Chapter Text
Jason and Tim never really got along. It wasn't anything bad—certainly nothing like what Jason had first planned for when he first came back to Gotham—it was just never anything more than what he would describe as coworkers.
If you asked Jason he would say it started from the fact that Tim stole his spot and ended with the fact that the little shit ruined his grand plans of revenge when he was tottering around alone as Robin hopped up on Pollen. Red Hood was hellbent on revenge but leaving Robin alone in the alleys of Gotham on Cuddle Pollen wasn't ever an option. Only, when Red Hood, with holsters full of guns and name freshly baptized on a duffle bag of heads, silently landed in front of Robin… the kid had just sobbed and lunged with open arms to latch onto him. Jason had threatened the kid—put a gun to his head that stayed stubbornly pressed in the armor, flashed a dagger that promised to slice off fingers—and even outright threw the brat two feet away only to have the kid nearly run straight into a fist trying to get back in Red Hood's embrace.
It had taken Jason, finally sick of trying to keep the Replacement's hands off of him, demanding Robin to call for backup that Tim went white and peeled himself away.
Jason had nearly stabbed the Replacement when he called Jason 'Batman' with a shaky and confused voice but just barely held back when a pit opened up in his stomach that didn't feel green at all.
The years away from Gotham changed Jason; he grew large, almost as large as Batman. No one would say they looked anything alike with the guns strapped to his fucking thighs and bright red helmet on his head.
So, really, Jason would say Replacement was at fault that night he was hopped up on Pollen and some mystery drug that had taken Jason three hours to find an antidote for in the cave he had no plans on breaking into until a little bird decided to confuse him for Batman. And of course, he would never be close with his Replacement.
If you asked Tim, however, he would just say the two of them weren't close because Jason had issues. Tim is working on it. It's a multi-step process.
"Hey, Jason!" Tim calls out, maskless and standing apart from the rest of the family in the cave for the briefing. Tim stands apart a lot, Jason has noticed, ever since Bruce came back from his little time trip. Jason eyes everyone else—Damian by Dick who is lingering around Bruce who sits at the Batcomputer—and decides standing by his bike is the better option until the briefing actually starts.
Tim does not get the hint.
"Looking to be a big night," Tim says while walking closer and leaning against his own bike that's parked next to Jason's. He doesn't take Jason's grunt as a hint to back off. "We haven't had rumors of a mass Arkham Breakout in a while." Tim goes through his belt to catalogue his things and Jason spies a spare grapple line in one of the pockets before it snaps shut and deft fingers moves on. "Not too sure how long Bruce thinks we'll be able to handle things ourselves if it's as big as word makes it seem."
Jason glances at the back of Bruce's back, and sighs. The modulator breaks it apart in a crackle. "He probably thought of that." It grates on him to admit it, even with the old fights past them, to say that Batman has a plan for everything.
Humming, Tim looks up at the bats blinking back from the top of the cave. "Sure," he agrees neutrally enough that Jason doesn't bristle. Tim's been good at that, responding in ways where Jason doesn't feel the need to lash out. It's refreshing. It makes Jason feel like he doesn't have to mince his words as much. Doesn't have to hold who he is deep inside himself just to find a corner of space where these people are.
"I'm sure you have your own," Jason says neutrally back.
Tim smiles, a small and quick thing that he smothers in his hand. "I might." A flash of something that feels too much like pride goes through Jason. It's too quick to know if it's from the fact that Jason got it right or from the fact that Tim had let out a huff of laughter so small Jason suspects he wouldn't have heard it if not for his helmet's audio receptors. "Don't go telling Bruce," Tim says through the grin behind his fingers, hand tilted just enough for Jason to see.
"Me? Tell Bruce?" Jason laughs. "It's like you don't even know me, Replacement."
The near-dramatic gasp Tim gives while dropping his hand down to chest is enough to drag another laugh out, even if the words aren't. "The great and mysterious Jason Todd being known? That can't possibly happen."
"You're such a little shit," Jason says while reaching over to punch the little shit in question when someone clears their throat in a way that rings across the cave. His fist hangs awkwardly in the space between them, never meeting the mark. Tim's hand drops from his chest as the both of them awkwardly move to stand straight and face the rest of the Bats who are watching them from their perches near the excessively large computer.
Bruce doesn't say anything but the way he just looks at them makes Jason feel all of fourteen again. Like he got caught staying up too late trying to sneak into the cave to practice moves Dick had taught him. He hates it. He hates that Bruce just has to look at him to make him feel like this again.
"I think we're ready to start if you are," Dick says with a smile and a laugh that Jason wants to punch away.
"Go ahead. I'm ready," he replies while leaning more into his bike and crossing his arms. Jason spots Tim doing the same in his peripheral.
"You two imbeciles are made for each other," Damian spits out while turning to Bruce. While he doesn't react, Jason spins that around in his head for a second. Damian's been making comments like that for a while now and Jason doesn't know how to take it. He always just assumes it's another one of his curses, especially since Dick always lands a hand on the kid's shoulder and squeezes. Like now.
Tim sighs next to him again, too soft to carry in the cave but enough for Jason to hear. "Brat."
