Chapter Text
“Zombies,” Mr. Dosletter says with a disgusted sneer, “are the bane of an assassin’s existence.”
“People coming back from the dead is a normal occurrence?” Little Tim asks with wide eyes.
“Not normally, no, but anything is possible in this world of magic and science. Remember to leave a clause in the contract covering them.”
“Because I’ll have to figure out how to kill a zombie otherwise?”
“Yes.”
A gentle push deposits Bruce in the chair in front of the Batcave’s monitors. Pulling his cowl down, Bruce cradles his head in his hands and remains completely still. Tim would think him dead if it weren’t for the fact that every muscle stay tense.
“Bruce? Breathe, Bruce,” Tim says, hands flailing around pointlessly. “I’m going to go get Alfred. Don’t do anything stupid.”
Tim pulls out his communicator once he’s halfway up the stairs to the manor.
“Oracle, what’s the protocol for zombies?”
“Pardon?” Barbara replies immediately.
It hits him suddenly that Tim might be the first one Bruce notified of Red Hood being Jason, and that no one else may know. He tries not to sigh.
“You may want to sit down for this,” Tim says with a straight face.
“I know where you live,” Barbara threatens.
The protocol for zombies is designed for apocalypse type scenarios and doesn’t cover the current situation. Figures.
Letting Alfred know that Jason is alive but is bent on becoming the biggest crime lord of Gotham is much harder than telling Barbara over the communication line. The way the old butler grows pale and silent hurts in a way that Tim can’t help but feel guilty for.
In the aftermath of such bizarre news, Tea is obviously required as well as that pack of stale cookies that Tim stashed in the pantry from the last time he was here. Alfred is so out of it that he doesn’t even complain about the evils of processed sweets.
“Lay it on me, A,” Tim steeples his fingers above a steaming cup of tea. “What’s the game plan for dealing with zombie Jason?”
“I’m afraid I cannot say.” Alfred stares into his own cup of tea with an unreadable expression.
“So, we’re playing this by ear then.” Tim bites into a cookie with enough aggression to send crumbs flying. Alfred doesn’t even blink at the mess.
“Master Tim,” Tim, not Timothy because only Deathstroke and his parents call him that, “I find myself at a loss. I want nothing more to bring him home, but at the same time, my wits in figuring out how are failing me.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure something out,” Tim sighs.
“I believe in you,” Alfred says, and it’s all he needs to make his resolve. Tim will not fail. Jason will be coming home whether he likes it or not.
He will not disappoint someone who believes in him.
The chance to bring Jason home comes when Red Hood makes an appointment to discuss another heist. Red Hood doesn’t appear to know that his identity has been discovered, not with the relaxed way he sits, legs spread wide and arms resting against the top of the atrocious pink couch.
“Got another job for you. Penguin’s got some missiles coming in that need disappearing.” That’s definitely a smug smirk underneath the helmet. Robin used to do that when he thought he’d gained the upper hand.
Red X waits until most of the details are hashed out before he switches the lasers off. The sudden movement spooks Red Hood, who’s quick to pull out a handgun.
“Hey there, Little Red,” Red Hood says as Red X nears him with small, slow steps. “Maybe back off a bit, yeah?”
“Well, Big Red, I’ve got something for you,” Red X says before flicking his wrist.
Red Hood snags the old photo of a smiling Batman and Robin on reflex. An outraged hiss comes out like a radio crackle, and the photo is crushed into a ball.
“Go home, Robin,” Red X tries. “Talk it out with them. Let them know what’s going through your head.”
The handgun remains aimed at his shoulder, and Red X keeps his hands up to remain as nonthreatening as possible.
“I see you’ve only gotten dumber without me around,” Red Hood comments, throwing the crumpled photo into the cup on the coffee table.
“I missed rubbing my superior genius into your face,” Red X admits truthfully.
The skirmishes between Red X and Robin had been more play than crime-fighting. Losing Jason had been like losing a friend. With the way Red Hood stares at him, Red X wonders if he feels the same way. That they could have been more than enemies given enough time.
“Robin died, and if you don’t stay out of my way, so will you.” The barrel of a gun moves to point between his eyes, but the finger remains off the trigger. “This is between Batman and me.”
Red X makes no promises, and Red Hood disappears out the door which slams shut behind him.
Tim doesn’t give up even though it feels like he’s the only one trying to bring Jason home.
With Bruce becoming a gargoyle, Oracle too busy with another project to do more than track Red Hood’s movements, Nightwing picking up the slack when it comes to the rest of Gotham’s problems, and Alfred trying to keep them all from falling apart—there’s not much help to be had.
“Another long night then?” Alfred nods as Tim slams his face into the kitchen table with a loud groan. “I will make you a lunchbox.”
“Make two. I’ll try to get Jason to eat one,” Tim says.
