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“Hey, Tim .”
The newest Robin spun around. Jason straightened as Tim Drake sized him up, snapping out his bo staff.
Too late to back down now.
Jason leaned forwards ever so slightly, reveling in how Tim seemed to unconsciously take a step backwards in response. “I was here first .”
“You’re the Red Hood,” Tim replied back, voice steady. Judgemental. “You’ve been cleaning up the streets the easy way.”
“Easy?” Jason scoffed. “What do you know about easy, Tim?”
Tim took another step back at Jason’s casual identity drop. Jason took a step forward. He was at the table now. He made a big show of unlatching his helmet, sliding it off and setting it down. Casual. Like he was completely comfortable where he was. He didn’t know if Tim was scanning his face, if the new kid recognized him. He didn’t care. “Heard you were the one who figured it out.” He said, keeping one hand on the helmet. “Heard you spent weeks tracking down The Dark Knight.” He put as much vitriol in the title as he could. “Heard you solved the mystery no one else could! You discovered who was behind that mask.”
He turned towards Tim again, seeing him frozen and snapping out “Billionaire Bruce Wayne ,” with disgust as he lurched forwards. He sent a couple smoke bombs out in front of him for a distraction, and was shocked when Tim’s staff blocked his first two punches anyway.
Tim seemed to snap out of his stupor, and jumped, flipping out of the smoke screen for easier visibility, keeping his bo up in a defensive position. Jason rolled his eyes, stalking towards him again. He held up a hand, pointing at Tim like you would a misbehaving dog. “You were so pleased with yourself.” He taunted, “that you forgot who you were really dealing with.” He spread his arms, leaving himself open. Tim didn’t attack. “I know Bruce Wayne. Let me tell you Tim, if someone was trying to figure out who Batman was, if someone was trailing him for weeks? He’d know about it.”
The kid scoffed. Jason’s eyes narrowed. Finally. A reaction. Jason closed the distance between them, throwing a punch. “You can’t be that good.”
Tim didn’t move, but somehow Jason missed. By centimeters, he guessed. He stumbled for a moment, shocked, and before he could rebalance, he felt the bo staff crack against his face. He nearly fell, having to catch himself on his hands and stumble backwards. He raised a hand to his face on instinct, drawing it back to see crimson blood.
He looked up. This time, Tim was advancing on him, the lenses of his mask narrowed. He walked slowly like a predator.
Tim leaned forward, mirroring how Jason had earlier, but Tim’s vicious smile was visible, completed by the blood dripping from his bo staff. “I am that good.” He chuckled, amused, as if Jason had tripped an inside joke.
Jason suddenly felt distinctly like he had made a mistake.
Too late to back out now.
“Yeah?” Jason stood, wiping at the new cut on his cheek, trying to replicate his previous self-important tone despite the chill that had settled over him. “We’ll see.”
A majority of the rest of the fight was a blur, at least for Jason. A flurry of kicks, punches, and staff strikes aimed at either party. At one point, Jason had taken out one of his knives, slashing at him. It didn’t make any sense. Jason had grown up with the wits and instincts of a Crime Alley Kid, had been trained by Batman, been trained by the League of Assassins, perfected by the All-Caste, so why was he not landing a single hit on Tim Drake ?
The kid hardly even dodged, but every single time Jason swore he was going to get a hit in, his fist or his blade passed through him harmlessly. Every time, Jason would be momentarily startled, and the kid would take the single second of his being off-guard to give him a new bruise. He had heard that the new kid had been trained by Lady Shiva, but that was only for a couple months as far as he was aware. That didn’t explain this .
Tim kicked Jason in the stomach, and he stumbled back again. He looked up, confusion and fury warring in his mind. He was covered in slowly forming bruises, the cut on his cheek still bleeding sluggishly, holding his side. Tim Drake didn’t even look winded.
It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t
fair
.
The fury won. His free hand rose at his side in exasperation. “Listen, kid ,” he spit out the word like an insult, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I will find a way to hurt you. I crawled out of my grave and came back to teach Bats a lesson, and I intend to complete it .” He took his other hand off of his stomach to unholster the gun strapped to his thigh, pointing it straight at Tim’s chest. He didn’t want to shoot him. His plan was never to permanently maim or kill him. But at this rate, he didn’t know if the bullet would even harm him.
But Tim didn’t know that. “One Robin’s already had his wings clipped,” he growled, gesturing to himself. “Maybe it’ll take two deaths before it really sinks in.”
Tim cocked his head. At some point during the fight, he had stopped smiling, but now a smirk was tugging at his mouth again, as if Jason had told him a particularly funny joke but he wasn’t allowed to laugh.
Jason didn’t know what was happening. He was pointing a gun at him. A loaded, safety-off gun . And Tim was trying not to laugh .
Tim took a single step forward.
He left something behind.
Jason’s eyes unwillingly flicked downwards, and the muzzle of his gun wavered.
Blood .
Tim Drake had stepped forwards and left a perfect footprint of blood behind.
But… Jason hadn’t landed a single hit on him.
Jason’s gaze returned to Tim Drake, and he took several steps backwards.
Robin was a corpse.
A large bloodstain stretched across the left of his torso, darkened to a black in the middle. His skin was pale with a grey-blue tint. Crimson red dripped from his head, down his arms, leaving a trail behind him as he stalked forward. The domino mask still covered his eyes, but Jason was absolutely positive they would be ice-cold and lifeless.
His vision wavered. He could smell smoke, hear a soft ticking.
Forehand or backhand?
He took another step back from the dead Robin.
A or B?
He didn’t know when he had fallen, but now Robin was crouching to his level, head tilted, examining Jason like a particularly interesting specimen. “Oh, Jason.” He crooned, voiced laced with pity.
My my, that was fun! Kind of messy, though.
The corpse grinned, all glinting teeth and cruel intentions. “Robin’s already dead.”
Black edged at his vision. The last thing he saw before completely blacking out was the remains of Robin standing over him, looking down impassively, and turning to yell “ Superboy! ” over his shoulder.
-
Several days later, Jason awoke in a safehouse.
He took his nightmare as a warning, and didn’t go to Titans Tower to attack Tim Drake. To attack Robin.
And if there was a still-healing cut across his cheek that matched the one he had gotten in his dream, he just told himself that it was from a patrol that he didn’t remember.
Nevermind that he wore a full helmet.