Chapter Text
For what it was worth, Jason had been paying attention to the street chatter. Don’t listen to anyone who said he didn’t.
What they said on the street:
1: Robin hadn’t been seen for almost two months
2: Batman hadn’t been seen for a week
3: Nightwing had been seen very occasionally during that week, and hadn’t made a single joke.
4: Some full-facemask wearing Bat he didn’t know was doing most of the Bat-activity.
5: The Joker had been laying low since Christmas. The talk had been that he was doing something for April Fool’s Day, but they were decently into April now, and nada.
It was easy to put these pieces together. Probably the Pretender had fucked up and broken a finger and was being precious about it. Batman probably had an off-world mission, since Bruce Wayne was on ‘holiday.’ Tim Drake hadn’t been seen in school since Robin had been seen in public, though he had a nice and tidy excuse - hacking the school’s systems had found a note from the Drake’s that they were on an archaeological dig and weren’t to be disturbed. So, the kid had just hitched a ride out of town with his parents, probably.
It wasn’t especially interesting .
Actually, it had cooled Jason’s ire towards the snotty brat. He wasn’t playing sidekick, he was meekly by his parents side, licking mummy dirt off shovels or whatever.
Jason was able to focus on how angry he was that Batman had replaced him at all. He’d buried Jason along with everything he’d ever said about being his dad, about valuing him, about caring about him, all of it packed in a casket and smothered with grave dirt. And then he’d gone on with his life, while Jason was unavenged.
Batman had fought the Joker after Jason died, and every single time he had let the clown live.
The clown had killed more people since Jason died. None of them had come back. (Jason had checked.)
He’d amped up his games with Black Mask, his control over Crime Alley, his dominos were falling -
But Mask wasn’t calling in the clown. It was frustrating and Jason was going to have to think of another way to lure out the clown and force the confrontation that he wanted.
It wasn’t helped by how hard it was to get any good help. Lackeys that were out of work with the clown off the street kept turning up to work for him and the number of them that he put down didn’t seem to be giving the rest of them a fucking clue. He might’ve put them to work for him if they hadn’t turned up still wearing clown gear.
In the middle of his difficulties, he heard one more tidbit from the street.
Robin was back.
The small amount of generous mercy that Jason had felt about the cuckoo went up in a puff of smoke.
The bird had been sighted in San Francisco, with his little Titan friends.
See, Jason could have let it go if little Timmy Tuskaninny had quit the hero game. But no. He’d just been having a little break, and now he was off having a sleepover. Wearing the colours that Jason had died in. That he’d practically ripped off of Jason’s corpse in his eagerness to wear the shroud of a dead child.
The Red Hood was going to make his Replacement regret ever hearing about Batman and Robin.
-
“I’m just looking over the cases that I missed, Kon, I’ll go to bed soon. I’m not even hacking to get the full details, okay? It’s just the cribbed notes that Dick okayed me to see.”
The brat didn’t even look around at the sound of Jason’s footsteps. He hadn’t noticed the power being cut, he’d already been sitting in the dark at the dining table, hunched over his laptop.
Jason was replaced by this ? “Situational awareness, heard of it?”
The mechanical menace of his voice through the helmet made the Pretender startle hard. He whipped around and was as pale as a ghost in the laptop’s sickly light. His eyes under the mask were huge.
“Hi birdie.” Jason snarled softly.
There wasn’t any noise from the Pretender, just an uptick in how fast he was breathing. There was a still moment where neither of them moved, and then the cheap copy moved in a blur. Jason tensed, but there was no movement aimed towards him.
Instead, Robin threw himself off the chair, skidded on the floor, gathered his feet under him and booked it. He wasn’t graceful or even that deliberately in how he moved. His feet slipped and he scrabbled, desperate before Jason had even done anything to make him this desperate.
Jason shot him in the leg when he reached the doorway, a sneer peeling back his upper lip.
A choking noise filled the room like a scream was strangled right as it was born in the boy’s throat. He collapsed against the doorframe, clinging to it to stay up.
Jason prowled forward and lifted his leg to kick the Replacement square in the back, knocking him to the ground. “What is the point to you wearing the suit? You’re not worth these colours. This is pathetic. You’re pathetic. I can’t believe Bruce took in something like you.”
Robin didn’t even react to him saying Batman’s name. He just pushed himself up onto all fours, seemingly determined to get back up and keep running.
A heavy boot on the new bullet wound stopped that attempt. But it also unlocked that choked-back noise from Tim’s throat.
It wasn’t screams.
It was laughter.
Jason’s spine was ice. His body felt so far away from him. The laughter kept going.
What hurts more?
“Shut the fuck up.” Someone said. There was movement. There was blood.
