Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bruce woke up, groggy and fuzzy, to a jolt of instant alarm.  He’d been patrolling Gotham—alone, because Robin was tucked away in the Cave, safe and sound, after being missing for thirty hours—and then his comms had cut out, and he’d seen a shadow, gleaming in red, moving fast and then—nothing.

“I know you’re awake, old man,” came the mechanized voice, and Bruce abandoned the effort to stay still.  He opened his eyes—cowl was still on, good—and had to blink a couple of times before his surroundings resolved themselves.

He was tied to a chair, knots careful and precise and leagues better than any Rogue’s.  These would actually hold him—wrists and elbows to the chair arms, across the ribs to the back of the chair, ankles and knees to the chair legs—and his gauntlets, belt, and comms had been removed, greatly reducing his available skillset.  The chair was right under a bright, naked bulb, blindingly annoying, and if he squinted, he could make out empty shelving in the distance and a gloom where the ceiling should’ve been.  Abandoned warehouse, then—admittedly a conclusion that required little deductive reasoning.

And his captor, tall and broad-shouldered, armored and armed, light glinting off that obnoxiously red helmet.

Bruce had downgraded the Red Hood as a threat after he showed up with a shivering Robin and all-but shoved Tim into his arms.  Tim was the one who relayed the shaky story of being taken captive by a group of traffickers, and if the Red Hood truly was sticking to his ‘protect innocents’ stance, Bruce had other priorities than a crime lord with contradictory morals.

It occurred to him that that might’ve been an oversight.

“Hood,” Bruce said in his normal gravelly tone, “To what do I owe this meeting?”

Hood gave a loud, derisive scoff.

“First of all, you’re not in control.  Second of all, this isn’t a meeting,” he sneered, pacing back and forth in front of Bruce, “Third, you’re going to shut your mouth and listen for once in your godforsaken life.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes.  No overt aggression, no waving around of the gun.  But Bruce was still tied annoyingly thoroughly to a chair bolted to the floor.

“Hood—”

“Nope.”

“What’s this—”

“I said no.”

“About—”

“Zip it!” Hood yelled, surging a step forward, “You are not allowed to talk!”  Bruce catalogued his stance, and Hood clearly caught his hesitation, because he tensed.  “Or,” he said, the distorted voice dropping a couple registers, “I could go find myself a baby bird, and then we can talk.”

It was a toothless threat, given everything Tim had said Hood did to rescue him, but the flare of fear was not rational.

“Fine,” Bruce said bitingly.

Hood relaxed.  “Great,” he said, unfolding a piece of paper from his pocket, “Now, you’re going to shut up and listen, because I’m willing to take all night to bludgeon this into your head if need be.”  Bruce hoped he wasn’t being literal, but with a Rogue, you never really knew.  “Reasons why Batman is Incompetent and a Hypocrite and Absolutely Not the World’s Greatest Detective,” Hood recited, “By yours truly.”

That…was not what he’d been expecting.

“Reason number one,” Hood said, lifting his gaze from the paper, “He lets toddlers out onto the streets with sharp knives and no common sense.”

Bruce blinked at him.  When he registered that Hood was being serious, he spoke, “Robin isn’t a toddler and—”

“Nah-uh-uh.  No talking.  You’re just supposed to listen,” Hood wagged a finger at him, “The first Robin—okay, he at least knew what he was doing, I’ll give you that much, even though you really should’ve encouraged him to take up gymnastics and not crime fighting.  But no, you apparently decided to take that as a blueprint, and put a second kid in that traffic light monstrosity of a costume!”

Bruce swallowed.  There had never been much of an official statement on any of the Robins, and they all liked to pretend like the mantle had never changed hands, but Gotham wasn’t a city of fools.  Dick to Jason had been a significant change, and—and Jason to Tim had been.  Well.  The pieces were there for anyone to put together.

“And, of course, we all know what happened to him,” Hood said derisively, and Bruce was straining against the ropes before he realized what he was doing.

“Do not,” Bruce snarled, low and furious, “Go there.”

Hood regarded him for a stretching moment, body language almost…curious, before turning back to the list, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll circle back to him in a bit—can’t really make a list of Batman’s failures without mentioning the dead Robin—” Bruce felt that like a punch—“But for right now, we’ll move on to Robin number three.”

He paused, for dramatic effect or just to take a breath for the near shout, “What, in the name of everything that is holy on this fucking planet, possessed you to put another fucking kid in the same exact costume that got one of them brutally murdered?!”

