This is set after the events of Lost Days and before he goes to Gotham to do Under the Red Hood stuff. I'm playing with timeline like a kid with building blocks. Any needed context is added in the story.
Based on a Tumblr post.
Deal
Jason looked up from the closed manila folder and glanced at the quiet figure of his new potential employer.
Caitlyn Williams.
It was a fake name, he suspected. If the black wig wasn't enough of a clue about the fishiness of the situation, the way she omitted parts of her explanation, redirected his questions or provided just the basic information he would need for the hit was another big red flag.
Jason could work with this. It wasn't as if he had the moral high ground here - he was living with a fake identity given that Jason Todd was dead and theoretically buried six feet under. Not even Bruce knew he was alive, but he had plans to remedy that.
In the meantime, he was trying to get some extra money since wouldn't have Talia's wealth forever and he had to eventually leave the nest, so to speak; and until he had a stable income he had to do small hit jobs like this one.
What this woman wanted wasn't small, though.
"I want them gone." She had said with a straight face. "All of them have to die."
That was a lot of rage in so few words.
She didn't dwell with pleasantries, she didn't smile once he sat down in front of her in the Diner they chose for this meeting, she didn't make small conversation. She just nodded at him and slid a folder over the table to him and said those words before explaining what she wanted, exactly.
Jason didn't open the folder just yet. He watched her as she sipped on her tea, her eyes fixed on the window of the diner, deceptively calm and distracted. She was watching him as much as he was watching her.
He respected that.
She continued sipping her tea as he opened the folder to take a look at the information inside. Names, locations, details about security and notes about how to bypass them - she had done all the homework for him.
"It's a lot of targets," he commented, eyes going over the lists and profiles. Scientists, doctors, a few government officials. It wouldn't be easy. "It will cost ya."
"I'll worry about the money, you just have to kill them." Caitlyn placed the empty cup on the table. Her hands were steady, too steady.
"What's the story?"
Her lips twitched. The first show of real emotion since he sat down in front of her.
"I was under the impression that you didn't ask questions."
Touchy subject, then. "And I don't." He chose to let it go. For now. "When do you need this done?"
"You can take your time," she interlaced her fingers over the table, "ponder over how and when you want to do this." She looked up at him. Jason had never seen eyes so cold, so furious, and so devoid of any other emotion but rage - at least not on any other person than himself. "I don't mind waiting if it means they all end up dead."
It was personal, very personal. She didn't want to kill a business rival, or an ex-employer, or wanted to eliminate a threat. She wanted revenge.
What could have happened to make someone hire him to kill so many people? She was young, too. Probably eighteen, twenty at most, even though she tried to mask her age under makeup, nice clothes and high heels.
Caitlyn had been royally screwed over by the people in this list, that was clear. Enough to make her hire someone like him.
Alright. He would do this.
Jason flipped more pages just for show despite having decided he would do this hit, and maybe give her a discount too; he was a sucker for petty revenge, after all.
She quietly sucked in a breath when the last section of her thorough report was revealed.
Doctors Jackson and Madeline Fenton.
He glanced up, but her face was again a mask of contained fury and faked indifference. Jason shrugged, knowing he wouldn't get anything from her, and read the information on the paper.
Lead scientist in the GIW, made a career studying creatures from another dimension, made a big breakthrough a few years ago about those creatures and had received this and that award.
The information in this section was extensive, with more notes about their behavioral patterns, a cataloged report on every little detail despite not needing that much information for a hit.
"Those two," the young woman said, one finger with bitten off nails pointing at the photo of the scientists on top of the report, "I want them to suffer."
If eyes were the windows to the soul, Jason would have guessed her soul was dark, cold and filled with a desire to kill so deep it almost made him shiver.
He accepted the job, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to do some extra investigation on the side.
Her report was extensive and plentiful, but there were gaps and a subtle vagueness that didn't sit well with him. It meant there was a big chunk of information she was deliberately not sharing with him, and that couldn't be good.
One, because if there was something he needed to know, he wanted to know. He wouldn't put the whole mission in jeopardy just because a pretty girl subtly told him to not look too much into it.
Two, because she could be lying and selling him bullshit to rope him into killing innocent people - not that they looked that innocent in the paper, given the dubious experiments and the suspicious payment methods - and Jason had morals, thank you very much.