“HA HA HA HA”
A?
There was laughter.
Or B?
He wasn’t seeing green.
“ Ha ha HA HA”
Forehand?
Did this little shit know ? Was he imitating the clown to get to him? How was he doing it so accurately?
Or Backhand?
He was fifteen and he was nineteen. He was in a warehouse and he was in Titans Tower. He was on the ground with a bloody crowbar dripping his blood.
And he was standing over a cringing, twisting teenager with his fists dripping blood.
“Shut the FUCK UP !”
“ Ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA,” Tim’s laughter only got louder.
A little louder, lamb chop.
Jason remembered how it felt, the agony, the blood pulsing in his ears as he was mocked and beaten and no one came to the rescue. The helplessness.
Never fucking again.
“STOP IT!” He found himself screaming, the voice modulator crackling with the volume. He was holding the Replacement by the neck and was slamming him back into the wall - and not for the first time if the smear of blood on the wall was any indication.
The laughter stopped, not because Tim had listened, but because he didn’t have enough air to keep going. His mouth was stretched out wide in a grin, wider than Jason would have guessed his mouth could go. He wasn’t grasping at Jason’s hold, his arms were by his sides, twitching slightly. And he hadn’t blinked once.
Jason threw him on the ground, placing his boot on the red throat before more than a single laugh could escape. That loud ‘HA’ of exhalation, when he hit the floor, was still enough to raise goosebumps all over Jason’s skin.
“I don’t know why you think laughing like him is going to save your bacon, Replacement.” Jason growled over the sound of his heartbeat throbbing in his ears.
Robin made a gurgling choking noise that didn’t sound like a good enough answer to lift his boot.
Jason pressed more weight down on that boot until the noise stopped. The pallid teenager started to gain some colour.
“You wanna keep laughing, cuckoo? You think it’s funny that I’m going to break you?”
After the sneered questions, Jason eased his foot back, ready to hear some pitiable begging, some apologies, some basic weeping, whatever pathetic mewling Tim Drake would deliver after his windpipe had been half crushed.
“Yes,” The croak came out amidst coughing. The laughter that followed was too weak to sound that much like the Joker. “Funny, so funny, you’re so funny Daddy…”
Oh god, what the actual fucking hell?
As tactics to repel an attacker, Jason could almost respect this one, because the way that one statement had made him take several steps back was fully automatic. He felt nauseous.
“Wait- wait, hah, it’s funny!” Tim still hadn’t blinked, and Jason’s eyeballs were beginning to get itchy. He sat up suddenly, raised one fist and bashed the bullet wound on his leg. Tears streamed from his eyes as his shoulders started to shake. “So funny! Ha ha ha ha ha !”
“Stop.” Jason snapped and Tim did. His fist was frozen, raised to come down on the injury again, and Jason couldn’t help but notice that most of the fingers looked like he’d fed them to a paper shredder. That hadn’t been him.
Not like the blood drooling from the back of that dark-haired head, or the other arm that hung limp from the shoulder, or the-
The kid looked like a tank hit him, basically. Jason hadn’t lost that much time in the swath of panicked anger that the laughter had kicked off, had he?
That thin, battered body was breathing hard, and that rictus grin hadn’t faltered, aimed right at Jason. Goosebumps were rising all over his skin. “Stop fucking staring, or I’ll cut out your damn eyes!”
“A sightless bird! Hah hahaha !” Tim’s fingers raked red furrows into his cheeks from startlingly close to his eyes. “I’ll be as blind as a bat!!”
Just like every single one of his fucking shithead guys running drugs for him, there was a total inability not to make a piss-poor excuse for a joke and then look to him for some kind of approval.
This wasn’t even good Robin banter.
“Just, fucking cut it out! What’s fucking - what do you have?!”
“A knife!” Tim almost screeched, his laughter nigh hysterical as he wielded a shitty little pocket knife from out of fucking nowhere and Jason had to leap forwards to grab his wrist as Tim made a movement towards his own face.
Jason twisted his hold and grabbed the pocketknife out of the hand as it reflexively loosened the grip.
It had a little bat on it.
“Are we - are we making vine jokes now, Daddy?” Tim almost whimpered, his eyes finally blinking, his face confused. “Only - you said memes weren’t - weren’t funny. But! But that was really funny! Should I cut it out now? The eyes?” There was a desperation in his movements as he struggled with his free hand to reach the knife.
Was this a pit nightmare? It made even less sense than they ever had.
“For fuck’s sake, stop calling me that!” Jason growled, choosing to criticize the most important part of this inane babble being forced into his ears.