Bruce—

He—

It took way too much effort to swallow, but his mouth was dry and he—

Tim had gone missing, and it was Jason’s cooling corpse in his hands, and a closed coffin, and—and—and—

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” came out in Batman’s steady gravel, “And it’s none of your business.”

Hood instantly stiffened.  “None of my business?” he repeated, slow and dangerous, “None of my business?  Do you want to know how I found him?  Do you want to know what they were saying about him?  It’s been burned into my head, I can recite it all for you, how lithe and small he was, how his skin bruised so easily, how much money they could get and how many times they could make him scream before his voice gave out and—” Hood took a shaky breath, hands balled into fists.  “Do you know what they would’ve done to him if I hadn’t gotten there first?”

Bruce.  Bruce was.  He didn’t want to think about it.  He.

“And you would’ve been too late,” Hood said, something aching and sad in his tone, “Again.”

Bruce seized that emotion as a way to distract himself—a potential crack in the façade.  Someone had abandoned Hood—the attention-seeking tendencies were a dead giveaway, the duffel bag of heads, the way Hood insisted on being loud and flashy and daring Gotham to ignore him.

There had to be a way to utilize that.  Even this setup—spotlight and single chair and looming darkness.  Hood liked theater.  So if Bruce just made it dramatic enough—

“Subpoint number two,” Hood turned back to his list, “Even if, in your vast, unfathomable stupidity, you decided that handing the Rogues another fucking child-shaped piñata was a good idea, why did you let him out by himself?”

“I didn’t,” Bruce started, and swallowed the rest of that statement.  Hood didn’t need to know that Tim was dangerously headstrong and only listened to Bruce when it didn’t conflict with what he planned to do.  Tim sneaking out after patrol to go investigate his own leads hadn’t exactly come as a surprise, though Bruce had found and deactivated the code that disabled the tracking on the Robin suit, and upgraded it against future potential hacks.

Tim had luckily been still too off-kilter to protest.

“Oh, that’s even better, you’re too goddamn incompetent to figure out where your Robin is,” Hood sneered, and Bruce hated the way the words cut too close to home.  They wormed under his skin and lodged into bone and Bruce couldn’t let this Rogue see how deeply his accusations wounded, not when Bruce couldn’t fight back.  “You’d think that you’d concentrate on keeping him safe, instead of going out and getting more babies in brightly colored suits like you’re fucking grocery shopping for orphans!”

Bruce took a deep breath.  And another.  And another, ignoring the fierce pounding of his heart, the how-dare-he and the not-my-fault-please-no-not-my-fault and the it’s-all-true-god-what-have-I-done.  And then replied in a voice that was mostly level again, “You seem to overestimate the control I have over this city or its people.  I have no power over who takes to the streets in a mask.”  Bruce turned his tone slightly dry, “Didn’t you just call me incompetent?”

Hood’s hand twitched towards his guns.  Bruce tracked that twitch, and the way he deliberately lowered it.  “Funny,” Hood said flatly, “I had no idea you considered the welfare of this city’s children such a blasé matter.”  He smoothed out the crumpled sheet.  “Or your children, for that matter,” Hood said softly, “But you’ve always been a shit father.”

For a stretching moment, Bruce couldn’t breathe.

“But no, if you want to focus on your own responsibilities, sure,” Hood shrugged, “We can focus on your biggest goddamn failure.  The fucking joke that is Arkham Asylum.”

“Arkham is not—”

“A prison?  Yeah, you’re right, it’s a revolving door,” Hood nodded, “A mental health institution?  Right there too, it’s a fucking torture den.  Your job?  Well, no, I guess it isn’t your job,” Hood turned back to his sheet of paper, “But if you don’t care where the villains you stop end up, then are you really stopping them at all?”

Bruce hadn’t realized that a mechanized voice could be so quiet.

Arkham was—a mess, Bruce knew that, the whole of Gotham knew that, but it wasn’t that easy to change things.  It had been a slapdash solution to a sudden problem, and the amount of red tape that they had to wade through to change it, not to mention public perception at the thought of the Rogues in a different jail, or, god forbid, receiving actual help—

Arkham Asylum was a problem that was beyond Batman.

“And your solution to this,” Bruce said levelly, “Is to kidnap me and yell at me while your men and your operations funnel drugs and violence into this city.”

Hood jerked like Bruce had struck him, and he filed away that reaction.

“Okay,” Hood growled, “You want to talk about blame?  Let’s fucking talk about blame.”  He crumpled up the paper and stuck it in a pocket.  “Let’s talk about the second Robin.”