"Exactly," he whispers back, voice carefully leveled so that Damian won't hear and retaliate.
The fact that Jason and Tim stand so far back means that Bruce is forced to use the large upper right corner to blow up the map of Gotham and mirror whatever he's showing Dick and Damian just so the two of them can see. If it aggravates the man he doesn't show it. Jason just watches as Bruce talks about amended patrol routes and check-in points. Contingencies on contingencies.
At some points Dick and Tim pipe up to throw in suggestions that Bruce either hums at and considers, or logics away with his bullheadedness. Jason stays quiet until Bruce says Damian would patrol Crime Alley if Ivy was loose so that Jason can play backup.
"Fuck no."
Bruce doesn't tense for the ensuing fight, probably because the asshole saw it coming, but Dick does. "Hood —" Dick starts, but Jason doesn't let him finish.
"No. He's not going into Crime Alley alone and he's damn well not doing it if Ivy is loose."
"I'm perfectly capable of —"
"It's not about fucking capability!" Jason yells out, frustration bubbling over. "It's Crime Alley. Do you all think that place gets the name because it's fun? You put a kid in there with people high on pollen, or worse, put the kid in there while high on pollen and it's asking for trouble you can't take back."
"You're overreacting, as always, Hood," Damian simpers from his place between Dick and Bruce. Jason is suddenly glad he's by his bike so that he can't reach over to strangle anyone.
Bruce opens his mouth to say something but Tim is faster. "He's not wrong." Damian scoffs and mutters something too low for the two of them to hear but has Dick squeezing his shoulder again in a silent warning. "It's always better to be paired up when Ivy is loose anyway."
"There's not enough people to cover ground if Poison Ivy is loose as part of a greater scheme," Bruce says while highlighting parts of the map. "Poison Ivy historically has a low presence in Park Row."
"A low presence is not the same as no presence as all, Bruce," Jason grits out through clenched teeth. His arms are crossed so tight across his chest to avoid punching something in frustration that they're hurting him. "You really want to risk his safety on luck? I think we all know how that works out, historically."
Dick grips Damian tighter and shifts in front, as if Jason is the one he has to protect the kid from. What the hell did he ever do to this family to warrant that? He hadn't even executed his damn revenge plan on account of the Replacement ruining everything. Damian had done worse on his introduction to the bats.
Whatever.
Never say Jason lingers where he isn't wanted.
"Are we done here?" he snaps out. Desperate, at this point, to leave and run the roofs to get some of his frustration out. Maybe find some muggers to hit while they wait for the big thing to go down. He does make sure to clarify, "Robin isn't coming into my territory alone. That's final."
"Seems like we're done," Tim says, already swinging his leg over his bike and Jason moves to do the same. "We'll see you out there," Tim says while pressing a domino over his eyes and Jason drowns out any complaints with an obnoxiously loud rev that makes the bats squeak and just add to the noise.
Jason doesn't bother to say goodbye and just drives off. If plans change he has enough trust in the Bats to convey it through Oracle. He also trusts them to take him seriously enough to not bring the kid into the Alley alone if Ivy is running rampant once he puts his foot down. It just pisses him off that he has to do it at all. Fucking detectives, every single one of them, and it seems like they choose to be ignorant to the most obvious things.
Thoroughly pissed, Jason speeds up and takes a corner sharp enough to leave his stomach chasing after him.
He spies Red Robin's bike following close behind in his mirrors and eases up on the gas when he gets to the point where he'd normally veer off into his own territory and waves at Red Robin. It's the least he can do for the guy siding with Jason. Red Robin waves back before riding off towards New Town that borders Crime Alley. Both areas are big enough on their own, even without the added dozens of blocks they've all been given, that Jason doesn't expect to see the other vigilante until they're debriefing at the end of everything tonight.
Jason turns off to his own territory with one last look at Red Robin's brake lights fading away.
Nothing happens.
That's not entirely true.
There are four muggings, one pimp that needs to remember where to keep his hands if he wants to keep them, and a few hungry street kids that are brave enough to call for him. Other than that, though, nothing happens. It's been hours and nothing like what the Bats heard of is going on. A good thing, possibly; a bad thing, potentially. Anyone who knew how to get false rumors that sounds real into the ears of the Bats could always be a future risk. Anyone who knew how to make it seem real was an even greater risk.
So nothing happens with Arkham and it leaves Jason on edge when he rides back into the cave to debrief.
It's quickly made clear that everyone else is just as on edge as he is when Nightwing is juggling smoke pellets while balancing on a railing to amuse Robin and Red Robin is typing away at his wrist computer on his suit with a furrow in his brow. Batman is, of course, as stoic as ever and typing away at a report. Jason walks up to Red Robin and slumps into the seat next to them.
"Looks like it was a quiet night," he says while slumping down and knocking his helmet against the table. Tim just hums, occupied by whatever he's doing, and Jason slouches further in his seat. "Thought we were looking at a busy one," Jason mutters, half because his nerves had been on a wire for hours from the damn rumor and half because he really was looking forward to punching some faces.
"So did I."
"Problem?"