“But- but-” Tim looked bewildered. “You said-”
“I didn’t say fucking shit!” Whoever Tim thought the Red Hood was, Jason assumed that unmasking was the only way to break that spell. He shoved Tim to the ground, pocketed the knife, and removed his helmet and the mask underneath.
It wasn’t the dramatic moment he had planned, but he needed to never hear the word-
“Daddy?” Tim had to be fucking kidding him.
“What kind of drugs are you on kid, I don’t look like Jack Drake or like B.” Jason growled, but Tim wasn’t listening.
He was blinking now, cocking his head to the side, smile faltering just a little.
“You… got plastic surgery? To look like…” Tim mumbled, trying to piece together reality with whatever was going on in that empty head. “....The blown up bird?”
“The what ?” Jason was almost too furious to be angry. Or something. The fucking nerve to call him that, like his death was something to make light of.
“Oh! Oh, you’re going to make the Bat cry! You’re so funny Daddy!” Tim chirped, his momentary flirtation with blinking over and the grin widening. “Show him what the bird could have been! Hah! Ha ha hahahahahahaha!! ”
When Jason and Dick had started to grow closer, Dick had taken a particular joy in sharing the Grayson trade with him. He had taught him to fly, the way only a Robin could. He’d taught him to grapple, to flip, and he’d taken him onto the trapeze and taught him how to walk a tightrope.
Right now, Jason stood on a tightrope.
He was held, balanced between two emotional states. He wasn’t going to keep his balance for much longer. After all, he was no Flying Grayson.
One end of the tightrope was anger. Was fury at the thought that Tim was pretending that B would cry for him - that he thought the idea was funny. Like losing Jason was either inherently funny, B grieving him was funny, or rubbing B’s nose in it was funny. His anger rose at each high-pitched laugh. Robin was sitting up slowly, watching him unblinkingly, smiling eagerly.
The other end was nauseated horror. A weight dropped into his stomach as nothing made… sense, not really. But it was beginning to become clear that ‘Daddy’ was… the Clown. Tim thought that Jason was the Clown. And was trying to appease him for some horrifying reason.
Why would Tim think that he was…
Jason was still holding his mask.
The Red Hood.
“No.” He said, staring down at it.
“It’ll be great Daddy! I - I promise! He thought he saved me, but he didn’t, I knew he didn’t, I knew you’d be back!! Hahaha! ” Back from what? Saved from what? “And we’ll rub the bat’s nose in his sick, while he stares at your face and remembers what you did to the blown-up bird! I told you about the case! The Bat loved him, Daddy, ha ha it’s so funny!”
What case?
Jason was shaking, he could see the tremors running through his hands and making the helmet tremble.
“You’re so clever, Daddy! I’ll help you!” The laughter was so close to the Joker’s, just a slightly different pitch, slightly less conviction. It was ringing in Jason’s ears.
“Help me?” He choked out somehow, but Tim didn’t bat an eye.
Tim pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the agony he must be in, and limped closer. “I’m your Junior, Daddy! I’m a good son! I wasn’t anyone’s son! I’m yours now!!”
Jason’s head swam.
Horrified nausea was winning. The anger was there, but it was drowned. The clown had gotten another Robin, but not to kill. Not to kill, no not to kill. Robin was standing there, having survived, still trying to survive.
Jason dropped the helmet, repulsed.
“Daddy?”
He needed this to stop. Cold sweat was dripping down the back of his neck. “Stop. Stop stop stop, just shut up, I need to fucking think. I need to think so stop fucking laughing!” Pressing the palms of his hands against his eyes helped, the pressure and the darkness giving him some measure of peace, even as quiet breaths that sounded like soft laughter kept echoing in his ears.
The Joker got another Robin. Batman let Joker get another Robin. And the Joker did something just as bad to Tim as he did to Jason and the Joker still wasn’t fucking dead. Because dead and fucked up Robins didn’t mean fucking anything.
“...Fucked up fucking Robins.” Jason muttered.
“You’re not…”
Jason had beaten up a Robin that the Joker had beaten up. Robin had thought he was the Joker. Jason wasn’t using the Joker’s old name to thumb his nose at the Joker…
He had become a version of him.
Choking laughter filled his ears again and he gripped his hair in his hands in sudden rage. “I told you to shut the fuck up with the laughter! Shut up! SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
“...Jason?” The soft whisper made him look up.
It was weird. He could hear the fucked up laughter, but Tim wasn’t smiling anymore.
God he was pale. So pale. Was it blood loss or was it like the clown? His hair was black, right? Not gr-
Jason couldn’t do this. He couldn’t fucking do this, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, not with that laughter between each and every thought he had, broken and hysterical. His head hurt, two points of painful pressure on the front of his skull, right at his hairline.
