Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Under Jason’s watch, buskers shouted out at passing office workers and couples. Taxi drives shouted at each other, blaring their horns back and forth in a vulgar brass band. Warm lamplights shone over clusters of pedestrians walking below them, bundled up tight and huddled together. Jim Bennett took a shortcut down a grimy cobblestone alley, craning his head behind him in an obvious amateur attempt at checking for a tail, straight from Hollywood’s newest action blockbuster. Incorrectly concluding nobody was paying him any mind, Jim strayed deeper from the faint glow of the street into the dumpster-lined backstreet.

It had stunned Jason to learn as Robin just how much of the city you could see from a well-selected vantage point. One brownstone or church could allow a vigilante an unobstructed view of an entire city block for hours straight. Passerby never deemed it necessary to simply look up, direct their gaze between the vents and heating units, and search for the far-off gleam of his red helmet. He’d call it sloppy, but then again, the average person had many items on their roster of stuff to worry about before unwelcome crime lord observation, and that was if the notion even occurred to them. Of course, if they did notice him, the concern would move up the ranks pretty quickly, but he digressed.

Extra attention would only serve to impede his scanning the street anyways, so he chalked it up to a neighborly display of trust in the age of constant surveillance and Batmen loitering on rooftops, and glanced away from Bennett long enough to watch a teen hit a curb and fall off his skateboard.

He’d loved watching the Narrows or Diamond District pulse and breathe down below his pixie boots, dangling them over the edge of the nearest precipice with a juvenile wonder, glancing down to check if the homeless lady he'd got a tip from last week — safer on the street than in the shelter — was still on the same corner, or gawk at a group of kids getting yelled at by the deli guy for busting his block’s hydrant open. Sometimes he’d find himself surveying the block below curled up on top of a scowling gargoyle across from the GCPD as he and Bruce waited for Gordon to clock into his office, sometimes on his way back to the manor after Batman dismissed him to return home alone, busy interrogating some unlucky chump or letting Catwoman get away by just a second for the fifth consecutive time that week.

On the latter types of night he’d listen to Bruce and set off northbound to Bristol, but things were different without anyone ahead slowed down by his dawdling and nobody waiting anxiously enough on his return for detours to matter.

It had been nostalgic, homey, a narrow glimpse back into the life he’d been whisked away from. Like a dream, the kind where he’d be tucked away in a backstreet with all his childhood friends, chatting about their families and trading cassettes or magazines bought off the Goodwill's clearance shelf or lifted out of one of the meaner boys' stashes back at the home.

It was also clumsy and alienating, like trying to fit into a sweater he’d outgrown instead of just sucking it up, accepting the fiscal burden of finding new clothes and the loss of something he’d loved. The dreams were ones he’d wake up from only to spend all morning after vaguely disturbed, trying to guess if the version of Numbers’s face he dreamt up was the way he looked now, was even true to how he looked back when they were together in Ma Gunn’s, if Max’s voice sounded right, realizing he couldn’t remember the actual faces or voices his mind had come up with in the dream at all.

Eventually he’d notice Bruce shooting him a pitying look as he asked for more orange juice or doused his French toast with syrup, and he’d smile convincingly enough to make him stop. He’d ask for the news to cover his tracks, read the comic strips and try to decipher why reduced-cost healthcare got the nepo-hire columnist so heated this time, why he was so virulently against kicking a little extra budget to the Otisburg rehab — Jason knew why he would be, because the nonprofit running it was embezzling funds and everyone from Robbinsville to Gotham Heights knew it, but the stuffy old Ivy League legacy never brought that up, only went on about "wasted effort."

Then Jason would spend all afternoon try to purge fake-Numbers from his memory, scrub him out right alongside the guy who’d gone into shock the night before when Croc attacked, when his first aid didn’t take. He’d seen plenty of death by then, spent an extensive amount of time learning the best ways to tend to the ailing and injured, but the amount of bleeding wasn’t something he’d been able to manage. The ambulance had taken him away by the time Bruce returned.

The roof he was on served him well enough, completely functional at blocking him from sight, but he couldn’t help mourning the absence of his city's obligatory gargoyle presence. They were a staple feature of Gotham’s looming and morose visual character, but Keystone seemed much less fond of their architectural choices.

Not that it mattered. Nowadays Jason didn’t spend that much time waiting on rooftops in the first place, and he wouldn’t be hanging around long enough to actually miss his city anyways.

He’d only come in the first place on the trail of the wandering dumbass cowering down the alley, and tonight would be his last night in town. About time too. He got a little touchy when he spent too much time away from the dense, noxious, surely-half-fear-toxin-by-now smog of Upper Gotham.

A gust of cold wind worked its way into his leather jacket with an eerie howl, Bennett bumbled down yet another wrong turn in his hopeless search for the construction zone one block over from him, and Jason let out an irritated groan under his breath. He threw his head back against the parapet, his helmet bouncing off the concrete with a dull thunk, and slouched back against his duffel bag.

Brent Chamberlain, Louis Herold, and Derek Nicholls had sat parked in front of the site in their van with bold blue letters on the side advertising the non-existent Squeaky Clean Laundromat and Dry-Cleaning for forty-five minutes now. Backup muscle for the Falcones had been stationed for an hour one block out from either end of the street, eight men divided inconspicuously between two cars. They waited, poised to raise the alarm on nearby police activity, listening for any updates from their bosses or signals to move in. Erica Carraway pulled up against the alleyway curb in front of them with her shiny BMW, the nicest model from two years back with the roomy trunk, fifteen minutes ago.

The meeting was scheduled for 10:30, that’s to say, thirty minutes ago, and Jason had been on this rooftop for upwards of four hours. Probably five, if the night kept up this way. And good old Jimmy was somehow still making his way over, on his fifth wrong turn of the night, hugging a backpack stuffed to bursting with chemical weaponry flush against his chest like a baby in a sling. It was looking like the night was keeping up that way, Jason thought with an amused sense of disgust.

It seemed all Bennett did of late was make wrong turns. The man was proving himself magnetically attracted to barreling headlong down the wrong path with no regard as to the repercussions. It started small, with loopholes and side hustles. Jason typically didn’t concern himself much with the side jobs his lower-relevancy men picked up, provided they continued to meet his protection terms and steered clear of associating with any other big names or making new enemies of people he’d really rather be on professional terms with. He understood the value of a quick buck when times were tight, nonconformist and self-starting attitudes tended to win him over, and he’d like to think himself a fairly patient boss.

So Jason had let Bennett get away with trivial little pushes against his terms. Looking back, he wasn’t completely sure why. Maybe it was amusement, curiosity at how far the guy would venture before losing his nerve, or maybe he just hadn’t cared enough. He’d thought there couldn’t be too much harm done, provided Bennett stayed small-scale and none of his coworkers were around to form any clever takeaways.

Jason’s mistake.

It went on, he’d let it go on, night after night, until he caught word of a nursing student vanishing a few weeks before her midterms, spiraling under the increased workload, and asking around about which stimulants were the best concentration aids in the days leading up to her disappearance. Last seen a block out from the worn-down bus stop where Bennett met up with prospective customers and sold during bad weather.

Within the hour, he’d caught Bennett’s plate on freeway traffic cams and trailed in his wake until he found a dingy motel room within fifty miles of the city. One with the student and three others packed in the single, dosed heavily with some depressant Bennett unambiguously wasn't authorized to sell, but Jason couldn't tell if any of his men were scheduled to deal in from a brief inventory of symptoms.

Bennett would be just as dead at the end of the day, and it was an betrayal of humanity itself regardless that any ill-intentioned dickhead could get their hands on the variety of product his men didn't deal, the ones blacklisted from the sect of Gotham's drug trade under Jason's thumb, in the first place. Still, the possibility that Bennett's sick endeavor was supplied from somewhere in the benzodiazepine department of Jason's chain of command, the plain ambiguity of whether it was wares under his supervision that had greased Bennett's wheels, earned revulsion to the point of nausea. And a few rounds of blood testing, once the trail had been followed to its end.

With a little more investigation, the navigation printout left behind led him to a semi with three dozen other girls from across the country packed inside its trailer, waiting at a truck stop half a day out. He’d filled the man in the drivers seat and his two buddies standing guard with magazine after magazine before directing the frightened abductees to the nearest FBI field office.

