Chapter Text
Two weeks after the event
In retrospect, he could have known that this had been a stupid idea.
“Do you have any idea,” Bruce, or rather currently Batman, lamented on as he walked back and forth through the cave, “how dangerous this was?”
He was only half-heartedly listening at this point, his mentor having gone through the same cycle of “I’m glad you’re safe” (not that he actually phrased it like that) and “Do you know how foolish this was” (this, he actually said) for about twenty minutes now.
He fondled at the juice pack in his hand. Not that he thought that the man wasn’t right, or that he shouldn’t have done this, he was more buzzed about having been caught. His wounds were healed, for the most part, and he couldn’t stand being in the manor one more day.
For a second, he considered saying that he wouldn’t do this again, but knew better than to try and fool the both of them.
“You know I’m right,” he muttered instead.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Bruce still momentarily, pressing his mouth into a thin line before closing his eyes as if to collect himself. He walked back to where Tim was sitting, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Get some sleep.”
He remained sitting until the cave was empty save for himself.
Six weeks after the event
He wasn’t delusional. He wasn’t out of control. He wasn’t any of the things Dick kept telling Bruce in hushed voices, their arguments getting more frequent, the wound that was Jason’s death ripped open because Tim couldn’t keep his mouth shut, couldn’t stop insisting he was right.
He was right.
And if proving to them meant going days without sleep (it meant no nightmares) and not eating enough (he couldn’t stomach the food anyway), that was his problem to deal with. He was an asset, he was Robin, and he was doing his job just fine without them worrying over nothing.
Six weeks, two days and a few hours before, Jason Todd had tried to kill him.
He stopped that train of thought. Focusing on the cold of the iron seeping through his glove, he adjusted his grip on the ladder. Gotham in fall, and yet it already felt like nature was trying to bring fear for the following months. His hands were cold and he was shaking, a feeling he’d grown familiar with. Maybe it was the malnutrition, maybe the lack of sleep, maybe it was his fragile mental state. Not that it mattered, what mattered was finding Jason and bringing him back home.
There wasn’t much to find on the Red Hood. Neither on the internet, nor by backhand sellers in the shadier parts of town. Officially, he had been following a lead on a new drug distributed across Gotham, rumoured to be sold from Metropolis, forcing a collaboration between Batman and Superman. (He knew the both of them had just tried to keep him busy with something.)
So what he knew was limited to encounters with law enforcement, B’s reports and general hearsay. Neither of those things gave him the answers to questions he was too afraid to voice out loud.
He had been avoiding the dead more than ever. If they had known that day that Jason had disappeared, if somehow they could look into the future, he didn’t want to face them. Death didn’t scare him, but if they didn’t conform to the paranormal he was used to, then what were the odds of anything?
If they knew things that were to happen, then why had none of them even given him a slight signal, a warning that he was about to die?
He nearly lost his balance as he slipped on an icy patch. Looking around, he verified that no one had seen. Though to be fair, if anyone had seen him, the fact that they were there would pose a bigger threat than him embarrassing himself in front of them.
Because what he was about to do was entirely stupid, well- thought through only a quarter in, and entirely made up in anger as he rushed out of the cave. He was right in what he was doing. (But misguided, like in most of the things that he did.) He was going show that he was right. (If he was, then why would Jason hate him enough to kill him?)
Sometimes he wished he could tell his brain to shut up.
Trying not to grunt as the heavy lid slid off, he carefully sat it down on the ground, pocketing the screwdriver and assessing his plan once more. Go in, take out the goons, talk to Jason. Simple.
He had memorised the floor plans and ventilation shafts on the way there. Yet, he felt unusually tense crawling through the dark tunnel, having to pause multiple times in between to calm himself down and stop worrying about how hard his heart was beating in his chest. The only sound he heard was the scraping of his clothes against the metal. He shouldn’t feel this way. He had done this hundreds of times, did this with Kon and Bart to annoy the JL for sport.
He turned another corner, the space around him getting smaller. By this point he was shimmying himself forwards more than crawling. Normally, he didn’t mind confined spaces, as he rationally knew that he was resourceful enough to deal with most situations. So he tried to focus on keeping his breathing steady.
The last time, Bruce had stopped him before he even got the chance to get too close. Announcing his arrival with gunshots and pained noises, Tim had watched as criminals in front of him had started shooting at thin air, had watched as the Red Hood turned to him, his hand twitching toward the gun strapped to his thigh. The man had made a break for it and all that had been left for Tim to do was keep quiet as Batman dragged him into the Batmobile. He didn’t clearly see the look on Commissioner Gordon’s face, but he liked to imagine that he felt sorry for him.