"Same as you," Tim says, and when Jason rolls his head over to glance at the man he sees Tim already looking at him with sharp eyes. "Who's spreading rumors about an Arkham breakout to the Bats and why?"
Jason grunts and sits up straight, rolling his shoulders out. He can't wait to get to his safe house and get this damn helmet off.
Batman continues to type away and Jason can see Nightwing move on to doing a one-handed handstand while tossing the smoke pellets into the air to catch. This debrief is going nowhere if no one even starts it.
"Nothing happened out there," Jason calls out. Bruce stops typing and swivels in the chair to face Jason and Tim. Dick doesn't stop his little circus tricks for Damian who never really has any interest in what Jason has to say anyway. "If it was just rumors then nothing else seemed to go down tonight."
Bruce doesn't say anything, just swivels again to look at Nightwing who flips upright to agree with him. Tim mindlessly rattles off his own, more detailed, patrol report that amounts to nothing.
"Quiet night," Jason repeats for everyone to hear while letting the weight of the helmet drag his head back. "Sounds dangerous."
Damian scoffs but even he doesn't dispute it.
"Everything we do is dangerous, Little Wing," Dick says while dancing closer. Jason edges away on his seat and Dick stays just close enough to irritate without actually touching. "What's a little nightlife without some excitement?"
He's a second away from a death joke—a flying bird and a grounded one, Dickie—when Tim butts in.
"Have we considered the fact that it's not Arkham we should be looking at?" Tim displays a list of Blackgate inmates onto the big Batcomputer. "Maybe someone used the distraction to slip out? We would never look at Blackgate if rumors of Arkham's revolving doors are right there."
Bruce turns to type away, pulling up Blackgate records, and grunts at something. Guard accounts of prisoner escapes fly across the screen, all over the last three days. At least a dozen.
"This is why you're the smart one," Dick says, moving around Jason to sling an arm around Tim. Tim allows it for a few seconds before shrugging it off. Dick looks more happy that he was allowed to do it at all rather than upset he wasn't allowed to do it for longer. Jason would say something to that only a couple names catches his eye on the screen.
"Those are Black Mask's men."
Bruce eyes Jason before running a quick program and verifying that more than half of the people that escaped are, indeed, people that have a history with Black Mask. He pulls up something else that shows that Black Mask is still in Arkham, for now, but it doesn't mean much when the place really does seem to have a revolving door some days.
"Good catch, Little Wing," Dick says from where he hovers in the space between Jason and Tim.
Jason turns his head to watch Dick out of the corner of his eye to make sure he's not about to get jumped, braces for it even, until he realizes it isn't happening. "Whatever," he grunts out.
Dick just smiles gently and steps closer to Tim before seeming to reconsider and dancing over to Damian's side again with tense shoulders. Damian eyes them all with disgust, not unusual, and Dick takes a breath that even Jason can see from his distance that loosens his shoulders. Damian scoffs at whatever bothers him this time and turns with crossed arms to face Bruce. "How will we defeat Black Mask if he's been so incompetent he failed to escape his prison?"
"He's not incompetent," Jason says while giving up on sitting upright entirely and crossing his arms on the table to slouch forward and brace his chin on them. It tugs at his neck with the way the helmet makes it awkward, but the nerves from the night is leaving him now that the answer is clear and it's leaving him tired. "I know he seems like it, with everything I do to him and shit, but he's not incompetent. You don't get a foot up the ladder in Crime Alley by being anything but competent in one way or another. The people simply don't let you."
Jason has more than once seen the residents themselves snarl and take down would-be muggers and wannabe crime lords who thought they could walk into the most dilapidated part of the city and step on everyone's neck. No one realized people who had nothing to lose weren't afraid of anything unless you made sure they knew they had to be right from the start. Even after that, it takes a special kind of competent to make sure people like Crime Alley residents stay under you.
"Of course you would say that," Damian sneers out.
Jason just stares silently and wonders what the kid would think if he was allowed in Crime Alley for more than a couple hours a night every few days. Damian bristles at the lack of reaction and Jason wishes he didn't understand that anger.
"Come on Little D, lets leave Crime Alley business to the expert," Dick says with a pat on the kid's back, directing them back towards Bruce. "You asked the right question anyway. How do we stop him if he's still in Arkham?"
"He can't be allowed to escape," Bruce interjects absolutely uselessly.
Jason would groan if he had the energy to spare. As it is he just rolls his head down to spare his neck the ache and pillows his helmeted head properly in his arms. Useless. Bruce is useless and Jason is tired. What else is new?
"Yeah, obviously," Tim says completely seriously, and Jason has to commend his self-control considering Jason is a thousand percent sure Tim is just as exasperated with Bruce's response as he is. "The rumor might have been wrong about when, but this might be proof that it wasn't wrong about the breakout in general."
"It's not his style," Jason says into his arms, fully confident that his helmet's modulators will carry his voice anyway. "Black Mask will start a gang war any day, but I can't see him setting a half-dozen rogues loose. The point is that he wants to come out on top, and he's smart enough to know that there's no guarantee he's winning something like that. Some random fucking drug lords?" Jason blindly throws a hand up and accidentally hits Tim, not realizing he had ended up sitting so close. "Easy. Give us a dozen and watch them drop like flies. A half-dozen rogues?" Jason see-saws his hand carefully, mindful of Tim. "It's really hit or miss, depending on who feels like teaming up that day, and Black Mask has survived long enough to know that too."