Then he'd driven the traumatized sophomore to the nearest train station, bought her a ticket back into Gotham with his burner number scrawled on the back as reassurance and the ledger he found in the motel heavy in his equipment bag. The ledger with Bennett and a Falcone-associated pal of his scribbled in among the various pieces of human garbage in its payroll.

Jason had wanted so badly to end him the next time he did his rounds and saw the filthy dumbass greet him with a relaxed “Hey, man,” scratch at the back of his crew-cut head like he hadn’t used his position to try and destroy the life of the first customer, first trusting girl, he’d caught waiting for her bus. He would have done it then and there, shot him point-blank, stabbed through his carotid on the spot, buried him right there in the pavement, if it wasn’t for the next sick day Bennett had filed for.

Booked five days after his return from the motel, Bennett would be going out of town to visit family on the very day a rumored deal closed between the Falcone family and an unnamed associate would be going down in Keystone. A deal Bennett’s high-school buddy had been bragging about being on the roster of in every dive that would serve him. Jason didn’t have to be a genius to connect the dots, though even if he did, he wasn’t far from it next to these unsubtle nimrods. He would have to wait for the deal to pan out if he wanted an in.

So wait Jason did. He picked off the other men from the roster one by one, clapped Jim on the back when he reported his numbers for the month, grateful his helmet covered the seething revulsion on his face, watched the man get jittery and paranoid as his associates slowly went radio silent, and waited.

But as Bennett finally lugged his directionally-challenged ass into the correct alleyway, Jason would have to wait no longer! It seemed eighth try really was the charm for poor, stupid, soon-to-be-dead Bennett. Watching the guy cluelessly approach the extremely pissed-off Erica’s side, missing the daggers glared at him as she rifled through the backpack, Jason tuned his handheld receiver into the feed of the high-sensitivity mic he’d planted in the BMW’s backseat before Erica had left Gotham, and clicked down the button to record. It really was a nice car, equipped with all the best features. Leather seats, new sandy metallic paint job, locks that were extremely easy to pick, the car had it all.

He absently fiddled with the safety lock on his detonation transmitter as he watched the door of the Laundromat van slide open, two of the three men inside getting out and heading towards the dynamic duo sorting out their finances in the middle of the street. He’d planted the detonators in the gutters, the asphalt, the construction site. The narrow street was practically littered with deposits of C-4, detonators wrapped up all cozy in their cores.

Setting them was an easy feat, with the construction across the road guaranteeing nobody would look twice at an odd pothole or two on their walk down the street provided there was a headache-inducingly orange cone next to it. The majority of the charges were precautions, only to be set off if something went really south, but it dulled the boredom to play with the plastic switch as the home team took their sweet time verifying that dumb and dumber brought the goods.

Erica turned to verify that Bennett managed to bring the correct amount of requested product to the men hovering behind them, handguns dangling passively from their hands. The home team seemed satisfied with this, because Brent craned his clean-shaved head back to the van and called for Louis to come out with the cash. Once he did, Erica popped her trunk and moved to unload the trunk of the BMW into the back doors of the van Derek had propped open upon receiving the affirmative.

She gathered a stack of tightly-wrapped heroin bricks in her arms, fixed her grip, then turned and walked her first trip over to the van, and Derek quickly followed suit, a few steps behind her. Jason watched them loop back and forth between the two vehicles, each armful of kilos bringing them closer and closer to their respite from the cold.

As they paced, Brent and Louis stood at the mouth of the alleyway, backs to the cars and fingers resting loosely on the triggers of their pistols — safeties off like it was amateur hour. The operation's protection was lacking, but even if it wasn't, they wouldn’t hold a candle to what Jason had planned for them. And really, could Jason blame them?

Brent Carraway had only three previous convictions, all of them drug possession with intent to sell, and Louis Herold had moved to America from France just a few years ago, racking up a few charges of aiding prostitution and bribery in the time since. No military histories, no violent offenses beyond a dropped assault and battery charge on Brent’s part — dismissed due to lack of evidence but not ignored, by Jason at least — and no gun safety training. Neither of them were expected to be a particularly good shot. Jason could probably guess the amount of times the guys had held a gun between them, then count them up on one hand. Red Hood, on the other hand, had taken on countless squads of professional gunmen and entire factions of gangs, and came out the other side intact, time after time.

The only consolation for these two was that even if they knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Their gun safety was abysmal, their scanning was sloppy, their aim was probably piss-poor, and still there was nothing they could have done to prevent what was coming.

Once the back compartment of the van was packed with what had to be near a full pallet of heroin, Derek called for the two standing watch to return to the vehicle, swinging open the driver's side door and heaving himself up onto the seat. Bennett, who had carried maybe one armful of heroin to the van and spent the rest of the time milling around awkwardly and trying to look busy, set the backpack down in the passenger seat. The glass bottles inside clinked precariously, and Bennett, with the body language of someone clearly overwhelmed by the daunting reality of transporting unauthorized chemical agents across state lines, responded by buckling the bag in.

The backpack was the reason Jason followed Bennett across several hundred miles, set up a perimeter of C-4 hours in advance, let Bennett walk away from that check-in in the first place. A drug deal was commonplace, dime a dozen, but it was a chemical smuggling operation that was whispered about across the underbelly of Gotham. The hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of heroin to use as a bargaining chip or explode however Jason saw fit would be the cherry on top, but he wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of a five-hour stakeout if it wasn’t for the backpack sitting in the passenger seat, stuffed to the brim with unknown — to Jason, for now — chemical agents stolen from the climate-controlled storage unit of a pharmaceutical company’s development lab.

Though what the chemicals were, and for what purpose they were taken, remained a mystery in the moment, Jason was good at learning at learning things. If anyone said a word about the details of the deal beyond Brent’s loud complaints to Louis about the Mets game he missed watching live for this, Jason’s receiver would pick it up, record it, and relay it directly. A compound name, the identity of anyone involved, the plans the Falcone’s mystery associate had for the chemicals, all captured raw and ready for instant playback.

Of course, these kinds of things were auxiliary sources of intel.

The laundry van’s engine started up with a deep rumble, pulling away from the curb and slowly veering around Erica’s BMW towards the mouth of the alleyway, and Jason flipped the safety tab of his detonator off. He wouldn’t really be needing any of that info, besides as a precaution. Jason’s primary source would be analyzing the chemicals themselves once they were in his possession, after getting some nice thorough answers firsthand. He flicked the transmitter on and watched the asphalt in front of the van erupt into fire and rubble.

The van swerved erratically as Derek scrambled behind the wheel to redirect his crew towards anywhere that hadn’t just become a flaming crater in the road. Of course, the pothole Jason had just widened by a large margin was dead in the center of the street, so places that weren’t on fire were few and far between, and steering to them mainly ended in a blunt collision with the surrounding brick walls. Derek seemed to realize this, and slammed on the breaks, trying desperately to lose as much momentum as possible before the veering car crumpled against the neighboring apartment complex’s sturdy foundation.

The tires frantically screeched above Erica’s panicked shouts of every expletive in the book. Jason tossed the transmitter in the direction of his duffle and glanced down the side the parapet to gauge where the van would meet the wall. Reaching a accurate impression of the van’s trajectory, Jason took a few steps back and a moment to prepare, before rapidly picking up momentum across the roll roofing and launching himself off the side of the building into the backstreet below before the veering car could make cold hard contact with the wall in front of it.

In one instant, the hood of the car crumpled against weathered brick and the metal backdoor of some store or factory. The windshield and windows shattered into brittle fragments with a sickly crunch. Brent threw his arm over Derek from the backseat in a desperate plea to keep his foster brother’s ribs from shattering against the wheel. Red Hood landed on the roof of the van with a thunderous bang. Jim Bennett knelt petrified behind Erica’s BMW. Then the Hood rose from his crouch atop the van’s rubble-dented roof, and Jim watched his boss’s featureless red helmet turn slow, until empty white lenses locked onto him.

Red Hood stood there on the steel roof of the car for a moment. He didn’t so much as twitch from his place as he shifted his weight back into a sturdier balance, only stared. Bennett stared back, stock still and wide-eyed like imminent roadkill in the blaring gaze of of a truck’s headlight. Hood didn’t move to get down as splinters of icy glass clinked down from the decimated windshield onto the dash, not when the driver’s side door burst outwards and Derek stumbled out, shallow cuts peppering his left cheek. Ripped the side door open hard enough it bounced off its tracks, mumbling curses and prayers under his breath, and scrambled to move Brent, whose arm was now hanging at an odd angle, out of the chassis. Hood only tilted his faceless head silently towards his shoulder and shifted his hand, tapped it on his thigh just enough for the light filtering in from the street to glint off the barrel of the submachine gun he held in a silent promise.