Stalking Red Hood is even easier than stalking Robin. Red Hood wants to be seen, wants to be heard. All he has to do is follow the bodies and explosions. Getting Red Hood’s attention without getting kneecapped—that’s a whole different matter.
“You didn’t have to kill them,” Red X says before ducking as a bullet goes flying near his head. He suspects Red Hood only fires warning shots instead of serious ones, but he doesn’t really feel up to testing out his hypothesis.
“Extreme problems require extreme solutions.” Red Hood kicks at one of the dead bodies whose brains litter the dark alleyway.
“My babysitter once said the same thing. It was about zombies, but eh,” Red X shrugs.
“Like I care what about what some teen girl in need of a paycheck said,” Red Hood growls at him.
“You might should care.” He wonders what Deathstroke would say about being compared to a teenage girl. Probably something about how he’s not nearly as vicious. “Considering that extreme solutions tend to end in tragedy.”
Jason holsters his gun with a flourish. A broken laugh comes out of the red helmet.
“As if my life hadn’t already ended in tragedy.”
Jason is probably surprised to see the crates full of Penguin’s missiles delivered to his warehouse, but considering the job's been paid for, Red X can’t avoid following up on it.
There was something thrown into the Meeting Fee cup, after all.
It’s not hard for Tim to piece the clues together, what Jason plans to do. He wants Batman to kill the Joker and avenge Jason. Red Hood wants some relief from the rage boiling through his veins; he wants his murderer dead by the hands of the one who failed to save him.
While it doesn’t need to be said that Batman will not kill, Red X decides that not talking about things is the reason this entire fiasco began.
He corners Batman on a rooftop. Doing his best gargoyle impression, Batman remains steadfast in ignoring both him and the rain beating down upon them. Red X curls up under a nearby window arch and goes for the throat.
“You operate outside the law to benefit the city, so why not kill the Joker?” Red X asks. He can faintly hear Batman snarling at him. “He’ll only escape Arkham and continue to murder innocent people. Killing him would benefit the city, right? So why don’t you?”
It takes a long time before he gets a response.
“I can’t cross that line,” Batman says.
“Why not? You’ve crossed all the others.” Red X gestures to the city below them. Invasion of privacy, assault, theft—Batman’s done everything necessary in the name of justice.
“Because then I may never stop!” The words are ripped painfully from Batman, and the rain falls like tears over his cowl. “Because if I can’t stop, I will ruin everything I—we’ve ever done and sacrificed. I will hurt more people than Joker ever could.”
Red X tilts his head.
“Have you told him that?”
There’s no answer, and that, in itself, is an answer.
“I don’t think Robin is mad you won’t avenge him. I think he’s upset because you don’t seem to be upset yourself.” Red X fires off his grapple gun and prepares to leap. “Talk to him. Tell him everything you regretted never saying when he was dead. What else do you have to lose?”
Red X goes home to prepare for his toughest fight yet.
The day comes where Red Hood’s plans come to a head, his grand finale. A warehouse that Red X has gotten familiar with is set up with a bomb, and Joker gets VIP seating from a closet after getting a face full of crowbar.
Before Batman can be called, before a choice can be made, Red X sneaks in and ruins everything. To say that Red Hood is not pleased to find Red X crouching over the bomb with a pair or wire cutters is an understatement.
“You’ve really done it now.” Red Hood holsters his gun with no unnecessary movement. “I’m going to make you regret ever putting on the mask.”
Joker’s laugh echoes as if finding the whole situation hilarious. It makes the hair on the back of Red X's neck stand up beneath his mask. Funny how a locked-up Joker is scarier than the livid Red Hood looming over him.
“A teenage girl is scarier than you,” Red X shoots back. Of course, by that, he means Rose Wilson, Deathstroke’s daughter. She is genuinely terrifying.
Red Hood leaps at him with lengthy blades emerging from the spiked sides of his gauntlets. Rolling to the side, Red X activates his own gauntlet blades to defend himself.
“Seriously? Don’t you feel that’s a bit too much?” He eyes Red Hood’s gauntlets in disgust. One wrong move will send a blade straight into Red Hood’s own thigh.
“Look who’s talking with all those freaking X’s!” Red Hood snarls.
All the tricks Red X has up his up his sleeves disappear in the face of Red Hood’s sheer brutality. Bones crunch, joints twist, and blood flies. Red X is too busy trying not to die to keep track of his injuries.
It’s a good thing he activated his emergency beacon before he began working on defusing the bomb.
“You should really get that anger looked at,” he squeezes out after a particularly painful punch to the gut.
A combat boot sends him through a rotting crate, and he’s not able to recover before he’s grabbed by the neck. A gun clicks near his head. He struggles to grab onto the arm holding him. Those stupid blades slice into him, but he can’t feel it.
A wraith falls from the rafters and knocks him out of Red Hood’s hold.
“Enough, Jason!” Batman pulls out a batarang and stands between them.
