Chapter Text
Robin, aka Jason Peter Todd, had to admit that for a former street rat destined to amount to exactly nothing in this city, his life had taken a turn into the coolest, weirdest thriller movie ever conceived on a bet.
He cautiously stalked the dead roof space between the Wayne Enterprises West Business Park and the old amusement complex that had been left to decay into an urban maze of overgrown walkways, rusting rides, show pavilions and old arboretum greenhouses. He was being watched.
That’s why he was here.
Jason may be the ward of billionaire Bruce Wayne now but he was a Crime Alley kid born and bred. No child raised in the Bowery or any of the surrounding hard luck streets grew up without knowing when they were being watched. Kids that didn’t pick up that level of awareness usually ceased to be kids pretty damn quick, and often ceased to be at all.
This wasn’t even a Sentinel thing; this was just pure street instinct. Although the Sentinel thing did render this all a bit weird because if he was being watched he was well trained enough by now to instantly lock his over-the-horizon enhanced senses right on the potential threat.
Except he couldn’t. At all.
Every time he tried to it felt like he was brushing something, but Jason couldn’t grip it enough to tell what it was.
Batman remained skeptical about this watcher when Jason had reported the feeling. He was always careful to drive home to Jason that his senses, enhanced and useful though they were, could also be fooled – at times much more easily than an ordinary person’s could be. Jason’s were abnormally sensitive even by Sentinel standards because of what B called a ‘prolonged psychotic devolutionary episode’ which is what any normal person would call ‘going feral for over a year’. His dials were stuck on high volume. Three years of hard training had only taught Jason to process the influx, not mute them. B thought perhaps his senses were trying to fill an information gap that was intangible. That subconsciously Jason had an unacknowledged anxiety that was being expressed through his senses, turning the anxiety into an unknown watcher.
Fuck that , Jason huffed to himself as he made his way around the rusted old stacks to the crazed, jagged patchwork quilt of the Mile Greenhouse, whose inmates were poking up through the glass in some places now, left to fend for themselves when the money moved out. Batman could do all the painfully ironic psychoanalysis he wanted, Jason knew he was being watched. He could prove it.
Speaking of; a flash of black and red, nothing more than a sense of movement and a resplendent puff tail, darted out of the lengthening shadows. Darcy… well, actually, he was Darcy when Jason was Jason but he was Hood when Jason was Robin because Jason didn’t see any reason why Darcy couldn’t have a hero name too. Hood looked over at his Sentinel, tilted his triangular face knowingly, then darted off across the greenhouse apex towards the promenade that would eventually lead to what Jason thought may have been a water garden of some sort.
“Right,” Robin grinned behind his mask, vindicated. Every time Jason had felt those eyes on him he’d seen his spirit animal appear, scuttling up drainpipes and across parapets, seeking the source. Hood knew there was something here too. Even Batman wouldn’t argue with a spirit guide, though he’d probably subject it to an interrogation. B was like that.
Robin ran over the apex of the slanted greenhouse roof, dodging the trees now sticking up out of it, like he was running on a flat road. He may not be Dick Grayson, Jason acknowledged (sourly), but he was no fucking incompetent either. Even if Dickface was so good he could balance on a fucking cobweb, the enormous showoff.
It was a pretty time of the day. The twilight sky was every colour and rainbows glinted every which way off what was left of the glass in the glasshouse. It made even this broken down old place look kind of nice. Jason reflected that he’d come a long way in three years. That much colour three years ago would have meant instant, shrieking meltdown. It would have been way too much to process.
The fox led Jason to swing down off the greenhouse and onto the promenade, which was a really nice stone walkway with parapet that curved around the sunken faux Roman water garden. It was either dried up or swamped with stagnant algae now – and stank of it – but the promenade that ringed a storey above it was still flat and free of mostly everything but dead leaves.
Darcy, or Hood, since they were in costume – rich red fur with black points and socks – gave a happy little jump as Jason grappled onto the promenade and hopped onto the faux stone guardrail. His ears were pointed eagerly forward. He’d seen the watcher. Jason knew his spirit guide would help him with this.
Robin unstrapped and unfolded his Robinata. Batman insisted the staff blade was called a naginata but Jason drew a line in the sand – if B could have Batarangs, Batmobiles, Batcomputers and every other thing under the sun bat-branded, Robin could have a Robinata. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Robin called, armoured, caped and masked under a lurid red sky, looking every inch the stalker-in-the-night. He could feel the pulse of adrenaline overtake him, the world sharpening to nearly painful clarity as his senses went along for the ride. He could taste the stagnant water like he was drinking it, feel the air currents like they were blustering storms. He saw red painting the world edge to edge.
Best action thriller ever.
He spun the Robinata like a baton. “I know you’re here,” he added in a mutter. He stretched out with his senses like he’d been taught. Yes , there it was, that indefinable thing that he couldn’t quite grip. There was a heartbeat, but it came intermittently, like the signal was scrambled.
It was, from what Robin could tell, beating fast.
Robin made a show of peering about him, but in the corner of his eye he watched Hood stalking along the guardrail. He was intent upon… a bird?
That made Robin falter slightly. He was trained by the World’s Greatest Detective and that wasn’t just an empty platitude. B was good at his job. He’d trained Robin to be good. There was no way Robin would have missed a detail like that, or the sound of it arriving.
But that ceased to be a concern because in the next instant Darcy pounced and in the next half instant the radar static interfering with Robin’s sensory sweep stuttered, uncloaking a human figure sidling just inside his blind spot.
The little bird gave a high pitched cheep.
Robin lunged instinctively. “Ha!” He swung the Robinata hard at the figure before it could vanish again.
The world turned into a series of lurid snapshots, one coming lightning fast after the other, which coalesced into:
Guide!
Then; kid!
Then, with a jolt; edge!
The last because guide and kid had forced Robin to wrench his shoulder flicking the Robinata off target so he didn’t hit the damn little kid .
Unfortunately, the suddenly unbalanced swing caused him to overbalance which led him to shift his feet to correct, which of course put one of his boots squarely in a patch of damp leaves which rendered his boots roughly as traction-ready as a ballet shoe. His foot slid, he twisted to try to stay upright and ended up slaloming into the poor kid, who hit the guardrail with enough force to send him over.
Robin went with him, slamming the Robinata’s hook blade into the rail edge like a grapple. He grabbed the kid with one arm and hit the filament wire release with his thumb. The Robinata split in two, grapple wire unspooling for about three feet before the brakes kicked in with a joint yanking jolt. Robin and rescuee dangled, the poor kid’s sneakered feet maybe four feet from the stone ground below. Sentinel reflexes – you had to love ‘em.
“You okay?” Robin asked.
Wide blue eyes stared back at him. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Um…”
There was a whining noise. Startled, the kid fumbled for… what looked like a really expensive camera, which was blinking and beeping warningly. He looked like he was trying to turn it off, but got there a beat too late.
The flash went off. Right in Robin’s face.
White filled the entire universe .
Robin heard Hood give a yowl which echoed his yell of pain. Too much influx all at once sent Robin straight into a zone, the world suddenly blinding, white and empty.
His hands slipped from the Robinata. The kid landed with an unheard thud and then a whoosh of air as Jason landed on top of him like a caped crash dummy. Even at fourteen, Robin was an impressive slab of muscle.
The Robinata disengaged, dropped and landed on the back of Jason’s head like an editorial comment.
Yeah, action thriller movie all right.
Except when it turned into a screwball comedy.