“Holy shit, wha— Fuck! The hell just happened?”

Derek was clearly struggling with supporting his brother’s weight, every few steps he had to correct his footing so he didn’t veer off course with Brent’s added mass slung against his back.

“I mean, what the fuck! Louis, you okay back there, dude?”

However bad Derek was looking, Brent looked worse. His brow was furrowed, sweat dripping down his face, and an unnatural pallor had overtaken his skin. His limp arm swung with every halted step, every movement eliciting a new muffled wail from the otherwise stuporous man. Derek stumbled with his next step, small chunks of glass shaking loose from his Keystone U hoodie as he readjusted Brent’s undamaged arm across his shoulders.

“Hey, what’re you sitting there for! Johnny, right? Gimme a hand?“

Bennett remained stagnant next to the car, barely even breathing for fear of moving, or more accurately fear of inciting movement, his eyes locked on Jason.

“Johnny! The fuck are you looking at!”

It was only when Derek twisted his head back to look at the van’s roof around Brent’s bulk and Louis clambered towards the derailed side door, swaying the wreck further, that Jason moved, one step towards the edge of the van. He crouched down on the lip, slouching his shoulders over the edge, and reveled in the panicked realization blooming across Derek’s face, before leaning in an extra few inches to address the assembly of clowns gathering around his perch.

The syllables hung thickly on his tongue as he spoke, enunciating slow and clear, reveling in the knowledge the distorted voice emanating from his helmet’s vocal filter would provoke just a bit more trepidation in his audience.

“I figure that’d be me, wouldn’t it Derek.”

Jason knew, now, how disingenuous all the theatrics of the hero business were. The good men would dress up in as many flashy logos and dramatically structured fabrics all they wanted, triumph over every new otherworldly threat before the wide-open lenses of countless news cameras. They’d strike awe in the public with logos in the sky, commemorate their victories with towering monuments, and still when they went to bed at the end of a long day, assured in their righteousness, there would be no change in the world, and no turn for the better. Only visuals, devoid of the security they promised.

He’d tried humiliatingly hard as Robin to get better at gymnastics, computer science, and more than anything, faith. Every day, he’d work against himself to rebuild belief for the first time since childhood that through each Arkham escape, bomb under the city, and dead victim, justice would be upheld in the long run. Eventually things would get better. Batman would make it better.

It just didn’t feel that way when another serial killer came out on top.

Then they kept coming out on top, for three years, on top as they ground countless people beneath their heels, on top even while he was six feet under, on top while he was put back in the world, on the streets again, unthinking. Five years of sitting back and watching them win.

He no longer deluded himself into thinking anyone would be helped by the performance of goodness without the weight of real action backing it up, the ceremony of righteousness alone— or that he was anything close to good or righteous — but he had to concede the effect of the theatrics. The flashing in the pan was only flashing, sure, and the innocent would wait for justice that never came, but the fear a bat-shaped shadow puppet triggered? That was undeniable. And he really did enjoy making a show of it, despite himself.

Derek’s face blanched, the hand latched onto his brother’s arm trembling and slipping around his clammy skin, and a droll anticipation overtook Jason at the confirmation he had cultivated the proper dread to keep his audience attentive.

“Do you know who I am, Derek? Maybe you’ve heard of me, or Brent has? Or maybe you could help your friends out, Louis.”

Louis, having successfully clambered out of the van, made no attempt to answer, only stumbled backwards on unsteady feet, moving like he didn’t trust the pavement not to crumble out from under him. Not an awful assessment, considering the recent C-4 incident. Derek kept his eyes locked on the Red Hood’s empty visage, his own face blank with fear, but upon being addressed by name, began to shake his head in denial, only his gaze left unmoving.

“No. Nuh— No, no, no no. Please, no.”

Some immature synaptic holdover from Robin, from when he could afford to feel sorry, elicited a faint twinge of pity for the guy. Derek Nicholls was only a getaway driver, a glorified runner who got mixed up with untrustworthy enterprises as a teen on the tail of his brother.

But everybody in this alley had made the choice to be complicit in whatever scheme called for tainting a truckload of heroin with experimental chemical agents, and Jason wasn’t here to kill Derek in the first place. Unless he made an extremely brave move, he would walk out fine regardless of whatever reprehensible scheme he took up driving delivery for. Brent wasn’t looking great, but his all his vital systems seemed to be functioning decently at a quick glance over, and, Jason thought with a hint of vindictive spite, if the bruised rib he gave his ex-girlfriend over a payment he'd ended up misplacing didn't hold up in a court of law, then he could handle his crushed arm, and Jason could spare him the sympathy. Jim Bennett, of course, had been living on loaned time for weeks now, and he was only accumulating interest on it.

“No dice? And here I presumed I was making a name for myself. You wanna help your friends out Jimmy? Tell them who I am for me, yeah?”

Jason kept his voice in a slow drawl, tracing the edge of the car roof with the muzzle of his submachine. A few drops of cold rain pattered off his hand, and he suppressed the keyed-up impulse to twitch at the sensation, instead schooling every muscle in his body into steadiness, projecting an air of easygoing and carefree confidence.

“Go on, Jimmy, don’t keep me waiting.”

He gestured widely with the hand holding the carbine, his mouth twitching up into a tight smile behind the helmet’s shell when Bennett full-body flinched at the sweeping motion. He still had the safety toggled on of course, but it was nice to know that Bennett was getting the right impression.

“Boss-“

“Could be a little more specific there.”

“Boss, Why’re you— You shouldn’t be-“

Bennett’s stammering was mercifully cut off as Erica screamed over him from her spot beside some business’s fire exit, where she’d frantically jimmied the locked handle and pounded against the door as the asphalt combusted into a flaming crater. Until the Red Hood’s entrance caught her attention, and Bennett’s spluttering apparently worked up enough indignation to snap her attention away from him.

“You brought the goddamn Red Hood to us, you dumbass? You better be fucking kidding me!”

Jason decided on the spot that he liked the lady. On top of her tasteful choice in paint jobs and car models, she said what everyone was thinking.

“There we go! Good job, Erica, thanks for the intro. I knew one of you could do it.”

Erica looked a little bemused at being singled out, but nodded back at him out of reflex, or maybe as a subtle attempt to raise the changes of him skipping her over if retribution started getting doled out, eyes comically wide.

“Now, we got there, but at this rate, if I sit here waiting for you to figure out what I want, we’ll be here til morning at least. Nobody wants that. How about instead, We’ll skip the speculation and I'll tell you what I want to happen, and then this can go over nice and smoothly for all of us.”

“Mr. Hood- Boss, the fuck did I do to you tha—“

“To me? You’re asking all the wrong questions tonight. Maybe what you did to your clientele, that’d be a better one. You know Julie, don’t you? Sweet girl, studying to be a medical researcher. Dipped her toes into uppers. Takes the 42 bus home from the Gotham U station. Maybe you’d recognize her from there.”

The phone number on the back of the ticket hadn’t been enough to ease the overwhelmed air of distrust, shame, and residual terror that hung around her. It was clear that the world, in one night, had become infinitely more unsafe for her, and Jason had neither the place nor the delusion to try and convince her otherwise. Not knowing that Bennet was still above ground. 

She’d sat hunched over on the bench with her shoulders drawn small, making stilted conversation about her pre-med credits, shaky hands fidgeting with the plastic keychain of some cartoon character whose show Jason recognized, but never had the channel to watch, stuck on her zipper pull, until he gathered the callousness to ask for her blood.

To Julie's credit, she'd stayed unshaken when he'd asked, though with the dreamlike tone to her voice, part of it might have come down to shock. She shrugged her windbreaker off before he could ask, and absently watched him tighten the tourniquet around her bicep and swab her wrist with a alcohol pad, only interrupting his blunt explanations of the process and why each step was necessary when he produced a lancet from one of his pockets.

"Do you have a butterfly set? It's just, we usually only use lancets on little kids, you're going to need more blood than that for my..."

She trailed off, her face crumpling a little, and looked down in her lap, running her thumb over the keychain's surface.

"If I'm the only sample you have, you should take backups. I'm not sure if you're trying to be nice, make it up or, or, I don't know but..." her voice cut off as she searched for words, then snapped "...just use the butterfly needle please."

