyson.

"Put the gun down," Bruce ordered. Kevin ignored him.

"One."

"Don't."

"Two."

"NO!" Kevin saw Batman's hand move, he'd thrown something.

A Batarang, but where was it going to go? It didn't matter anyway because Joker was going to die.

"Thr—uck!" Kevin's voice was cut off as he felt searing pain slash across his shoulder, he could feel the blood spraying out of his neck as joker shoved him away, still smiling.

It was pathetic. His adopted father would rather hurt him than kill the Joker. They were all the same, self righteous fools who didn't understand him. He was going to save thousands of lives by offing one psychotic nut, it's not like before where he was trying to kill people to exploit them, he wanted to save people, and this was how you did it.

He instinctively clutched at his neck, still on his knees.

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! You got him! You expert, rooting-tooting Goth marksman sonofabitch! Ya banked that Bata-thingie off the pipe." Joker was absolutely giddy. "Ha, ha, ha! Oh God, I love it! You managed to find a way to win…and everybody still loses!"

Kevin had fallen over. He was trying to absorb material from the floor to staunch the bleeding. Bruce was just standing there doing nothing. The hypocrite.

"Except me, my dark little pumpkin pies. I'm the one who's gonna get what he wants tonight! Badda bing, badda boom!"

He grabbed one of Kevin's guns and aimed it at the C4 explosives Kevin had set up in order to blow up the Joker.

"NO!" Batman screamed. He was not about to have another repeat of this again. He had been too late to save Kevin once, and now it was happening a second time and there was nothing he could do.

"Doncha just LOOOVE how this is all ending. Toodles," Joker saluted. And then he fired the gun.

The explosion had sent Kevin falling into the Gotham Bay; he'd managed to stop the bleeding by absorbing the concrete and sealing the wound.

"KEEVVINN!" Bruce shouted repeatedly calling for him. Kevin didn't care and he didn't even give him a second thought.

Using the last of his strength he swam to shore. It was time he left Gotham City, he'd heard the Forever Knights were offering to buy Laser Lances and he was going to need more money. Once he'd recovered and got some extra cash, he was going to find Ben Tennyson, one failed revenge attempt wouldn't stop him, but this time he'd kill Tennyson, he'd make sure he'd do that. Tennyson wasn't nearly as difficult as Batman. Even if he didn't have his gadgets or weapons, he wouldn't be that difficult to deal with.

Boy he'd been wrong about that too, then she'd come back into his life, he'd been surprised that'd he'd become so attached to her. Perhaps it was because she wasn't as stuck-up and self righteous like Bruce was. She did have that no-kill rule, but it had saved his life, he understood a little better, but that didn't mean he agreed with her a hundred percent.

Gwen had changed him more than she knew, had he decided to play anti-hero vigilante before he'd been reunited with them, he would have enjoyed killing scumbags, now it felt more like a chore and he knew the weight of what he was doing, but sometimes, he couldn't take the moral high ground because he knew that sometimes you had to do whatever it took to save lives.

He didn't begrudge Ben's attempt to kill him when he had gone insane at the Forge of Creation, he had behaved the same way in Gotham City. It was amazing how they were so much alike.

Gwen was more like Bruce than she realized. She had his sensibilities when it came to right and wrong, she had his compassion, but she was not a selfish, my way or the highway when it came to how to solve problems, she understood his moral ambiguity, but she did not condone it, but she wasn't darkly obsessed with fighting criminals with the only drive in her life being fighting crime for the mere sake of fighting crime.

Starfire had once told Dick Grayson that Bruce was insane. Kevin didn't disagree with her either, perhaps they were all crazy, but he knew that sometimes criminals can't be changed. He had made a career out of it, but he'd been lucky, he had actually wanted to change, most criminals didn't.

Kevin snapped out of his reverie. It was time to go to work.

Making his way over to the wall, he pushed a hidden button in the wall of the mechanic shop that he secretly owned, he worked there, but he had bought the building under a false name.

He made his way down a set of stairs to a vast room filled with weapons, high grade military arms, earth's finest guns, plenty of illegal alien tech he had confiscated from Plumber missions, explosives and various gadgets to aid him in his battles.

He slipped out of his jeans and put on a pair of gray pants; he put on his steel-toed boots, and slipped into his Kevlar body armor. He put on a gray shirt over the armor and slipped on the black leather jacket.

He picked up a pair of handguns and tucked them into the holsters; he removed a Kris from the drawer and put the ornate blade into a sheath on his utility belt. It was going to be hard, he'd been trying to track the Joker's location in Bellwood, but clues were scanty and people weren't talking.

Kevin placed the red domino mask over his eyes and fitted the red helmet snugly around his head.

"Time to go out," he told himself. "It's going to be a long night."

For Kevin Levin, the night was barely finished, and the Red Hood ready to go to work, he didn't have much time, and he'd promised himself that Bellwood wouldn't experience the terror that Gotham's citizens experienced so often when it came to being at the Joker's mercy. Besides, he knew for a fact that he was no doubt on his way to stop the madman, and Kevin wasn't particularly looking forward to a reunion with Bruce.

Being with the Tennysons had given him a new outlook on life; he decided he was going to leave his troubled past behind him. So he did the impossible, he suppressed his skills, hiding all the training from Batman, he still got hurt in fights, but he didn't want to show off too much, drawing unwanted attention to himself was out of the question. Max Tennyson had glimpsed just a fraction of his skills when he had easily read the crime scene they had visited, but Kevin always held back in fights, relying on his powers rather than his martial arts.

He had been educated by Bruce, but his education had only gone through middle school, so he did have to learn from Gwen, but when it came to weapons and martial arts and even foreign languages, he still maintained his training, although he had held back when it came to his marksmanship in Plumber basic training as to keep it hidden concerning how good he actually was.

He'd put away the dress-up for a long time, mostly because he truly enjoyed his life as a hero, but he'd heard disturbing stories about something big that was going to happen in Bellwood, so he'd spread rumors about the Red Hood before he'd purchased everything he needed in his renewed crusade against criminal scumbags that ravaged the city.

He had money. Millions of dollars under various accounts under fake names he used. He had nowhere near the wealth of Bruce Wayne, but if Ben knew how much money he had he would freak. He had never viewed himself as one of those rich kids from Gwen's prep school because none of the money was "fun money". No large house, boats or fancy cars. It was all for the war he waged, the war he had set aside for a normal, simpler life with the two of them. But that life he had was them was threatened, and he wasn't about to lose them, just like he had lost his life to the Joker.

But he wanted to find Joker before he did, so Kevin knew he had a lot of work to do. He'd long given up on trying to kill the Joker, but beating the living crap out of him would be the closest thing to it. Not to mention it would give him a great sense of satisfaction.

Kevin knew he should tell Ben and Gwen about what he'd been doing, but he didn't want them involved but what they didn't know didn't hurt them. Besides, he enjoyed the thrill of the chase he got from them trying to find him; he always came up with alibis that would always make it so that he would be gone. They hadn't become suspicious yet.

And when she fought him, Kevin felt the shiver go down his spine. Gwen's rage was something that surprised him. But she had used all her skills and had fought him to a standstill. It had been a glorious and beautiful thing. He'd seen her fight before, and he had overpowered her once, but it had all been a part of her plan to get him back to normal, but this time she didn't know it was him behind the mask and she hadn't held back, and the rush he'd gotten was the most wonderful thing he'd felt in a long time. He'd tell her the truth soon, right after this was over.

First he had to track down where the Joker's goons were hiding the chemicals.