No one talks.
Jason sighs loud enough for the helmet's speakers to crackle with it. "I'm not fucking lying."
"No one said that." It's only the way Tim says it, in that Tim way he's figured out that doesn't make Jason bristle, that makes Jason grumble a bit more and leave it be.
"So… what we have is Black Mask's men escaping but not Black Mask."
Jason shrugs awkwardly, given that he's still refusing to lift his head. "Sounds about right to me, Timmy."
"Sounds like a puzzle to solve to me."
"Right," Jason groans while heaving himself to his feet. He should not be this sore and tired for how slow the night went. "Have fun with that. Make sure to sleep. Whatever." A quick glance already shows Tim bent over his little computer in his armor, typing away ferociously, and Jason swipes at his head. "Hey," Jason says a bit more harshly while gripping Tim's head and shaking it lightly, bending down to make eye contact through the helmet, "I said: make sure to sleep and whatever. At least change out of your stupid suit." He lets go of Tim harshly, pushing him away and nearly sending the man falling off of the chair head-first, only saved by him gripping onto the table.
"Oh fuck off, Jason," Tim snarls with a curl of the lips that betrays his humor. "At least I don't have chronic helmet hair."
Jason would snap back but he's tired and Tim is standing and heading to the lockers so he's not in the mood. He settles for flipping Tim off while making his way to his bike.
"Not staying, Hood?" Dick asks and Jason scoffs.
"Do I ever?"
"No, but you could start!" he sounds hopelessly hopeful and Jason pauses for just one second, pretending to adjust his mirrors to consider it. Then he catches sight of Bruce staring at him blankly and decides fuck that, actually.
He doesn't even bother saying anything, just spins his bike around and books it out of there.
Never say, after all, that Jason lingers where he isn't wanted. Or where he doesn't want to be.
The next two nights are quiet.
The Bats keep an eye on Blackgate and spot a few more of Black Mask's men slipping out but they run to ground before they can get to them. That, if nothing else, proves to everyone else that this is a carefully planned effort. It takes more than a half-assed plan to escape even Oracle's eyes and the most she's gotten were blips. It never panned out, everyone having cleared out without a trace by the time anyone showed up to the location.
It was frustrating and left everyone on a short fuse from nerves which led to this.
"What the hell is your problem, Dickface?" he growls out, modulator turning it into something ferocious, after another too short debrief of nothing where Nightwing had stepped in front of Robin as if in defense. "I haven't done shit to either of the fucking Robins."
Dick looks around slowly, half out of his suit from where Jason had cornered him by the lockers. "What?"
"I haven't touched a hair on Tim or Damian," Jason reiterates, hissing out his words to keep it from echoing back to Bruce who's still sitting at the computer back in the main cave. "What the hell is your problem with acting like I'm going to take a damn shot at the twerp every time I say something?"
Squinting at Jason, Dick slowly stands up straight and lets his suit hang off of his waist. "Are you… talking about me stopping Damian?"
Jason feels his brain restart but has enough sense to question, "When you… what?"
Dick slowly moves his hands in a pantomime of earlier during the debrief with Damian. "When I moved Damian? To stop him?" He moves a half step in an echo of stepping in front of Damian. "Like this?"
"To get him away," Jason corrects, totally confused, "from me."
A laugh bursts out of Dick before he slaps a hand over his mouth with wide eyes and then quickly apologizes. "I didn't mean to laugh. Sorry, really. It's just… you're probably in the top five people I would trust with both, Tim and Damian, in the same room. Top three, even." Jason feels like that's supposed to mean a lot more than he's taking it. "I was stopping Damian from lashing out at Tim. Not stopping you from attacking Damian."
"What does the twerp have against the brat?"
There's some awkward silence before Dick seems to move to get the rest of his suit off just for something to do. "I forgot you weren't really around for the whole thing. You were off with—well—" Dick clears his throat and Jason leans against a locker, watching Dick strip down to his leggings and tank. "When Damian came and then Bruce went through that whole," Dick waves a hand in a sort of convoluted circle, "time trip thing? Damian didn't have the best relationship with Tim."
"What does that mean?"
Dick sighs and closes his locker to lean against it too. Jason spies a bruise on his shoulder that shifts with the movement but Dick doesn't wince. "I mean, and there's really no easy way to say this, Damian thought that he had to fight for his place in the family or something? I never really fully understood it." Dick runs a hand through his hair and some of it sticks up. "It was a mess. There was a lot of… fighting. Mostly on Damian's part. And that's putting it nicely."
Jason blinks behind his mask. This is the first he's really heard of this. He knew there was some animosity between Damian and Tim but thought it was more like what had been between him and Dick back in the day. This was not within the realm of what he had imagined.
"Fighting."
"Yeah. Although I suppose fighting implies that Tim fought back most times?" Dick runs another frustrated hand through his hair. "I'm not entirely sure if he did. A lot of this happened where I wasn't around."