Jason slipped the lancet back into his pocket, feeling around for the tyvek packet of a butterfly needle. He shrugged loosely, and drew a blank on the front of responses that'd do anything meaningful. He was too keyed up. There’d be no use trying to alleviate her discomfort if he went and cancelled it all out coming across as tight as he the last few days had wound him up to be.

"Sure."

When he'd walking across the station to grab a pack of crackers or cookies, something to keep her blood sugar up after the draw, he'd stood only for Julie to trail after him, hovering between the vending machine and the ticket window, applying silently pressure to the gauze on her forearm. Only after he'd punched in the codes for a bag of UTZ chips and a 3 Musketeers for her did he register her gaze scanning absently over every pedestrian that moved too close to her, and know there that a certain trust in the world around her, the feeling of safety in public, was no longer present.

Losing that, the implicit protection of a crowd, was a very specific rite of passage. Once it was gone and you knew strength in numbers didn’t apply to you, that safety was very hard to replicate. There were other people on that street most likely, waiting for the bus or coming home, who turned their heads to what they assumed Bennett was, an ordinary dealer or overbearing boyfriend. Jason couldn't rectify that for her. The best replacement he could offer was dispatching Bennett himself.

"You're gonna pick up lithium." She said while she opened the chips, apropos of nothing. "On the tests. Probably trace amounts, by now."

"Alright."

The foil bag crinkled.

"I know what you're thinking. Off my mood stabilizers, talking to a dealer, my roommate probably filed a missing person report— it looks like an episode. I didn't quit my meds. It's just hard not to miss a few doses when you get fucking abducted."

If he was honest, Jason didn't really care either way if she had quit her meds, or had a manic relapse, or that she'd been looking for drugs. Lots of people bought drugs, and went off their meds on purpose. None of them would be to blame if a trafficking attempt was made on them over it. There was only one perpetrator at fault, one that wasn't her. But she sounded like she was presenting her case in court, trying desperately to convince the judge she was innocent when the slightest lapse in judgment would condemn her. Except there was no jury to convince, only Jason, whose mind was made up before she started her defense.

He believed she took her meds, for what it mattered.

"The Wayne Foundation covers any psychiatric costs insurance won't. If you need a consult to get your levels back up."

He stayed on the station bench while she stepped away to a nearby payphone and call her parents all the way in Middleton, hung around until the train pulled into the terminal and drew her out, away from the Red Hood’s sight and the limited security it guaranteed.

“42 bus— The— You know about—?”

“Yep. Anyways,”

Hood rose to his full stature, towering above the surrounding drug traffickers.

“You’re gonna hand over those chemical agents. In fact, I’ll be taking the whole shipment. And you’re not going to run or try any clever tricks, because there’s more C-4 planted in this block than I know what to do with, a cell blocker on a short delay I can activate the minute you try to call your friends over for backup, and enough incriminating recordings backed up for your employers to ship you to the morgue de facto if I send them out. If you comply, the majority of you will make it out of this alley relatively unharmed, and live long enough for the Falcones to decide how they want to respond to your failed job. I think that sounds more than fair personally.

"Also, I want you three,” He drew a broad circle in the air with the gun’s muzzle around Derek, still carrying Brent, and Louis, hovering nervously a few feet from the van, “to hand over all the information you have about your boss’s identity, and their plans for this shipment.”

“Fucking- fine, man! It’s all yours! Here, take it! We got it in the mail, a copy of, the roster of our new associates, a- and the meeting plans, all we got’s on this flash drive, it’s yours!”

Louis broke out of his petrified fear and began to stumble forwards towards the side of the van, fumbling around in his coat pocket and coming out with a dime-a-dozen silver thumb drive.

“Don’t look at me like that Derek, fuck are we meant to do dead? If I don’t hand it over he takes it anyways, just shoots us first and with how they talk about this psycho, mails our heads to the Falcones or some shit!”

Louis turned to face said psycho, then lost a bit of nerve staring into the blank lenses and elected to shift his gaze towards the wall behind him.

“I really don’t know who our boss is though, honest, it’s all set up anonymously.”

“Smart man, very nice of you. I appreciate your cooperation, Louis. Really, you’re making the best choice of your life.”

Spurred into action by the positive response to Louis’s compliance, Erica set off across the alley to retrieve the backpack of chemical agents from the passenger seat, hurrying past the brothers: Derek wavering in place as he weighted his options and Brent getting paler by the minute, watching the proceedings through eyelids half-closed by pain. She spared no glance to the betrayed-looking Bennett, muttering to himself angrily from his position crouched near the car before shifting his focus to the man atop the car, gathering the guts to argue.

“Fuck you man! This isn’t fair, you shouldn’t know! It was gonna be the only time, I was trying to leave that shit behind me, and for that kind of pay?”

Bennett was beginning to panic, the past week’s disappearances and his boss’s sudden appearance combining slowly in his head and solidifying into the reality of his impending doom.

“There’s gotta be something I can do to make you get over this, right?”

“Yep.” Hood braced the submachine gun against his shoulder, angling his body back a little to support the imminent blowback. “Stand still.”

The Red Hood’s grip was sure and steady when he pulled the trigger. His aim was calculated to account for recoil and enable the gun to fire true, his gaze unflinching as the bullet soared straight and precise towards Bennett’s orbital. All of this only served to make its failure to meet his skull more surreal.

Everything the last week had been leading up to crumbled in on itself in the few milliseconds it took for Red Hood to process the sight of the bullet he’d fired caught snugly between the Flash’s fingers. Goddamn it, he thought ruefully. The sudden appearance of Wally West meant the odds of this operation had shifted in a pivotal way. One that meant there was going to be a lot less progress to reap.

Spitefully, Hood made a point of masking any physical signs of surprise. Instead of reacting, he took a moment to think through possible outcomes and shortcomings, questioning where the bogus arms deal he facilitated as a distraction had fallen through, trying to calculate his next moves with this unpredictable variable added to the mix. The Flash didn’t seem to notice, and made no effort to wait for him to process as he turned away from Red Hood’s smoking gun to address the surrounding goons.

“I was gonna apologize for being late, but I’m getting the sense I got here right on time!”

As if it had been waiting for a cue, a peal of thunder cracked above them, loud enough to feel inside his ribs. God fucking damn, he did not want to deal with this guy right now.

Tragically, Wally didn’t seem to pick up on that much either.

“You clowns have no clue about the type of trouble you’re in. The situation you’re gotten yourselves tangled up with, what? Seemed like easy money? Think again. The Justice League has been looking into your employers and trust me, you’re gonna wish you’d hung up the damn phone. Lucky for you, a jail cell’s a pretty good alibi.”

The Justice League had involved themselves in this? That was news to Jason. The unwelcome kind.

Their attention had to have been drawn to the buyer’s side of the deal, no chance the Falcones were garnering that kind of attention from that caliber of big names. One or two maybe, a team-up, but not the coordinated league. It was the type of thing that would have piqued his curiosity a day ago, and sent mental alarm bells blaring given that he was already on the roof of the getaway vehicle.

The tricky part about the Justice League was that, when it reached the level of official business, their members didn’t tend to come in teams of one. He supposed it came with the territory of calling yourselves a league. If Flash was already here he’d have to be very careful with how he extracted himself from this situation. Jason mentally shifted getting the fuck out of dodge and regrouping from a distance to a top priority.

The transport team gathered below seemed to come to a similar conclusion. Erica took the sudden appearance of another player as a sign to tuck the backpack against her chest and make a dash for the BMW while Derek pulled his handgun out from the center pocket of his hoodie, opening fire on the Flash with his free arm.

Hood couldn’t really tell if he was right-handed or just really bad at shooting — honestly those bullets were going into the wall, the tail end of the van, really anywhere but the Flash — but Derek got a few merit points for keeping his brother secured against his side as he waved his left arm as though aiming at a ghost. In an instant, Wally had engaged Derek, wresting the handgun from him with remarkable ease.

“This guy looks awful. You’d be smart to spend less time failing to shoot me and more time trying to keep your pal over here from going into shock, loser.”

Flash punctuated his critique by binding Derek’s wrists together before he could blink and sweeping his leg from under him, letting him fall backwards to the asphalt. Faster than Hood could process it, Brent was propped up against the bumper of the BMW, still ghastly pale, crying out through gritted teeth at the sudden movement, but unharmed and secure. No such kindnesses were taken for Derek, whose tailbone cracked audibly against the road as he sat down hard, scrambling to hold himself up despite the newly-restricted range of movement in his elbows.