“No.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you think you got a choice in the matter?” Hood laughed, disjointed and unamused, “This isn’t your show, old man, and you don’t get a say.”

“We’re not talking about him,” Bruce said flatly, because he’d dreamed of Jason when Tim was missing, and the wound—never healed, not in all these years—was far too close to the surface.  Bruce was far too close to breaking.  “You know nothing about him.”

Hood made a half-bark.  “Oh, you have no fucking idea,” he said, slow and drawling, “I know exactly what happened to the second Robin, I know how he was too violent and angry and rebellious to be a good little soldier—” No, no, no, Jason had been magic and laughter and brilliance and—“I know he disobeyed orders and got himself killed—” No, Jason hadn’t—the fault was Bruce’s, all Bruce’s, Jason had been a child who wanted a mother and he didn’t—“But that’s on him.  Your fault was not learning your fucking lesson—”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No.”  Bruce can hardly recognize his voice.  “That’s not on him.  He wasn’t—he wasn’t any of the things you said, you don’t know him at all, and his death was my fault.”

Hood looked…surprised.  His shoulders had gone slack.  Bruce couldn’t see anything past that blank helmet, but it was clear that Bruce had flipped his script.

“That—that’s not the point,” Hood cleared his throat, “It’s about what you did after—”

“That is the point,” Bruce snarled back, “You have no idea what happened, and you’re using it to make some inane argument—”

“I have every right—” Hood started, and then stopped himself.  Started again, slower, “That’s not the fucking point.  If you cared about him—”

“Of course I cared—”

“Then why is that goddamn fucking clown still alive?!”

Oh.  The Red Hood was a name that hit too close to be a coincidence, Bruce had seen that and it had alarmed him, but when Hood didn’t get up to any of the Joker’s old tricks, Bruce had…let it slip from his mind.

But no.  That was real rage in Hood’s tone, personal rage, and they’d finally stumbled upon the heart of the problem.

The answer was simple.

“Batman doesn’t kill.”

“Not even for this?” Hood asked softly, “Not even to avenge the son that died in your crusade?”

He wanted to.  Oh, how desperately he wanted to.  It took everything he had not to murder the clown in his cell.  Bruce could do it.  He could even convince himself it was just a one-time deal.  He’d stop.  No one would fault him for killing the Joker.  No one.

No one but himself.

“No.”

Hood actually wavered, stumbling back a step.  Bruce used the increased space to start tugging at the ropes again—gauntlet or not, if he could just reach the batarangs concealed in his gloves…

“Well,” Hood said, his voice mechanical, “At least you’re aware you’re incompetent.”  He drew out the paper again, “Next—why you’re a hypocrite.”

“Hood—”

“Number one—you think you’re the only person who can do any good in this city, despite your methods demonstrably not working,” Hood recited, cold and flat.

“Hood—”

“Number two—you advocate non-lethal solutions like breaking multiple bones is just a walk in the park and not something that results in pain, permanent injury, medical bills, and extremely reduced quality of life.”

“Hood, why are you—”

“Number three—you are one of the few people in this city with the unique means to advocate non-violent options, and yet you decide to squander your reputation on being drunk at parties—”

“Hood!”  There was a jolt running through Bruce, because he had no illusions about his secret identity being a secret with half the Rogues, but the Red Hood knew far too many details for his relative obscurity.  “Let me go.  If you want to talk about real change, leave the guns behind, and we can talk.”

“We can talk.”  There was a thread of something in his tone that Bruce didn’t recognize, too hysterical to be level.  “Oh, I’m well aware of how you talk, old man.  You’ll either lecture or give nonverbal answers with that disapproving look, and anyone who makes the mistake of trying to have a conversation with you walks away thinking they’re the stupidest person on the planet.”

Hood was back to pacing back and forth, arms gesticulating wildly.

“You never care about other people’s opinions if they disagree with your own, never stop assuming that you’re the smartest fucking person in the room, and if someone dares to have a different opinion than yours, you’ll make them think they’re fucking crazy.”

His hands were getting far too close to his guns for Bruce’s comfort.

“And you just—all we need is for you to try, to put a modicum of effort into seeing our point of view, into climbing down from your ivory tower for once in your fucking life, but no.  You’re Batman, and you know best, and damn whoever gets fucked over in your personal crusade,” Hood’s voice was cracking, “Newsflash, asshole—you’re not special!  We all saw our parents die in front of our fucking faces, and we didn’t need you to shove us into costumes to get over it!”