Jason doesn't respond. There's not much he really has to say to this that won't condemn Dick who already seems to know how much he fucked up and seems to regret it.
"Anyway," Dick says, sounding as if he's tired enough to sleep for a week all of a sudden, "I wasn't stopping you. I was stopping Damian. They're better. A lot better. But I just… I worry."
"When was the last time something happened?"
Dick blinks at him, opens his mouth, then closes it again. "A while."
Jason sighs and shakes his head while pushing off of the lockers. "Okay. Well… maybe they're not close because you're not giving them a chance. I don't know what went down so maybe ignore me, you're good at that," Jason plows on and ignores Dick's hurt noise, "but maybe you're just hurting the both of them now by not trusting either of them."
"It's more complicated than that."
"So, like I said, ignore me. Either way, kid isn't gonna grow fixing himself if all you do is stand in front of him. Sooner or later you're not gonna be there and that list of people you trust to be in a room with them isn't gonna work."
"I know," Dick says while dropping his head and rolling his shoulders. "I just don't know what to do." He laughs softly in a way that makes Jason frown. It isn't that bright thing that Dick always does even in the softest of ways. This is too self-deprecating. "You of all people should know I'm not a perfect brother."
Jason really would be the expert in that except that he really didn't think that anymore. Dick was a decent brother. Decent in the way that he tried and tried and it still never seemed like enough and just pissed Jason off for the fact that it seemed like it felt like it never would be. Pissed Jason off for, apparently, a great big misunderstanding despite the trying. And maybe even that is what makes Dick far from a perfect brother but Jason knows what Dick looks like when he's not trying and even these futile efforts that creates misunderstandings are better than nothing.
"I do know," Jason says and watches Dick nod in resignation while pushing off of the locker too. "I also think you're not the worst you've ever been." Dick hadn't even been the worst he'd ever been when he hadn't picked up Jason's call during the worst time of Jason's life; he just hadn't been able to. Jason has a lot of hindsight and a lot less anger to realize that.
"Thanks, Little Wing," Dick laughs out entirely sincerely.
"Don't thank me. I'm not calling you the brother of the year."
"Didn't think you were. Still, thank you."
Jason shoves his helmet back on his head. "Like I said: don't. I had a problem with you. Turns out it's a problem you have with the two idiots. That's all I needed to hear, anything else that might have or have not happened is happenstance."
Dick smiles, a hint of that brightness breaking through. "Okay. You staying tonight?"
Jason scoffs and it breaks apart in the modulator into a crackle. "You ever gonna give up on that?"
"Never, Little Wing." Dick says while opening his locker back up for a towel. "Never."
"Well then, you know the answer." Jason turns around and takes his leave. He feels like he has enough pent up energy from this conversation alone to do another lap in the Alley. With how ominously quiet everything has been he just might do it. Walking into the main cave gets him a good view of Batman hunched over the computer in a way that would have Alfred tutting. Bruce straightens and looks over at Jason at the sound of his steps and watches him go to his bike, making the hair on his neck rise. Fuck the Old Man and the way he stares.
He hears the chair roll even if he doesn't hear the man himself get up. "Are you leaving?"
"Not at all," Jason says so sarcastically that he can hear it penetrate the flatness of the helmet's modulator. "I'm just heading to my bike to drag it up to the manor and straight into my old, dead, childhood room where I'll snuggle into my old, dusty, sheets." He swings his leg over the bike in question and looks over just in time to see Bruce clench his fists in his own version of a flinch.
"I," Bruce starts and then seems to think better for once because he closes his mouth before trying again. "There's a room. For you. We have a room for you."
Jason leans back on the seat, bracing himself on the tail of the bike, to stare up while imagining he can see through all the layers of rock into those brightly lit halls. "Yeah, I figured. If anything, Alfred would have made one."
"You've never used it."
"No."
"Why?"
And god… it's moments like this that makes Jason wish he hated Bruce a little less because it'd mean he loved the man a little less. Would mean he could just let it all lie. Turn his bike around, never answer another question, and never wonder where he sits with a man who will never love him the way he wants. Maybe then he'd be able to leave Bruce and his questions behind and stop hurting his dad who doesn't realize he's just playing a part in hurting the both of them too.
"Because, Bruce… you never asked me to." Jason doesn't bother to stay and hear any argument or stuttered half-mangled apology at that. Doesn't want to hear the invitation now. He doesn't think he'll ever step foot in that manor again if Bruce asks him to, right now, after Jason's admission. It'll feel too much like pity. To go from 'are you leaving' into 'will you stay' just because Jason asked? No. That's not what he wants.
He kicks his bike around to face the exit and drives as loud as he can.
Something clatters behind him but he doesn't turn around or check his mirrors. He refuses to look.
There's something building inside of him and he needs to get rid of it or he won't even be able to lay down, let alone sleep. Another lap around the Alley is looking more and more appealing.
"Hood!" Red Robin cries out while grappling over. A birdarang shoots out to slice through some vines reaching for his ankles and Jason takes the chance to jump back and away to get onto a fire escape.