Behind them, Erica was making ground. Smart to make her break while the Flash was distracted — the quick thinking cemented her as Jason’s definite favorite of the bunch if he glossed over the turnabout angle of it all — but that couldn’t be happening.

He corrected the guns position against his shoulder, reentered his weight into a position better suited for aiming, and took out the visible three tires with triplet shots. For good measure, he sprayed the ground around Erica’s feet with a stable line of gunfire, blasting chunks of asphalt out of the already cracked pavement, stopping her dash with a frightened jump and a scream. Before she could touch solid ground, the Flash swept her behind the side of the car, trying to pry the chemical agents out of her grip.

“Look lady, I get wanting to get a good word in with your boss, but no paycheck is worth the situation you’ve gotten yourself into. Hand this over, go back home, and pretend you’ve never so much as seen these things."

Erica responded by slamming the back of her hand flat into his nose mid-sentence, then snatching the backpack out of his arms and rapidly moving back a few steps, gaining a bit of distance from the hero cupping a hand to his bleeding nostril until the metal surface of the car was pressed flush against her hips and she could back up no further. The Flash raised his head, the small rupture in the septum already closing up, in synch with Louis stepping in close and raising his pistol to the back of Wally’s cowl, settling the barrel inches away from his occipital lobe.

Except, that also wouldn’t work with him. Hood leveled his own sights on Louis’s back. Clearly, he wasn’t about to sit by and let this no-name goon take out a Justice Leaguer no matter how irritating he was, but as he lined up his shot, Louis’s immediate compliance earlier in the night pressed insistently on his conscience. He conceded by redirecting his aim to the handgun, then fired.

Before Louis could pull the trigger, his gun was ripped from his grasp by Jason’s bullet. Instantly, Louis hunched over around his hand with an ugly scream of pain, clasping an index finger almost certainly broken by unyielding gunmetal against his chest.

Wally whipped around, and instantly he was searching the scene in front of him, trying to get his bearings. Between his attempted assailant, crumped to the ground with his hand wrapped tight around his shattered digit, the gun thrown into the wall with a sharp clatter, and the sound of a gunshot, so near to Flash’s head and fundamentally incompatible with his intact skull and all his brain matter contained safely inside its rightful home, there was a lot to catch up on.

It inspired a sense of camaraderie, ironically enough. Even if his interloper had applied his attention to the low-levels so far, Jason needed to make a bid for the lay of the land too if he had any intention of salvaging the situation, and quick. He wasn’t expecting a warm welcome and a productive discussion, communication with a hero type at all was a long shot, but the likelihood of Wally being willing to hear him out remained undetermined, and wasn’t worth nothing. Every bit of information counted. It was convenient then, that he’d been given such a smooth avenue to test the waters.

“You definitely aren’t working on your A-Game tonight, Flash. Look at you, to think Louis over here almost got the drop on you. If I hadn’t seen it go down, I couldn’t have been convinced of it. Lucky you, I’m here to keep you from getting in over your head. What do you think, should we take a minute to clean this mess up?”

For the first time since prolonging Bennett’s life a few extra minutes, Wally looked up at the Red Hood, blood crusted on his upper lip and lenses still a bit wide from the proximity Louis had managed to gain on him.

“We aren’t doing anything, nutcase. What, like you’re here ‘cause you’re an altruistic guy? Looking out for the greater good? Take it from me, whatever your plans are for this chemical shipment, It’s about to be well out of your reach.”

Yeah, about what he’d been banking on. Impersonal, therefore grudge-free, but suitably menacing. Standard heroic-type fare. He’d proceed as usual then, adjust for the defensive, and above all, he’d work on a timer. The longer he hung around, the more likely he’d be engaged with. Out of all the options for how the night could end, exchanging blows with a man who moved faster than sound itself wasn’t high on his list.

Erica made another move to run after rattling the car handle surreptitiously, patting her coat pockets down, and reaching the conclusion she’d dropped her key fob in the chaos. Flash grabbed her coat collar without taking his eyes off Jason. Though, come to think of it, Jason wouldn’t actually know if he looked at her or not, with how fast the guy moved.

The smartest move really would be to get going before Wally decided to redirect his efforts from the nameless henchmen to the crime lord opening fire on them. The catch was, if he was too obvious in his retreat, he’d force the Flash’s hand and send himself right out of the frying pan to the fire below. And where would that get him? Where would it get Bennett? Besides— he never could resist a little banter. Sue him. He paced the roof of the car in a line, tapping his gun against his the side of his leg thoughtfully.

“That’s a little rude, but I won’t hold it against you. The only thing is, I really do think we’re seeking the same end here.”

Jason raised his hands above his head, sardonically mimicking surrender. The Flash’s brow furrowed in irritation, and he felt the satisfaction of preemptively knowing the response lift his sunk mood a little. He wasn’t going to get a chance to explain himself. Jason knew it when he asked. He’d known it long before too. But factoring that into his contingencies in advance and asking anyways meant he got the consolation prize of being proven right each time. It really was the little things in life.

“I take it there’s no chance I can convince you?”

Whatever response Flash had lined up, it was cut off before he could get a word out. In its place, a deafening clap sounded, preluding the bullet that sliced through the underside of Jason’s arm and left burning pain in its wake. Jason resolutely repressed his flinch at the agony searing down his tricep as much as he could, but the fullness of the pain swarmed his nerves as he leapt down from the roof and out of the line of fire in a clean front tuck, stumbling a bit as he crouched into a messy landing. Embarrassing, he thought a bit hysterically. Good thing Dick Grayson wasn’t there to watch.

He raised his head, preparing to catch a glimpse of the shooter through the window of the totaled van once the gunfire ebbed a bit, but it proved unnecessary as his vision settled on the figure in front of him. Still ducked beside the trunk, Bennett held his cellphone, still half raised. Hood didn’t need to catch even a glimpse of the screen to know the most recent call was to the backup team parked a block away, waiting patient for this very scenario. God damn, did Jim Bennett have a laser-guided sixth sense attuned to the very concept of fucking everything up.
Between the agonizing sting in his arm and the numbing rage flooding his synapses, Hood’s mind was as close to silent as it ever got as he raised his carbine and unloaded a rain of ammunition in Bennett’s direction. Sure enough, bullet after bullet was plucked easily out of the few feet of space between the two, but he'd make that a small obstacle this time.

Undeterred, he slid his parrying dagger out of his belt lunged for Bennett, the terrified whites of the man’s eyes reflecting his own helmet back at him as he launched off the asphalt to bury the wavy blade in the shameless piece of shit’s chest cavity. He had let him try again so many times, and it got them here.

He’d turned a blind eye when Bennett called out for a night only to show up that same evening moving heavy artillery for Two-Face. 'Course the idiot was gonna get himself killed if he kept up like that, but unless he started setting an example where his coworkers could see, it wouldn’t be by Hood’s hand. He’d sat by and let him pick up work showing a debtor what happens to people who miss loan payments to the Falcone family when a high-school buddy of his got a cold. He’d listened calmly when his lieutenants reported the guy pocketing a few extra tens right in her face, a sale or two a little too close to the Maroni family’s territory, and he gave him one last chance when he’d covered doors for one of Scarecrow’s labs overnight. He’d become permissive, and been reminded fresh over what excess chances permit men to do to other peoples’ lives.

The second attempt on Bennett’s life prompted Flash to remove him from Jason’s proximity entirely, shuttling him to the other end of street in an effort to deem him inaccessible to Hood, throwing Jason none-too-softly against the door of the van for good measure. His arm lit up with revived pain as his shoulder slammed against steel. Something shifted oddly as he struggled to return to an upright position, leather sliding fruitlessly against the rain-slick vehicle. Once sitting, he gasped for air, rivulets of water flowing down the helmet, and watched Bennet settle, afraid but intact, on the other side of the street.

Simply the thought of moving had his winded lungs aching for breath. As he slouched back, empty, the awful helplessness that had gnawed inside his bones every moment since he’d seen Bennett before him and let him walk evolved into desolation. It hollowed him out. He’d almost forgotten that type of vulnerability, like desperately trying to pry your eyes open during a locked-in night terror, had overwhelmed him to this extent. He hadn’t felt it since he watched Karl Branneck walk free out the courthouse’s front doors, Garzonas on his coattails.