And three, because he was curious. What had happened? How was this woman involved in a secret government organization that experimented with creatures from another dimension? He needed to find out who she was and why she wanted to destroy them so much.
Turns out, it wasn't that hard to find out the answer to at least one of his questions.
Her name was Jasmine, twenty years old. Eldest daughter of Jackson and Madeline Fenton.
Jason had to stop and take a step back for a moment, his mind replaying the way her eyes hardened at her mask of indifference almost broke when those two were discussed.
Her own damn parents.
"I want them to suffer."
What the hell happened? He wasn't a stranger to shitty parents or wanting to kill paternal figures; hell, he wanted to kill Bruce, but he wanted it to be clean and swift, beat him at his own game, not the dark desires he saw in her eyes as she said those words.
The next days he worked restessly to find out what the fuck happened to the sweet girl in the family photos he managed to find online. What happened since her graduation photo, seventeen and with a bright smile full of hope and plans for the future, that could make her what she was now.
Turns out, she had a brother. Had.
Daniel Fenton was seventeen years old when he was reported missing. There was some follow up on the investigation, but local police quickly closed the case as another runaway and forgot about it.
It smelled so bad and sketchy, the police files were half assed and filled with grammatical and spelling errors, as if nobody cared enough to properly write them. The interviews were brief and scarce, and the parents were absent for the most of it.
Bad. Very bad.
The last piece clicked when he found out about project P-001.
It wasn't in Jasmine's report. For a good reason.
If Jason had to make a list of things that weren't pleasant to read, the reports on project P-001 would be at the top - and he had read many unpleasant things in his career as Robin and then with the League and training with the teachers Talia set up for him.
P-001 was… an ode to inhumanity. How far people were ready to go "in the name of science", how extreme things could get without anybody having concerns about the morality of it all, how much auto-justification a person needed to hurt another creature and stop questioning if there was a limit to what they were doing.
Jason saw a photo of the studied subject for project P-001. Malnourished, broken and defeated, but not beyond recognition.
Daniel had been tortured and killed by these people, his parents won a few awards thanks to the results of project P-001, the GIW got a whole new influx of taxpayer money thanks to his sacrifice.
They called him "Phantom", but there was no doubt that it was Daniel who was sitting in that cell, chained to a wall. They called him "a thing" but the reports talked about vital signs and electrical brain signals and bone density. They reported his death as a "small bump in the road of the pursuit of knowledge" but he couldn't find a death certificate no matter how much he looked.
Jason found the woman in a nearby park, quietly feeding the ducks some lettuce at the pond. It was a nice day outside, not too sunny or too cloudy, and the breeze was cold enough for a jacket. A perfect day.
Jasmine looked younger in her jeans and black long sleeved shirt, now without makeup in her face. She had long red hair freely moved by the breeze, pushed back from her face with a teal headband.
"It wasn't hard to find you, Jasmine."
"I wasn't exactly hiding." She shrugged, still looking at the ducks approaching the little lettuce chunks she threw at the water.
Both watched the ducks fight for the food for a moment.
"Having second thoughts?" She asked, deliberately not looking at him.
He shook his head despite knowing she wouldn't see it. "No. Just… curious."
"About?" Jasmine arched an eyebrow, ripping a bit more of lettuce and throwing it at the ducks.
What could he ask? How did that happen? Why didn't she save her brother? How could her parents do something like that? Why had she chosen him for this?
"Why me? Why now?"
"Those are two different questions, Mr. Todd. Pick one."
It just came out of her mouth like nothing. She knew who he was. She knew about Jason Todd and about his past and what else-
"Relax. I don't know the details. I just know you were dead for a while and then you were not."
"How?"
"It wasn't that hard, actually. Just connected the dots between the dead Robin and Bruce Wayne's adopted son that was involved in a tragic accident overseas."
At this point, he was just impressed. When Jasmine investigated, she did so thoroughly.
"It was one of the reasons I chose you, actually."
"Because I was Robin?" If so, he was walking out of this and never looking back.
"Because you died." She dropped the last bit of lettuce and turned towards him. Her eyes were dark as the depths of the ocean. "And no one avenged you." Jasmine smiled, but it wasn't the vibrant smile of the picture he found of her. "Want to walk with me?"
He just nodded, too entranced by her mysteries. He needed to know what she knew, how she knew it and why her words pulled strings in his heart.
They started wandering around the park without a clear destination, walking side by side, virtually alone at the park in the middle of a weekday.