He's tired, aching, and haven't slept since the other night with the conversation with Bruce. Jason had gone straight back to the Alley to patrol until the sun came up, having lost time to the buzzing under his skin, and then spent all day going through his files for information on the people who'd escaped from Blackgate. He's regretting not getting any sleep, now, while fighting Poison Ivy who snuck out of Arkham from under their damn noses.
"Oracle!" Batman barks down the comms, the rumble of the Batmobile underlining his voice. "Do you have eyes on Black Mask?"
"I'm trying, Batman," Oracle bites out, the stress clear in her voice, "we're a bit busy, in case you didn't notice."
"Focus on Black Mask," Jason grits out even as he uses a giant machete to cut down more vines that crawl towards him. "We've got Ivy handled."
"Not his style, Hood?" Robin mocks from the cave. He's been benched for the night with a sudden fever and Jason is stupidly glad, considering Ivy is rampant. "Whatever happened to knowing your rivals? I should have expected you would be incompetent in even this."
"Leave it, Robin," Red Robin says forcefully while throwing something acidic that eats away at the plants. "Focus on assisting Oracle."
Jason is tired. He's so fucking tired in every single way and to hear the comms go silent is a minor miracle and a blessing. He could kiss Tim for it. Jason unclips a vial from his belt, tosses it into a dense wrapping of vines and shoots into it, starting a fire that burns rapidly through the plants. In the heart of what's become a jungle, Jason can hear Ivy scream in frustration.
"Focus on Hunts," Jason manages to say while rolling out of the way of a flaming vine that gets one last attack in before crumpling down to ash. "He's notoriously shit at evading your cameras and if Black Mask is out he's not going to miss a chance to go back." Robin mutters out something that has Jason bristling but he's too busy backing up Red Robin to argue back about his intel. "How much shit do you think I'd get if I were selectively muting members?" he mutters to Red who laughs while they run ahead into the jungle to chase Ivy.
"Well, aside from the trouble you might run into on the field? I can't imagine it'd fly well with anyone else."
Jason runs ahead as the vines grow thicker, a sign that they're nearing Ivy, to use his machete to clear the way for the both of them. "Anyone else? You'd take my side, Red?" Sparing a second to dramatically clutch a hand to his chest he pretends to swoon just a bit before getting back to hacking at the growth. "Careful, Red, or I might lay one on you."
"A kiss?" he hears Red laugh out from behind him, strained with the effort of their trek.
"No. A fist. Just for old time's sake."
"Don't let anyone call you a romantic, Hood."
Jason laughs. "I think you mean, 'don't let anyone not call you a romantic'."
Red Robin hums before ducking below Jason's swinging arm to block an attacking vine and cut it, literally, off. "No, I think I said what I meant. Thanks."
"Ass." He can't help but say while shoving Red Robin aside to toss one of his own acid containers against the thick wall ahead of them he can't quite cut through. They stand there for a bit, fighting back the vines that are getting more vicious, while the acid does its work. Red Robin doesn't really get a chance to say anything back with the way they get swarmed with plants, flowers, and the way Jason becomes totally sure that Ivy is behind that wall of vines.
There's a giant pressure behind him before the vines seem to suddenly swallow him whole. He only barely has time to gather his arms to himself before he's fully dragged in, Red Robin doing the same in the corner of his eye before he loses sight, and the spikes on the vines cut into the vulnerable spots that isn't covered. His wrists below his gloves but before the armored sleeves, his ankles, the place on his thigh where an earlier attack had ripped through his pants and left him sluggishly bleeding. Something sharp brushes his neck and he ducks his head down as much as he can to guard it with the hard edge of his helmet and his shoulders.
The other side of the vines spits him out on his ass and he doesn't hesitate to roll onto his feet. Red Robin gets shoved out a second after him and Jason spies holes in the cape, tears and holes that seem more melted through than not. The acid. Ivy stands across the circle with a furious look but Jason spares a quick glance at his jacket sleeve to notice some damage and groans.
"I liked this jacket, Ivy. What the hell?"
Snarling she curls her fingers into claws and vines covered in flowers bursts out of the concrete ground, cracking it. "I like my plants, Red Hood!"
"Just a bit of pruning. You know what they say about overcrowding and new growth," Jason snarks.
Red Robin splits off to circle around the other way, ducking past vines that burst out pollen into his face. The rebreather stays firmly on Red Robin and Jason ignores them with his helmet's filters working overtime while going through his own side.
"Don't talk to me about my plants, you brute!" Ivy screeches, voice pitched high in her anger and indignation. Jason can't help but huff as he takes out his gun to shoot at her. Why does everyone call him a brute? Just cause he was large and had guns? That's got to be some form of stereotyping or something. Maybe some form of type-casting? He'd have to look into when he had some free time. Depending on what it was he might be able to use it as a guilt trip on some people.
"Listen, Ivy," Red says, way too calmly from where he's dodging spike-filled vines, "just because Harley hasn't been able to get in contact with you for a while doesn't mean you can go on a rampage." Ivy falters for a second, face crumbling and Jason takes the moment to throw a sleep gas. It fills the space, leaving nowhere for Ivy to hide, forced to cough into the crook of her elbow.