A bout of nausea wracked through him. Jason knew the thought was petulant and unfair, overly self-pitying, but it echoed shamelessly in his head anyways. Bruce would be proud. Not of him — never of him, not now and maybe not before — but of where his restraint had landed him. The outcome it led to.

Wally was fidgeting with the comm built discretely into the fabric of his mask now, speaking urgently into the microphone words Jason couldn’t quite make out through the high-pitched whine in his ears, his hand obscuring his mouth. The Falcone’s backup muscle was starting to round the van, guns braced for fire, scopes to their faces as they scanned the alley. And as a final flourish to end the crescendo of failure unfolding before him, Jason realized with a sinking horror that Erica’s figure was quickly vanishing, dashing frantically onto the open street and out of his grasp, clasping the backpack tight.

In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a silvery object glinting from under the body of the car. Before any party could pay much attention, he dove beneath the chassis, dragging himself deep into the undercarriage while thanking any greater force that might be listening, or maybe just Talia, for the barrier his helmet provided between his skin and the black puddles depositing grime across the side of his head.

The bite of a jagged hunk of pavement against the gunshot wound elicited a new wave of searing pain, forcing Jason to clamp his teeth around his inner cheek to keep from crying out. Warm blood mixed into his saliva for his efforts. Clutching the discarded thumb drive, he tucked it deep into the pocket of his jacket. No matter how much he had let get away in the cacophony, Hood wasn’t about to leave this scene empty-handed.

With nothing left to salvage from the trainwreck his operation had turned into, Jason took a new bout of gunfire opening onto the Flash as his cue to make his escape, and crawled out the other side of the van. The Flash would be fine. After all, the guy had proved himself thoroughly capable of catching bullets, Hood thought, the taste of iron filling his mouth.

Jason had spent too much time running from pursuers with various levels of authority to head straight back to his duffle. He’d known better since nine at the oldest. So when he fled the scene, he scaled a fire escape opposite from his starting perch, and went from there.

He’d lose the advantage of familiar ground, he couldn’t return to his setup, and he could at least find comfort in knowing no League member would be led to it either. His bag was somewhere deep in the shadows of the building’s parapet, hidden away from sight in accordance with lingering childhood reflex, easily overlooked by any passing heroes’ investigations.

He transferred the drive out of his open pocket and into a secure belt compartment before ducking behind a skyscraper illuminated from below in an effort to obscure his path from tracking eyes. Humiliatingly, he realized his own were flooding with hot tears, blurring the lights of the city into hundreds of astigmatisms. Swinging around the buttresses and weaving between the spotlights angled up its facade, Jason shot his grapple in the direction of a neighboring building.

He wasn’t even sure if his aim was steady enough for it to meet between his injured arm’s instability and the waterworks he was putting on, but he'd put enough work into bettering his skillset that if heavy rain, a pity party, and a concrete sidewalk got him in the end, he'd deserve it for letting himself get so off his game in the field. The grapple hooked though, and he continued with his momentum onto the ornate roof of some properly-funded city building.

The rain was coming down heavier now, and the wet granite and marble slabs of the higher-end district he’d drifted into would be impossible to gain footing on for near anyone. Jason was not anyone.

He used the hydroplaning of his rubber soles as a launching point to dive off the roof and latch onto a neighboring window’s lintel, heaving his body up onto the flat asphalt. The second he pulled his torso over the eave, a glowing streak darted past, inches from him. Close enough that the displaced air in the Flash’s wake slammed into his body, flipping his jacket up behind him.

A wave of vindication crept up on him as his goose-chase detour was justified. Who said his paranoia was excessive? Nobody, not when he was so often deemed right to operate with it. If only his lieutenants could see this shit.

“You sure hit the road fast. At least, for someone who claims to be working towards a noble goal. Where’re you trying to get off to, leaving in such a hurry? Pretty weird, with how you were just asking to work together. I take it you changed your mind.”

The rain had thoroughly soaked through Jason’s body armor, making the grey fabric cling cold and wet to his clammy skin. Blood was beginning to glue his leather jacket to the stinging bullet wound in a jammy congealment. Fuck, did he ever want to book a cheap motel room and throw himself into its shower, scrub until his skin turned pink and raw, but Wally didn’t seem too keen on letting him go without a little placation.

“Easy, I didn’t intend any offense. You didn’t exactly seem receptive to my offer, and I can pick up on when I’m unwelcome. I assumed it was best to head out. That’s all.”

Jason dove off the side of the building, using the lintels protruding out as a handhold to swing himself over to the adjacent roof, wincing as his jacket lining tugged against the scabbing gash. He wasn’t operating under the illusion that the interaction would end there, but a guy could dream, couldn’t he?

Sure enough, Wally was standing on the next roof with his arms crossed severely. Jason waved cheerily at the angry man, and watched his posture tighten noticeably at the cavalier gesture.

“Cut the excuses, creep. Just own up. You got involved because you wanted that shipment for yourself. We both know the only good you care enough to go out of your way to work for is a hefty payoff.”

Well, he was halfway right. Jason had, in fact, fantasized during those slow hours surveying the deal about lording the intercepted material over the Falcones' heads, maybe getting a chance to taunt Black Mask with the new leverage he’d gained, but the money? Never had money been the most important element of his work. Truth be told, it didn’t even make his top five.

Part of him — a really childish and naive part — ached to try and respond to the Flash’s taunt honestly, but mentioning Bennett could only escalate the situation in directions he'd really rather avoid. He would have to be immensely stupid to think, after everything, that that line of motivation would resound with the likes of his current company.

So Jason didn’t bother with pausing and facing the Flash to respond. Instead he picked up speed across the roof and used it to propel himself onto the eaves of a neighboring residential in a clean handspring before vaulting onto the chimney, speaking freely into the air and trusting the Flash would keep up, though he’d heavily preferred he didn’t.

“Look, I’m getting the sense I’ve ruffled some feathers, but I’d prefer to work with you than against you, and I’ve been trying to do that.”

Jason kept his focus off the man flickering in and out of the corner of his eye as he ran, locking his eyes onto the space before him as he tethered his line in a tall brownstone’s brickwork and swung along the side of it onto a jutting annexed wing of an office building.

“I would absolutely enjoy getting that shipment and pursuing my own goals with it, but I also take interest in keeping unknown chemical agents out of the drug supply. Ignoring everything else, it'd be pretty detrimental in business terms for one of my men to be polluting the supply and distributing impure product, wouldn’t it? I take that mess out of the game, my name stays clean. Seems like two sides of the same coin from my point of view.”

“That’s all pretty convenient, huh? But, see, I don’t know if I buy that. Besides, you still end up with those chemicals in your hands at the end of the day. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, it doesn’t sound much better to me.”

Wow, this guy couldn’t be much less receptive, even if Jason had already known not to expect active listening when the big-leaguers crashed his function. The idea that he was setting out to poison the masses with chemical terrorism at random, planned to wreak aimless carnage unto the entirety of drug users just for its own sake, was laughably off-base, but the cub-scout types never gave a second thought to the things he actually sought out or what his orchestrations actually meant.

A bit petty over the turn the night had taken, Jason also resented the insinuation that he couldn’t steal his own chemical agents, instead resorting to hapless freelancers six states away from the lab the chemicals were produced on. And honestly? To hell with it. Jason was just as well off getting hung up on that point as he’d be arguing any other, considering he was arguing with a brick wall.

“Look, if I wanted chemical agents, I would get chemical agents. I don’t care about those materials past making sure whichever brain-donor that does want to buy them isn’t getting them. Now we could-“

“The scene’s all cleaned up then, Vic?”

Jason slid to a halt on the metal roofing at the Flash’s lowered tone. Behind him, the Flash had come to a standstill as well, hand raised again to his the golden wing of his cowl and its built-in comm. He was working with Question then, or maybe Cyborg?

The possibility of Bruce had occurred to Jason. Of course it had, this type of thing seemed right up his alley. If he didn’t take interest in this case, despite the Gotham-based instigators, and overall shadowy tone, he must be very preoccupied back in Gotham. Good. The less Jason saw of him, the better.
Without the exertion of the chase pumping his adrenaline overtime, Jason’s body throbbed. An unpleasant wet sensation alerted him to his gunshot, the fact it had probably began bleeding anew, sluggishly oozing into the autumn night. He really should bandage it up before he lost anymore blood, slap one of those self-suturing dressings on over his sleeve, but the idea of so much as acknowledging the wound in front of the Flash made his temples throb with stress.