"I knew you would take this job if only because of the similarities it had with your case. Died young at the hands of a maniac that never got what was deserved. I hoped to appeal to your unprocessed rage as a way to convince you to kill all these people without asking too many questions."
He frowned, not really liking the analysis, especially because it was exactly what he was going to do. "That's too many assumptions about a person you have never met."
"I was going to be a psychiatrist." She shrugged. "I was interested in profiling and therapy. Guessing is my specialty."
Was. Past tense.
"What happened?"
"I came back home during a school break to find that my brother was missing. Jack and Maddie acted like he would come back at any moment and didn't give it a lot of importance." Her mouth twisted when she said their names. "Danny's friends told me the truth - he had been taken by the GIW."
"And the doctors were covering for them."
She was already shaking her head before he finished his sentence. "Wrong. They were the ones that sold him."
"Their own son?" The words left a bad taste in his mouth.
"Ah. But they didn't consider him a son anymore. Danny, for them, was dead. Replaced by Phantom." She saw he was going to ask follow up questions and quickly added. "Ghosts. The 'creatures' they were investigating. You call them ghosts."
Okay. Aliens existed. He had died and came back to life. Ghosts he could believe. "Your brother was already dead?"
"He was a halfa. Half ghost, half human. A rarity."
Jason didn't ask more. With what he found in his research and with the new twist in the story, he was capable of drawing correct conclusions.
"Why didn't you try to rescue him?" It hurt a little that Danny was already gone by the time he was made aware of this.
"I tried, I tried so hard." Jasmine stopped walking for a moment, her eyes lost in the memories. For a second, Jason thought she was going to cry. "But it was futile. We were too late, he was dead before we could gather enough resources and intel to storm the lab."
She resumed walking and he followed. "And then?"
"Then - And then it was like, I don't know. I wouldn't say they tried to move on, because they were affected for a while. Danny was dead and gone, we couldn't even find his ghost in the Ghost Zone, and they accepted it and continued life.
"It was like I was the only one that still cared, that still felt like life had fucked her over. They asked me to let it go, to let Danny go, to be content that at least he was finally resting and not in the hands of his torturers. I couldn't." She looked at him, a single tear rolling down in an otherwise emotionless mask. "He was my baby brother. They killed my brother, Jason."
The force of her words hit him like a sledgehammer.
She wanted the people that hurt her brother to be killed? To suffer? He would do it. Free of charge.
"Give me three days and you have a deal." He extended his hand for her to shake it.
The slight tremble in her hand when she took it wasn't exactly because of the cold.
Precisely three days and three nights later, everyone in that list was dead. All the bases had been burned to the ground and the lab where Danny was tortured didn't exist anymore. As an extra, he also uncovered where some of the dirty money came from and sent a few emails to the people that would investigate this.
The GIW would be no more by the end of the week.
He called Jazz, as she insisted she preferred to be addressed, to tell her the good news. It was late at night, but she picked it up after a few rings and didn't sound sleepy at all.
"It's done." The night was quiet as he walked back to his motorcycle, ready to go back to his safehouse, shower the blood away and collapse in his bed for twenty four hours.
Jazz's only answer was a slow exhale. Was she relieved?
"Thank you, Jason." Neither commented how her voice broke a little.
"No problem."
He knew he should hang up as it was what he usually did. The job was done, the bad guys were killed, and the client was satisfied.
And yet…
"I'll send you the rest of the money-"
"Don't."
She was quiet for so long he checked that the call hadn't been dropped.
"Are you playing with me?"
"Nope," he popped the 'p'. "I was feeling charitable and I think your brother deserves a bit of righteous fury. Long story short, the down payment you did before the hit? It will get bounced back to you in a business day or two, I think."
"I don't want to be pitied. If this is because I told you-"
"No." He finally got to his bike, hidden behind some bushes. "It's not about pity. Is not even about your brother. It's about me."
"Oh?"
He sighed. He had time to think about this job and how close to his heart it hit. "You were right, I was never avenged. I have an older brother, but you probably already knew that," she hummed in agreement, but didn't interrupt him. "I wish he had gone and hired a dude to kill the Joker, like you did, instead of hiding behind shitty morals."
"I don't think the Joker could be killed so easily, so it's not the same situation." She chuckled softly, the sound fitting her lovely voice. "And also, I hired you because I can't fight and I don't have the means to do what you can do. Not because I didn't want to do it myself."