She goes down to one knee, shooting a hand out and leaving sluggish roots to try and knock Red Robin's mask off. "She needs me," she whispers and Jason feels bad enough to inch forward and squat down to look at her.
"She'll be fine. You're here and she knows to come back to you. You know she'll do whatever it takes to get back. She's Harley Quinn."
Jason has rapport with Ivy, with a lot of the rogues. Partly because of his days as Robin—a lot of the more decent ones like Poison Ivy went easier on Robin considering he's just a kid and took care to remember that—and partly because he's dipped his hands into the wrong side of the law. You don't cut off heads to shove into a duffle bag and take Crime Alley in a storm without getting attention from all kinds of life. It was just easy, after a while, to get into a easy banter with someone as normally as chill as Ivy. He thinks it's only this fact that lets Ivy go soft and take purposefully deep breaths.
"I need her back," she says as she sinks to her hands and knees and Jason watches her eyes grow heavy with each blink.
People don't see this side of the rogues, semi-retired or not, often. The human side. The one that still longs for love and comfort. It's too easy to dismiss them as a lost cause and make them out to be monsters; the ones like Killer Croc and Poison Ivy make it harder to remember with their metagenes and powers. It's the same effect that lets people forget that Robin is just a kid under that mask and snark.
"She'll be back," Jason reassures right before Ivy finally falls, asleep from the gas. He goes over and pokes her a bit but the way the plants are drooping, looking more like plants rustling in the air than plants moving with intent, tells him more about how she's actually knocked out than anything else. "Poison Ivy has been neutralized," Jason says into the comms while watching Red Robin tie her up.
"Good job, boys. Sending along information to route you to possible Black Mask sightings."
There's some background chatter and Jason can just barely make out Dick saying his point of entry was blocked and was going around to the other side. It gets lost when the little dome of vines start to collapse in on itself and Jason snaps his head up at a sudden vine giving out lifelessly.
"Red!" he shouts, lunging for the man, half an eye on the walls that are slowly giving up. Red Robin looks up with a startle, notices what the problem is, and then moves to grab Poison Ivy because he's a self-sacrificing asshole who knows that Harley would kill them all if she knew they even thought of leaving her girlfriend in this. Ivy is solidly out cold, which might be the problem here, and when Red Robin hauls her up into a carry she looks like dead weight. "We need to leave. Now."
Jason rips Tim's cape off of him with a bit of a struggle with Ivy in the way and then drapes it over the woman. He's just barely managed to get the edges of it to cover her face when he has to jump away to dodge a falling vine that's already shriveling up on the way down and letting down a final plume of pollen. Jumping over it, he throws one of his last acid canisters at the fragile wall of vines and barely waits for it to work before throwing his leather jacket over the exposed head of Tim and shoving him through.
"Red Robin! Hood! Report!"Oracle shouts, clearly hearing his frantic tone.
"Bit busy trying not to get crushed by plants. Talk later," Jason grits out through his pain as he runs through the vines himself and feels the burning tingle of acid where the spikes had slashed him earlier. Where the vines had created cracks in his armor and ripped his pants. By the time he forces himself out the other side, Red Robin is waiting, jacket still over his head, and looking one step away from reaching in to dig Jason out one-handed. "Let's go!"
There's a burning in the cut in his leg but he can't stop to rinse it out just yet. They still have at least two blocks of dying plant life to evade with dead weight on Red's shoulders. Then another half a dozen blocks after that to their rides.
Jason just gets his machete out again and tries to cut the plants at the base as they run in a way where they'd fall out instead of in. It works for the most part if he's fast enough and they're not too big but they have to stop more than once when something falls and gets in their way. Have to reroute too when too many dead vines pile up in the street in a way that Tim and Jason would never be able to get over it with the weight of Ivy between them.
Eventually, after what feels like too long, they make it to their bikes and far enough away from the dying vines to safely leave Poison Ivy tied up on the ground while they catch their breath.
"O, route the authorities to us to collect Ivy." Red Robin says even as he pulls out some sterile flushes from a bag on the side of his bike to wash out the acid on his skin.
"Routing. ETA five minutes."
"What's the situation with Black Mask looking like?" Jason asks, hissing as he splashes some of his own sterile water into the cut on his thigh.
"Nightwing and Batman have hit duds. You two are closest to the next location and it's looking the most promising."
Jason finishes flushing out the cut on his neck and tosses the sterile container away. Ivy doesn't seem to be waking up and and nudging her with a foot doesn't do any good. "You go first," he says to Red Robin. "I'll make sure she gets picked up and follow behind you." Robin wasn't running around Crime Alley doused in Cuddle Pollen, and Jason had enough morals in him to not leave Ivy dead to the world while the streets were covered in it too.
Women and children.
His head was clear enough to know that applied to everyone in his territory. No matter the colors they wore.
Even without that, it's just good protocol to make sure the rogues are actually received by the authorities. It'd just be embarrassing if they slipped away before they even get in the transport. Doesn't make for good street cred if you can't even make sure they get in police hands.
"Who knows," Red Robin says in a tone of voice that immediately catches his asshole-meter, "maybe I'll be done before you even show up."