“They are? Well, at least we have some good news.”

Whatever Vic said on the other end, Wally’s lenses narrowed, and took a deep breath through gritted teeth, held it for a moment before huffing out a sigh.

“Yeah, some ‘fastest man alive’ I am, can’t catch some lady booking it on foot. Took a minute for me to notice. Then, I checked the nearby blocks, didn’t see her. No sign at all.”

Another pause, another response from Vic.

“Sure. And any info on how that rain check might go down?”

“He dropped… flash drive, huh? Fitting.”

The thought occurred a moment too late to take this brief reprieve as a sign to get the hell out of dodge. All that he could do was draw his dagger and watch. Garbled noise came through faintly on the comm, then the Flash’s eyes locked on the Red Hood, his voice rising in volume, the crisp enunciation of building rage.

“When I showed? About to hand it over to Hood. Gotcha. Thanks Vic.”

Trying to keep up with Flash’s movements and respond in real time would have been a fool’s errand akin to catching every drop of rain plummeting onto the roof they stood on. Jason, however stupid he might be for not taking his window of freedom when it was offered, knew better than to try. He reclined into a defensive stance, he swung in front of him in wide slices, but he did not try to track his enemy’s movements.

The blur descended unto him, and recalling how Derek’s legs were taken out down in the backstreet, he instantly dropped into a wide crouch, despite the chance that even instant was just too late. Dead on the money, a blunt blow landed against his calf within milliseconds, and he shifted his weight lower to keep from pitching backwards.

“Wow. You really are something impressive. I remember seeing Barry on the news as a kid and being floored, and you were so fixed on him back then, all about legacy. But watching you work? Just incredible.

“Where is he these days, anyways? I remember everyone else thought he’d bit it, but, well, you know.”

He managed to drop his defensive posture just long enough to gesture widely at himself, and took the opportunity to manage a few unsteady steps towards the corner of the roof.

”You can never be sure. Not to say you’re lacking, in any aspect. From how you’re operating tonight, man, you have to know by now you measure up like a goddamn altimeter.”

“Shut up! Where is it? Just hand the drive over already!”

Contrary to the limited amount Jason remembered of the guy, Wally wasn’t feeling chatty. The notion of lying occurred to him, but he wasn’t in the mood for games anymore either, and surrendering a scrap of his integrity for a quick getaway from a guy who wouldn’t even believe him just chafed too much on what little of his pride remained.

“Yeah, I’m not gonna be doing that. You clearly have your own plan for how this night is gonna go, and I don’t think I’m down with it.”

The blows Flash volleyed at him were landing hard enough to bruise, but far from any vital areas. Aimed without the intent to cause real damage, because he put things like limits and goodness over results. Still, Jason couldn’t be sure it’d remain off the table if he held out long enough for the fight to escalate, and in the second it took to determine that, his defense slipped enough for a second blow to make hard contact with his side.

Working off reflex and intuition, Jason swung his dagger down in front of his shoulders, and found that it met resistance for a split second. Then the obstacle was removed, and the Flash reappeared a few feet before him, the angry gash in his forearm already stitching itself closed.

“Shocker. You’ve gotta be some kind of sick in the head, trying to use ‘teamwork’ as your way out with the drive in your pocket. Wasn’t gonna work in the first place, and clued me in on top of it. Guess you said it for the thrill of flaunting your little stunt. That right, idiot?”

Jason wracked his brain for any weaponry on his person that could give him an edge against a guy who could break the sound barrier. Any rounds, aimed weapons at all, were useless, and speedster metabolism would burn through the neuromuscular blockers in his belt before he could finish pushing the plunger. Settling, he dug in his pocket for his taser, slotting it into the palm of his glove as he fought for breath. At some level, he recognized using electric weaponry in a downpour was a tremendously ill-advised plan, but he wasn’t seeing many other options. At least if it shorted, the electrocution would be quick.

“Nah, I was really down to collaborate. It just so happens I’ve outgrown the kind of collaboration that consists of giving you all my evidence and sitting back until you feel inclined to loop me in sometime.”

The taser buzzed softly, tickling his palm as he switched it on, shoulder slouched and chest heaving.

“The thing that got me with that was that no matter how much a guy gave in, it never really seemed to return much of an outcome. It’s plain as day you don’t want me sorting this out. You believe the spandex crew you run with are the only ones capable of doing right. Suppose that’s your prerogative.

"But I can tell you one thing right now: you’re going to have to hit me exceptionally hard if you want to pry that drive out of my grasp, cause you already know I’m not doing your job for you. You want it that bad? Come on, get at me already!”

Jason lunged towards Wally and for the first time that night, Wally listened to him. He swung his dagger into air as Wally dived out of the way and destabilizing blows bloomed along his body. Shoves landing on his pectorals, ribs, shoulders, hard pushes glancing the sides of his body, sweeping kicks aimed to his leg. A hand dipped into his pocket, fumbling around for the drive, and Jason latched his fingers around it as fast as his body would allow. It withdrew in a split second at the current of electricity suddenly coursing through it, followed by a frustrated shout from somewhere off to his left.

“You sure do like to go on about cooperation and what’s good and bad for a guy who was just shooting at three people! Count yourself lucky none of those bullets hit, or I’d be showing you what ‘exceptionally hard’ really means!”

Well, the Flash wasn’t exactly Jason’s type, a little too strait-laced and traditional — a little too straight overall, if he entertained the logistics — but he was flattered nonetheless. Jason snorted a bit, and Wally’s face darkened an extra degree at the sound rumbling out distorted and harsh through the hood’s vocal filter.

“I’m fixated on good and bad? We’re playing by your rulebook here, man. Take a look at how this night’s going down then ask yourself who’s stuck in their ways for me.”

His next blow somehow made contact, elbow slamming into Wally’s abdomen, prompting him to hop back with a hiss, but it came at the cost of any semblance of orientation. Too lucky. Sure enough, when he pulled away and settled his balance back low, it was on tarry gravel, not asphalt. It fucking figured, with how quickly his night had turned, that in the half second when his center of mass was thrown off-balance, he had been moved onto the rooftop of an entirely different building.

He didn’t get another hit in. No, Wally accepted the blow for the momentum it gave, used the narrow window of opportunity when Jason’s weight was ungrounded enough to move him, and paid the price of a gut punch for it. Granted, he recuperated within seconds, his healing seeming faster and faster with each blow the Red Hood landed. Before Hood could so much as take a breath, he was back in the fray.

“God, you aren’t going to take me out, idiot! Forget about it! And you aren’t outrunning me either, that goes without saying. So, what’re you betting on here? Why stick around to fight one hell of a losing battle? You gonna do the right thing? You sure talk a lotta talk about it. Well, in case it wasn’t obvious, the right thing? Cutting your losses and handing over that drive.”

Every heave of his lungs against his bruised ribs brought Jason closer to that prospect, but the combination of his residual dignity and Bennett, standing on the other side of the alley, comfortable in the safety of his newfound protection, held him back. The last chance to make him pay was tightly tucked away in his belt compartment. He couldn’t let himself walk away, didn’t serve to if it happened knowing he’d pitched that for a clean break, an easy way out. Julie didn’t get a clean break, only people like Bennett got the luxury.

“I suppose you called my bluff. I’m the type of person that just doesn’t particularly care about what’s right.”

The luminescent blur faltered for a moment, and Jason took the opportunity to drop low and sweep his leg across the area of the blur’s feet in yet another bid to carve himself an out. It wouldn’t work, but it felt obligatory to try. Wally’s face flickered briefly back into view, closer than Jason had guessed, his mouth twisted into an unsettlingly thoughtful pout. That wasn’t good. Jason couldn’t bear when these guys got to hypothesizing. So many theories and stances on his actions, none of them even close to accurate.

“You’re fighting awfully hard for the info on that drive. You really want to hold onto it, don’t you?” He was gone again, lost in the blur of motion encircling Hood like a coiling snake, flickering with the same quality as film running through an old projector.

Jason moved for the corner of the roof, only to have his path intercepted yet again by the scarlet son of a bitch. Then there was the broad sensation of hands on him, too fast to localize, and he was gone again from the open rooftop, instantly cornered in against a stairway enclosure.

“Of course I do. Why, have I been unclear?” he replied, taking a moment to quell the shivers that roof maneuver gave him, devoting his limited energy to masking every inch of the eerie powerlessness it instilled in him, the way his blood turned cold at the loss of control over his own body’s movement.