Knowing when to bow out, Red X makes for the exit while wrapping the cape around the worst of his injuries. It’s a poor effort to stop from leaving a blood trail, but it’s better than nothing.
The journey home uses up the last of his invisibility, and by the time he makes it to his lawn, he’s crawling on his hands and knees. Tim passes out after climbing through the dining room window.
Whatever goes down between Jason and Bruce, he misses it.
“I love you, Jason. I have always loved you!”
“Then why isn’t he dead?”
“Because I will destroy everything you gave your life for. Because I won’t be the man who can love you anymore. Because I will burn the world, and you will have to put me down.”
He’s recovering on the couch, watching tv with a can of peanuts when the Red Hood swings through the nearest window. Tim pauses in the middle of chewing to have a staring contest with a red helmet. It ends in his victory, and Jason pulls the helmet off.
Tim switches the tv to a Spanish soap opera out of pettiness.
“If you’re here to kill me, I want to die to a mother screaming dramatically as they watch their child dying,” Tim says.
Stomping towards the couch, Jason reaches out quick as lightning to pull Tim to his feet. Large, leather clad hands wrap around Tim’s face, and he briefly panics over getting his head crushed like one of Bane’s enemies.
“Aw hell, you’re a baby,” Jason says before squishing his face.
Oh no, Tim knows where this heading. He’s had his cheeks pinched too many times at parties to recognize the oncoming danger.
“I’m fifteen!” Tim struggles to get out of the hold to no avail. Jason continues to squish and pull at his face like the cruel person he is, and Tim goes limp to wait it out in agony.
“Like I said, a baby.” Jason finally lets him go with a scoff. “How much is Bruce feeding you? I’ve seen ten-year-olds bigger than you.”
“Excuse you, my line of work requires me to be as slim as possible.” Hiding in itty-bitty places aside, the least amount of mass saves on expensive material needed for invisibility.
“You’re a skeleton, kid.”
“Not all of us can be elephants like you,” Tim says, eyeing Jason’s thighs pointedly.
“What’cha say?” Jason asks dangerously.
“Peanut?” Tim offers before dodging the swing at his face.
Oracle schedules a group meeting, and Tim tries not to stare too hard at having both Bruce and Jason side by side on the couch. They’re both tense and sitting as far away as possible from each other without falling off.
“So there’s a lot of things that need to be said,” Tim begins, wondering how this is his life. “We’ll begin by talking in turns.”
Bruce and Jason make no sign of acknowledgement.
“This is the Squishie,” he holds a pink stress ball shaped like a cartoon octopus. “Whoever holds it, gets to talk. Everyone else must listen. No interruptions, no excuses, no explanations. Just listening. Okay?”
“Jason, you begin,” Tim throws the stress ball to Jason, who makes a face at it. “Tell us how you felt after coming back to life.”
“This is stupid.” Jason runs a hand through his cropped hair, subconsciously pulling at the lone white streak.
“Jason,” Bruce growls, and Tim clears his throat loudly in response.
“The only way we can know how you felt about it is if you tell us,” Tim says to Jason while giving Bruce a look.
The silence drags on until Jason looks at Bruce then Tim and breaks.
“You want to know how I feel? Do you?” Jason snarls. “I woke up buried beneath the ground in a plush coffin, had no fucking clue what was going on, and then got thrown into the Lazarus Pit where fucking Talia messed with me—and I still have no clue if that was consensual or not—and now Brucie here is putting the life of Joker above mine!”
“Jason, I—”
“Shh, no Bruce. Jason has the Squishie, which means he talks, and you listen.”
“Yeah, I got the Squishie.” Jason squeezes the stress ball, and it makes a sad, dying squeak. “So listen to me.” Jason looks at Bruce with an unsure expression before squaring his shoulders.
“We’re listening, Jason. Say everything that comes to mind,” Tim says, folding his hands into his lap.
Jason’s not as courteous when it’s Bruce’s turn to hold the Squishie, but it’s progress. By the end of the session, Jason seems more confused than murderous, and Bruce has actually broken down and cried. Both have agreed to dinner with Alfred.
Tim considers this his win.
“Burn the city down to contain the infestation? What about all the people living there?” Tim asks, aghast by the thought.
“Extreme problems require extreme solutions,” Mr. Dosletter says simply.
Tim knows that, in theory, sacrificing one city to save the world is the best option, but something inside of him revolts at the idea. There has to be another way; there has to be something missed in the small details.
If he does it once, then it become too easy to keep sacrificing cities for the world until there is nothing left.
“There has to be a limit to the solutions or else everything will suddenly become an extreme problem!” He juts his chin out, and a single eye narrows back at him.
“Figure out a better solution then, if you can.” A challenge.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find a way.” A promise.
“Hey Jason, before you go, there’s some letters written for you while you were gone,” Tim says. “Want to have a look?”