“What do you call two broken Robins on the ground?”
What?
“A bloody good time?” Tim offered weakly. The laughter was dying away as Jason just stared at the swaying teenager in front of him. “...He laughed when he said it. So. I think he thought we were the same, basically.” Tim rubbed his neck sheepishly, then made a weird face when he saw the blood on his hand afterwards.
“I think I’m hallucinating,” Jason muttered, walking away from this shitshow to the table Tim had been sitting at when he’d entered. The laptop was still on and emitted a vaguely green light, he ignored it.
“Well, if you’re hallucinating, and I’m hallucinating… who’s flying the plane?” Was responded, in the cadence of a joke, but without any laughter, mercifully.
“Dick, probably.”
“Yeah.”
Without much noise, Tim folded back up onto the floor, sitting upright with both legs akimbo, stretched out in front of him. Blood was pooling under him, but neither of them cared.
“Are we hallucinating, or are we hallucinations? Maybe he killed me too, and we’re together, in bird hell.” Tim paused. “Which is for birds.”
“Who’s hallucinating us?” Jason asked.
“Dick, probably.” Tim shrugged.
The hallucination theory would have been nice. It uncomplicated things.
But when Jason paid attention, the meat of his body was an impossible fact. There are some things you do with your body that mean you can’t just go wandering away from it without knowing. Tuns out, digging yourself out of your grave is top of that list.
And the sharp smell of iron in the air from the wounds he’d gifted his fellow Robin was reality too.
“Golden Boy’s probably fucking about in space and not thinking about either of us.” He grunted, dragging his hands down his face.
Tim hummed, starting to draw a shape on the floor with his blood. “Do you think Starfire took him to Tamaran? He could eat some tamarinds and pet some tamarins. Then maybe he’ll stop that awful noise.” Jason thought about responding to the vague tone and nonsensical words and instead looked at the computer.
To his surprise, he saw his name, in all capital letters. He jerked the laptop closer, staring at a lime green chatbox.
ORACLE CHAT:
O:ROBIN JUST HOLD ON, HELP IS INCOMING
O:WHEN DID YOU DISABLE THE MICROPHONE?
O:ROBIN, ASSISTANCE IS OTW
O:WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET THAT KNIFE
O:JASON?
O:jason?
O:CLAYFACE OR MAGICAL IMPERSONATOR IS PROBABLE
O:ROBIN, FOCUS UP
O:ROBIN THAT CAN’T BE HIM
O:ROBIN, GET AWAY FROM HIM
O:HOOD. HOOD LOOK AT THE COMPUTER.
O:LOOK AT THIS MESSAGE RIGHT NOW
O:
JASON
“Oh, I’ve got to fucking jet. B’s incoming, says the green chat. Who the fuck is O, Robin?”
“Not Robin. Not Robin, not me.” Tim said instantly, smearing the bloody design he was working on. “B’s busy. O’s O. She’s just like us except no feathers. Flightless bird, y’know?”
O: JASON YOU HAVE TO STOP THAT WOUND FROM BLEEDING
O:IF YOU’RE JASON.
O:YOU CAN’T BE JASON
“Fuck you, I can be whoever I want to be.” Jason replied out loud and then felt dumb. Before he could finish typing ‘fuck off’ into the chat box, there was another response.
O:JASON WAS A GOOD KID.
O:YOU’RE ABUSING A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD WHO WAS TORTURED BY THE JOKER FOR MONTHS.
O:AND PRETENDING TO BE HIS DEAD BROTHER.
Jason dropped the laptop onto the table. “I’m not wasting time arguing with a chatbot. It’s probably just one of your little friends that didn’t want to deal with your fucked up ass this weekend after the bats ditched you.”
There were probably more messages, but Jason just closed the laptop. He shoved himself away from the table. Part of him badly wanted to curl up and have another panic attack, but if he caught sight of a single pointy bat ear, he didn’t know what was going to happen. Especially not when Tim had been left here with not a single responsible adult.
Well, Jason wasn’t responsible, but he wasn’t leaving the crazy Robin here to doodle with his blood. He could doodle in his blood at Jason’s safehouse.
“You done? We’re going.” Tim hummed, looked at what he wrote and then nodded and got to his feet slowly. “Not going to fight me on the kidnapping?”
“Birds of a feather, right? Maybe you’re Jason and He just killed me and now I’m all done. Or you’re not, and then I’ll see Jason after you kill me. Or maybe I’m hallucinating and why not?”
“...Sure. Let’s get out of here before B shows up.”
Tim ended up being hoisted over Jason’s shoulder, blood dripping onto the ground as they walked away from the bloody message that he'd written on the floor.
HE’S NOT DEAD