Afterward, Dick had come to Gotham to spend some time with his family. Reports of Nightwing and Red Robin working together made headlines, the media celebrating the return of one of their heroes, even if temporarily. They didn’t know that it was a punishment to make sure that he wouldn’t do anything like this again, too caught up in the ‘dynamic duo’ comparable to ‘Batman and his Robin’.
But if anything, Tim was persistent. Someone had to give him that.
His hands found the little screws that were separating him from a backroom in the warehouse and with little effort, he pulled out the first ones, holding the vent cover with his right hand. It had been hard to get intel into where the Red Hood was at any point. If he and Bruce had anything in common, it was the pretence that he worked alone, even if it only actually seemed to apply to one of them.
With a small clang, he placed the cover on the floor, crawling out of his hideout. He tried to calm his breathing. If worst came to worst, he couldn’t go back the way he came from. And if he managed to call for backup, he might as well dig his own grave by now. He hated not knowing.
Resisting the urge to breathe into his hands to heat them up, he straightened up instead, pulling out his staff and gripping it defensively. Why was it so cold in there?
Quiet steps, pausing at every door and listening for any sign of someone coming across him, he made his way through the building. Concluding that he must have taken a wrong turn, he knew that he had somehow ended up in an administrative part of the complex. Higher risk of encountering anyone.
Not being on the top of his game should have been his sign to terminate whatever suicidal mission he was following, but he ignored the part of his consciousness that sounded too much like Bruce. He was Robin, he could do this.
For some reason (refusing to work through what had happened at the tower), he felt reminded of that night. Nothing was the same and yet everything made him think of… He gulped as phantom pain made him check his neck. The skin was still slightly raised where the cut had been. It wasn’t an angry red anymore, but he hid it under hoodies and turtlenecks, never quite wanting to confront that Jason had actually tried to-
He came face to face with a man. For a second, his muscles tensed, before he realised that he could not harm him. His eyes were sunken and his face was frail.
The warehouse was in the old industrial part of Gotham, so it had probably seen its fair share of workers passing away under the conditions during the industrial revolution. He should have been more surprised that not more of them were loitering around over the place.
Sidestepping, he kept his eyes on him. The man watched. And then, as if Tim himself were nothing but air to him, he walked around the corner, undoubtedly having disappeared if he were to check. He took another deep breath.
It was odd that he hadn’t encountered anyone at this point. According to his source, the Red Hood was working on something big, something he had been meticulously planning for weeks. That Tim had managed to find one of his goons who took a big swad of money as a change for loyalty was pure luck. Four hundred dollars poorer, he had been given time and location of a briefing.
After another hallway, the only thing separating him from whomever was inside the warehouse with him was a thick metal door. There was no way he could make a quiet entry.
Experimentally, he put his hand on the doorhandle, holding his breath in expectation. There was nothing coming from behind it. Maybe, if he had been a little less anxious about everything, he might have found that strange or at least alarming. He did not.
Pushing aside his last reservations, he pulled down the handle, leaning his entire weight against the metal and swinging it open as quickly as possible. The heavy material squeaked loudly, reverberating in the vast space, the hinges sounding as if they hadn’t been oiled since the building was built. Expecting a tirage of guns pointed at him, he froze with what he was faced with instead.
“Fancy seeing you here,” the modulator crackled at him, making a shiver run down his spine. Just like the last time, he felt himself freezing up.
It was only the two of them in a giant, empty, remote warehouse, where no one knew that he was there, and if they came, they would not be able to come fast enough. What had he been thinking? (He hadn’t been, too caught up in his self- righteousness, too caught up in trying not to contemplate what any of this meant for him.)
The Red Hood sat there, on a single plastic chair in the middle of the hall, the mask directed at him. As if he had been expecting him. And suddenly, Tim realised that finding someone who would sell out the inarguably best criminal employer for a mere 400 bucks was downright ridiculous. His throat felt dry.
“You’re not gonna say anything?”
For a long time, he had wondered what Jason’s voice sounded like. What he said to make Bruce laugh just the way that Tim never quite managed to. He wondered, too, if he had screamed himself hoarse yelling for their father. They were in a warehouse. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
“I gotta say, I expected him to come here himself.“
He watched as he shifted on the chair, involuntarily catching a glimpse of a hidden knife strapped to the other’s leg. If Hood wanted to, he could take him out with a quick gun shot. His head felt funny. “Who?”
Hood scoffed, then threw his head up to the ceiling. “Figures he would send his Robin to get himself killed,” he muttered, the words nevertheless being heard in the vast space. It sounded funny, the words getting slightly more distorted as the walls threw them back to their source.