Unfortunately for little Timbit, that's not the taunt he thinks it is. Jason slumps against his bike and groans loud enough to crackle through his helmet. "One can only hope, Red. One can only hope."
"Hey now," Red Robin says while kicking his bike upright and driving off, voice disappearing for a moment before reappearing into the comms, "you'll make old Mask feel sad at that rate. He's a sensitive soul." Jason can just barely make out the purr of the bike under the the voice, the comms working well to auto muffle any outside sound.
"Right, I'd hate to make the guy feel sad," he intones, flat and grit out for the fact that he's biting back a laugh. "He's just such a lovely guy."
"Exactly."
"Shut up," he says, finally giving in to the chuckle that's been building in his chest.
Red Robin has a split second of getting his voice on the comms before Batman is talking over him; quiet but forceful. "No chatter on comms."
"Come on, B," Nightwing pants out—and he must be running the roofs in a pace more brutal than he should be taking them if he's panting already—"ease up a bit." Nightwing, infuriatingly, still manages to sound like he's playfully ribbing Bruce without a care in the world. As if nothing has changed at all in their lives. Nothing. Not a death and a rebirth. Not a missing father and a sudden brother and a returning man to his own heavy cowl. Not even, in this moment, like he's gasping for breath while running too hard in the middle of patrol.
Will Jason Todd ever stop finding things about Dick Grayson to look up to at every moment?
His glove creaks when his fist clenches so tight he swears he can feel the stitches strain.
"Nightwing." Batman calls out. A reprimand in a single word.
Nightwing doesn't listen to the unspoken command or the thousand word lecture buried in a single name. He has more experience than all of them at doing that and it's during times like this that it shows. "Ease up, B. We got Ivy, Robin is at base, and Black Mask is an easy capture. We've got ease to spare."
And they really do, because even as Nightwing says it, the lights of the police flash down the street and speed closer. Not as fast as Jason would like but he can't blame them with the way the street looks right now, the closer they come. Batman grunts into the comms in a way that lets them all know he's giving in but only because he doesn't want to waste time when Jason finally sees the police cars round the corner, waving at them lazily to catch their attention.
"One day we'll get you working on words," Nightwing jokes and Jason barks out a laugh. He even hears Oracle snicker at that.
"Always the optimist," Red Robin mutters, softly enough that one might mistake it to be an accident except that Tim was the one who helped Barbara make and test these comms. Jason can't help but let out a full body laughter at that that startles the officers trying to crawl their way out of their cars and to where Red Hood stands guard over Ivy. A few of them skitters back to the safety of their cars at the harsh sound of it, the sound distorted to a nightmare from his helmet, before Jason waves them over impatiently.
Luckily for Batman, the chatter does die down after that while Jason directs the police to both: take Ivy away properly and to check on the residents of the buildings took took the most damage from Ivy's plants.
He makes sure that Ivy is locked away on the back of a proper transport truck, taking note of the license plate and the officers going with her, before getting on his bike to follow directions to the possible Black Mask hideout.
It's only as he's maybe another handful of minutes out that Red Robin comes back online with a strained, "So, bad news and worse news. Bad news: Black Mask isn't here."
Jason curses down the line and he only barely covers Nightwing's frustrated muttering.
"Worse news: there may be a bomb."
Jason can't find the breath to curse. He speeds up.
"What's the probability on that, Red Robin?" Oracle asks, tone clipped.
"I'd say it's pretty high," Red says in that exact tone of voice that sends alarms ringing up and down Jason's brain.
"Don't fucking tell me you're trying to play nonchalant while staring at a bomb. Tell me this isn't what you're doing."
Red Robin laughs and it's easy mannered enough that it would ease Jason's worries if he hadn't, somewhere and somehow, gotten to know Tim Drake enough to know that that's somehow more worrying than anything. The asphalt kisses his knee guard when he takes a turn and it's somehow less grating than Red Robin's response. "That's not how you play nonchalant."
"That's not a fucking answer. Try again."
"Tetchy."
Jason takes another corner and goes just slowly enough that he thinks he sees a possible mugging. Cursing, he revs his engine just a bit louder as he ride an edge closer to the alley than he strictly needs to, scaring the both of them off. "I find that bombs do that to me, now. Where is the bomb in relation to your fucking body, Red?"
Red Robin doesn't answer for a bit of time before saying just on the verge of too quiet, "Two feet in front of me."
"ETA on disarming it?" Batman growls out, because bombs make the old man sensitive now too.
"Disarming implies I have arms to disarm it." Jason nearly careens into a building in his haste to stop his bike and park all in one motion. The warehouse—and why was it always warehouses, why couldn't people be more goddamn creative—is a block away and Red Robin continues to talk even as Jason grapples to the roof and leans to look through the skylight. "I'm a bit tied up, right now." He says it so casually that it almost stops Jason's stomach from falling from the ceiling to the floor.
Only almost.
Off to the side, stuck to a pillar, is Red Robin with chains wrapped around him and the pillar. The bomb is, as stated, about two feet in front of him situated nice and proper on a table for easy viewing.
Well shit.
What the fuck happened to ease to spare?