He couldn't help but smile. "So you are saying that if you were trained, you would have done this yourself."
"Absolutely. Why waste time telling my sob story to a total stranger?"
She had a point. Also, he was scared what kind of assassin she could be if she had the proper training. She was smart and methodical, she just needed-
Jason stopped the thought right there. He was getting attached. Maybe he was just tired.
"So. What's the deal now? I don't know you, you don't know me, and we never speak again?"
"Pretty much it," Jason got onto his bike, but didn't turn it on just yet. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you, Jazz."
She hummed again. "Thank you again. For this, I mean."
Jason choked a little at how sincere she sounded. "No problem at all." And, feeling like she needed a bit of closure, he added: "Danny would be proud of you."
Jazz was quiet for a moment, and he feared he said the wrong thing for a hot second. The apology was ready at the tip of his tongue when he heard a quiet sob.
"I hope so." She tried to sound normal, but he already heard her. "I really hope so."
He tracked her down again in another park, in another city. She had changed her fake name twice and did a really decent job covering her tracks to just disappear and start again.
The thing is, she looked miserable.
She was looking at the ducks in a nearby pond, a lettuce in her hands, but she wasn't moving from the park bench she was sitting on. Just looking at the ducks.
"I thought we wouldn't see each other again."
"Maybe this is a coincidence."
Her chuckle was as lifeless as the rest of herself. What happened?
"Danny's friends got angry at me. They said I went mad and that what I did was wrong." She said as an explanation, but he knew that it wasn't it. "An anonymous tip led the Justice League to my childhood home and everything was confiscated."
She glared at him, as if she knew he had something to do with it. One of her hands went for a necklace she hadn't the last time he saw her - it was more like a piece of metal that had been drilled a hole and was attached to a chain.
He didn't comment on the object, although he assumed it had something to do with Danny.
"Jasmine Fenton is dead." She sighed. "I really can't go back, huh."
Jason couldn't think of anything useful to say, so he didn't say anything.
Both sat in silence, watching the ducks paddle around the pond. Jasmine fiddled with the lettuce, probably thinking about walking up to the water and feeding the animals.
Jason stood up and extended his hand for her to take it. To his surprise, she easily did so, following him towards whe ducks, and letting him take the green leaves from her hands.
He started breaking off pieces of lettuce and throwing it to the water. "You could come with me."
"Huh?"
He didn't look at her. This wasn't some spur of the moment decision - he couldn't stop thinking about her dull eyes and her anger and her sad smiles. He had his own issues, but he could see a kindred broken soul in her.
Also, he could use someone like her in what he had planned for Gotham. She was smart, capable and wasn't afraid of doing what had to be done.
"I'm going back to Gotham soon. I have plans for that city."
"What about Batman?"
He looked at her, finding her arching an eyebrow at him. Her teal eyes were getting back some light as she narrowed her eyes, thinking, analyzing him.
"I have plans for him too."
Jazz had given him much to think about. After he got his shower and his rest, Jason considered how broken up Jazz had been about the whole issue, how much revenge had taken from her. She got the job done, she made sure her little brother's death meant something - but her cost had been more than money.
He still resented Bruce for not doing anything after his death, don't be confused. But he was starting to think that things aren't that simple, and that grief could really mess up with someone's decisions.
So. He had changed his plans regarding Bruce. Less torture and more hard facts, and was still going to make him lose his mind trying to guess who Red Hood was, but that was more for his own enjoyment than to see him suffer.
"How could someone like me be of use to someone like you?"
Right. His offer.
"You have guts and the brains to back them up. I like that," he shrugged, passing the lettuce back to her. "And you can be trained."
"To be like you?"
"If that's what you want." He wouldn't force her, though. If she said no, he wouldn't push it. "You could watch my back and I watch yours."
Jazz was quiet as she took her time breaking up the lettuce and letting it fall into the water. Her face was neutral, her eyes glazed over as she contemplated her options. She had done her research on him, on his past, on Gotham and on Batman. She knew what she was getting herself into if she said yes.
"You know what? Why the hell not." She rubbed any remaining piece of lettuce from her hands and turned to look at him with a tiny smile. "Danny always said I had to live a little."
She extended her hand for him to take it. He did so, finding that this time her handshake was firmer. Stronger.
"Give me three days and you have a deal." She winked.