“B doesn’t know I’m here.” He said before he could stop himself. Then, as if trying to appease Jason somehow, he continued: “He doesn’t believe me that you’re…”, he stopped.
He tried to keep his breathing steady as the helmet snapped toward him, the lenses zeroing in on him. If he hadn’t already been feeling like a trapped animal, this would surely do the trick. He had just informed the Red Hood that nobody would be coming for him, and the only thing separating them were roughly thirty metres of dirty floor and his sorry excuse for defence. He squared up.
But instead of attacking him, Jason merely mustered him.
(It reminded him of those nights where he would rummage through the kitchen, trying to find something that he liked, as the older teen watched him from his spot at the kitchen table, patiently. He would turn around in triumph, catch the somewhat melancholic smile before he could morph it into something more joyous, and they would just be.)
He felt nauseous.
(Bruce had called the Red Hood cold and calculating, had told him about the dead bodies and the brutal disfigurements that were the remaining criminals. Tricking Tim into coming here without him suspecting anything, separating him from help in the Tower, those things spoke of this precision, the ruthless planning. They hinted at the outcome.)
“So no Batman?”
He should have lied, he knew that. If Hood was playing with him and giving him another chance to save himself, he should have taken it. Still, he found himself shaking his head, unable to use his voice in fear of throwing up.
“Fuck.”
If that wasn’t the word to describe all of this. His life, his ability, the entire mess that had been them finding each other, him being a terrible person and then losing Jason and-
“Fuck,” Hood said louder, more frustrated. Somehow, he had angered him with just his presence, and he was sure that this time, he wouldn’t call help. As if spellbound, he watched as the Red Hood took of his mask, blue eyes meeting his own. (The same eyes that had been haunting his dreams for years now.)
Once again, he was confronted just how much younger the other looked without the helmet, because truly, he was only two years older than Tim. Old enough to drive, not old enough to drink. There was a white streak running through the front of his hair, strains of it falling into his face. The last time, he thought that maybe he had imagined the shock of colour.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” His voice betrayed his uncertainty.
Why did you try to kill me?
“Why did you call for help?” He hadn’t believed Clark. He’d checked the data himself, had calculated everything to know that he had been physically unable to call someone because he had passed out by then. Nobody else had been there.
Jason slowly rose from the chair, rising to his full height and he put the helmet down. Yet again, his mind supplied him with the fact that he is both taller and stronger than him. He felt himself subconsciously moving back until he physically can’t anymore, until he felt the door behind him, not remembering when it had slammed shut.
“It doesn’t matter. Just-“ he watched as he threaded a hand through his black hair, the white streak at the front bouncing back in its place. “Get outta here.” He sounded like any other Gotham teenager.
“You’re not answering my questions.”
“Maybe it’s because I don’t wanna answer them, Replacement.” The tone was clipped and his body language spoke of hostility. The burning inside Tim’s throat felt stronger.
“Why-“ he struggled to move past the lump that felt baseball- sized- “is the first thing you do when coming back trying to kill me?” He felt like he was about to cry. He was defenceless, useless and he knew that whatever the other would do to him, he would deserve it.
But for the first time, what he said apparently got to the teen. Jason froze, his eyes widening slightly, looking at him as if something had scared him. And what a silly thought, that Tim could scare him, when he was still standing in a useless defence, preparing for a fight he would inevitably lose.
Sometimes, he really did prefer the lingering dead over the living. They couldn’t hurt him unless they were poltergeists, and even then, their rage was chaotic, not focused like the one of a living being. Jason had been able to touch him when dead, but he would have never been able to hurt him. In death, Jason had never looked at him like that.
It took a second, and suddenly all hell broke loose.
Around them, glass started to shatter and the unforgiving noise of bat-smoke-bombs filled the air. Shadows moved just as quickly as the gas seemed to fill the room and he distantly recognised Jason swearing. He tried to blink back the tears in his eyes.
They must have checked his trackers when they had found him not actually being in his room. After their argument and his ban from being Red Robin, he had expected them to let him cool off for a bit, enough for him to do his thing and come back. A simple plan.
A simple plan that had been conjured out of anger, had been piloted by someone else without him noticing, because he was never as good as his predecessor. His eyes remained transfixed on the older teen.
There was a gasp from his right that he vaguely recognised as Dick’s. Yet despite this, and despite what was happening around them, Jason was moving toward him, anger written on his face. That was it. As if trying to deter a hurricane with a fan, he gripped the staff in his hands tighter.
“You lied to me,” is the last thing he hears before Jason rushed past him, through the only entrance the other bats hadn’t covered. If he had to describe the tone, it would be betrayal. In life and in death, he always seemed to do the wrong thing for the other, screw this, seemed to always do the wrong thing, period.
He hadn’t known.