The silence was ringing.  Hood was breathing hard, and his hands were balled into shaking fists, and Bruce had half his attention on those guns and the other half stuck somewhere in between shock and denial.  It was easier to focus on Hood as a threat, to make the clear deduction that Bruce needed to deescalate this situation before it got worse, to view Hood’s tirade dispassionately and detached.

Before Bruce could open his mouth, another voice rang out, high and echoing in the rafters, “You forgot to mention the micromanagement.”

Hood startled violently, and Bruce squinted through the light.  He couldn’t make out anything but darkness, but that was Nightwing’s voice.

“The micromanagement is ridiculous,” Nightwing said cheerily, “Like, hello?  I’ve been doing this nearly as long as you have, you don’t need to keep hovering over my shoulder.”

“Nightwing,” Hood growled, low and flat, his hand curling around the gun, “How long have you been here?”

There was a pause, a whir of a grapple, and Nightwing touched down in the shadows, blue glinting faintly.  “Oh, ages,” Nightwing said nonchalantly, “You’ve covered the incompetence and the hypocrisy, all’s left is that stupid title, right?”  Nightwing made jazz hands, “The World’s Greatest Detective.”

Hood was all tense lines, and Bruce flicked his gaze between the two of them—Nightwing had lost the element of surprise, and his smooth gait wasn’t even confrontational, and why—

“But that’s rather obviously false,” Nightwing hummed, flicking a glance at Bruce, “Isn’t it, Little Wing?”

Hood went rigid.  Bruce stopped breathing.  The entire warehouse seemed entirely too small and too stifling and too terrifying.

“Enough of B being an idiot, though,” Nightwing dropped his tone to something softer, and—and extended his arms, “Can I get a hug?”

It was some kind of plot.  That was it.  Nightwing was planning to stick a tranquilizer into Hood.  It was just a front.  He wasn’t seriously offering a crime lord a hug out of some delusion that the man was his long-dead little brother, no, because that would be insane.

“How did you know?”

“Listened to Robin talk about you,” Nightwing’s lips curved into a deeper smile, “The hero worship sounded familiar.  And I was listening to the majority of the conversation—actually listening, not whatever the fuck B was doing.”  He raised his hands higher, “Hug?  Please Jaybird?  I—I missed you.”

His voice cracked convincingly.  Hood fell for it, Bruce could see him waver, and his fingers slowly moved away from the gun.

“You want a hug,” Hood said, slow and suspicious, “Not to—call the cops, or free Batman, or—or—”

“At this moment, there is nothing I want more in the world than to give you a hug,” Nightwing said, soft and desperate and—Hood was moving forward tentatively and Bruce yanked harder at the ropes and finally managed to reach the edge of the batarang in his gloves.

He wasted no time in extracting it, and sawed through the wrist ropes as quickly as he could—Nightwing would need backup against Hood and his armory—before moving to the others.  The silence was absolute, and Bruce looked up, heart pounding in his throat—

They were hugging.  They were—actually hugging, Nightwing had his hands clasped tightly together behind Hood’s back, and there was no indication of any kind of needle or drug or—and Hood was gripping him back, and Nightwing was murmuring something too soft for Bruce to hear, and—was Hood crying?

Nightwing slightly disentangled himself from Hood as Bruce stepped closer, and knocked on Hood’s helmet with a faint smile.  Hood made a harsh, distorted wheeze, before raising his hands and unlatching the helmet and pulling it off.

Bruce—froze.

There was a domino mask underneath, but no lenses, just vivid green eyes, and Bruce had seen that face covered by a domino mask so many times, and there was a single streak of white in dark hair, and a familiar, mulish set of his jaw and—

“I know how he was too violent and angry and rebellious to be a good little soldier.  I know he disobeyed orders and got himself killed—but that’s on him.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” the words spilled from Bruce’s lips, “It was never your fault.  You—you were a brilliant Robin, and you helped so many people and I am so, so very sorry that I was too late to save you.”

Green eyes blinked, and shone in the light.  The grip on Nightwing tightened slightly.

Bruce stepped forward.  And another, jerky steps, and watched suspicion tense up, like—like the twelve-year-old had, braced for a blow—and raised a hand to place it on a cheek, to stroke over a face he never thought he’d get to see again.

“Jay,” Bruce said quietly, “My son.”

The tension left in one giant swoop, and Bruce had his arms full of a sobbing child for the second time this week, and this time he couldn’t hold back his own tears.

“My son,” Bruce repeated hoarsely, and he could take all of Jason’s disdain and anger and bitterness, as long as he was alive again.