Religious fervor, water dripping, the dank smell of Gotham’s catacomb of a sewer system. A mob’s dozens and dozens of hands tugging him down by his cape, tunic, hair. Pulling him under, deep below the city.

“Doesn’t matter how clear you are, I don’t trust you for a minute. Something’s up that you’re not telling me, I know it.”

Jason had hoped the thrusts of his parrying dagger would motivate the Flash to quiet down, even if neither of them were buying into the pretense of them hitting anymore. Insultingly, they weren’t even met with retaliation, ignored altogether in favor of the Flash’s monologue.

“But I don’t like the direction this is going. you aren’t gonna give that evidence over unless I beat it out of you. But wailing on some guy who doesn’t even have it in for me? Not my speed.”

Yeah, fine. He had no particular qualms with Wally. The offhand dismissal still elicited an surprising level of humiliation. He swung his dagger with a pointed ferocity, and sliced a surface level gash into the muscle of his shoulder. The cut prompted Flash to catch his wrist, wrest it into the air and pin his hand still with an inquiry into his fucking problem and a hissed curse involving his mother. Nice.

“Take it from me, making it home free with that drive isn’t on the table. With the stakes you have in this deal, you aren’t getting home tonight full stop. Keep resisting and I’ll get it in good time, but you keep going on about being on the same side. I’m gonna give you the change to prove it.”

“How generous.”

“Hand over the drive and combine whatever other info you’ve put together with the League intel, and we can work out the situation on the Watchtower. You’ll know what we know, no funny business. Sound good?”

Jason tested the grip on his forearm gingerly, pushing his arm against the resistance just enough to gauge the strength of the restraint, subtly enough to avoid giving the Flash any solid impression of belligerence, with any luck. Unfortunately, the hold was robust and steady, as if it was a marble statue pinning his arm back rather than the childhood friend of a guy who had once almost gotten close to being his brother. The tight hold on his wrist, the concrete of the rooftop access flush against his back, the cold GSW seeping openly from his underarm, turning his stomach too, and an opponent who could have him strapped down in an electric chair before the current could move from the outlet to the coils if he applied himself. It added up pretty clearly. No outs for him.

“Not particularly, no. Though I’m not seeing a second option.”

The hand clamped around his wrist released and the Flash stepped back, his face displaying trained neutrality, a valiant effort at stony professionalism given away by the his softening frame, the tension leeching from his shoulders. It was a commendable effort, sure, but Jason had spent his teen years with Batman as his benchmark for emotional expression, and Wally was no Batman.

“You’ll be doing the right thing. Hand the drive over. I’ll call the Watchtower to send us up. Any luck, and our combined intel will wrap up this whole mess real quick. You’ll get sent back to Gotham without too much hassle if you keep up the cooperation, and-“ Wally paused, wordless for a fraction of a second.

“Hey, if you’re telling the truth, about wanting the right thing? The Justice League is gonna make sure the scumbags behind this whole thing see their comeuppance.”

The platitude hit Jason’s ears hollow, though he was sure the Flash believed his words. The League wouldn’t bring real comeuppance to Jim Bennett. Not the kind that would right his transgressions, force him not to take other people’s bodies for profit. As if such a thing existed in the first place.

He would live day after day, fresh out of Jason’s reach. There would be a long life for the man hunched behind his coworker’s trunk, pleading with the Red Hood to just get over his wrongdoings, approaching his newest customer, a college girl who took his bus route, late at night. He would do it again one day, somewhere new, with a boss who couldn’t see him and wouldn’t care if he could, because Jason felt like taking his foot off the gas. The right thing, Flash said.

It was entirely possible that this whole peace treaty was nothing more than a ruse, and Wally would blink out of his sight for good once the ploy bore fruit. He could, if it meant Jason could just lose and be done. Lining the chance of deceit up against even the best case scenario, the slap on the wrist the league would pass off as retribution, he didn’t particularly care anymore if the offer was sincere or not, couldn’t make himself. There was no winning with these guys.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

But lucky for them, telling the truth was what he’d done all night. For the most part. Some truths would only ever fall on deaf ears, and as such he’d tactfully omitted them, but Jason liked to consider himself an honest enough person. He didn’t like treachery beyond the theatrically-necessary.

“Look, just— Thanks for cooperating.”

The Flash shifted rapidly from foot to foot, a fidget which had to be fueled by superspeed-induced antsiness. Well he could cool down, Jason was getting the drive.

He sheathed his serpentine dagger back into its rightful home against his thigh and fumbled through his belt compartments, trying to ignore the Flash’s attempt at making conversation. His rapid-fire chatter itched unbearably under his skin, joining the chorus right alongside the little self-flagellating voice in his head screaming about everything he’d let get away, how he shouldn't have bothered crawling out through his coffin if failure like this was how he wanted to spend the retry foisted on him.

“Lot of people were really shaken up with how things went down, with, you know.” The Flash ventured tentatively, waving his hand in a vague gesture.

“Nightwing always used to say you would have grown into a great man, back when you were- before you came back.”

When he was still dead enough not to prove him wrong. A tired smile twitched across Jason’s face, mercifully hidden. Wally was lucky he’d had given up hope of escape, because if he had any choice left in the situation he would have turned on his heel then and there.

Talia had the decency to prep him with the basic developments of his sabbatical, but the more heroes he encountered, the more gaps he found in his education. Take for example, his legacy.

Since returning to the ring, Jason had gradually learned that his torture and subsequent exploding was taken by every hero he’d ever met as an open invitation to invent their own personal version of him, making for a rapidly-expanding collaborative mythos of the exact wrong way to be. Whether there was potential in him snuffed out when his life was, or he’d been a lost cause from the moment he wrenched the canary yellow cape out of storage and snapped it around his undeserving shoulders, nobody thought it prudent to lower their voice as whispered rumors of caution thrown to the wind and unchildlike depravity telephoned through their ranks. Apparently, Flash felt like throwing in with the likes of the Titans, speculating as if they had never met back then, which was less offensive than it was plain silly, when all he had to do was just think back.

Hooking his arms tight around the newly-minted Flash’s neck as he ferried both of them up the side of a skyscraper — faster than any elevator Jason had ever been in — and lauding the bravery of the Teen Titans to him as his own nerves worsened. The cold of the Alps biting into his exposed legs made him wonder why Dick had never been ashamed like he was.

Knowing what he knew now, looking back felt like trying to watch sitcom reruns from the other side of a door. It was his favorite once, he recalled the feeling. But with every joke, he found the cast of characters flatter than when he’d last tuned in, the writing worse. The memories would loop, he’d end up on the same scenes, but with this awful whine drowning out the line deliveries, making him question if it had ever even been good, of if he’d just been too excited for one of big brother’s only few appearances before Robin turned to ash. If he listened close, he swore he heard the same canned laughter play, over and over, through the gap near the floor.

If Jason couldn’t be dignified with the pleasantries of accurate remembrance, then he wouldn’t be dignifying Nightwing’s secondhand theorizing with a response. He tried to ease the ice that shot through his veins at the offhand insult back to a manageable degree as he fished for the thumb drive in a medley of loose keys, bullets, and vials of adrenaline injections. Silence fell after the Flash’s comment, which he elected to fill with his own rambling before the guy could get into elaborating.

“The rest of the info’s in my duffle. Backup recordings, the pharmaceutical company’s break-in report, CCTV clips, that kind of thing. Probably best if just show you, I’m not too local with the addresses of— There it is.”

He held the drive up, pinched between his fingers, and punctuated the reveal with a sarcastic jazz hand from the unoccupied glove. Refusing to linger long enough on Wally’s face that the guy might feel compelled to start up a new dialogue, in doing so put himself through another round of inadvertent reminders of how exactly the world remembered him, he turned away towards the corner of the roof.

He would have called out into the night behind that the duffle was back at the site, and leapt off in that direction with the grapple holstered along his hip. He would have swung through the air as he wracked his memory for the route he needed to retrace, using the skyscraper with the spotlights as a landmark. If he looked up at the neighboring building’s parapet, he would have unsheathed his dagger and dove into an evasive tumble. As it happened, Jason did none of these.

Instead, his ribs were abruptly slammed into the wall of the roof access, rough bricks cutting into his back, by a muscular kevlar-wrapped forearm pressed into his sternum. He caught a blurred glimpse of Bruce’s overfamiliar cowl as his eyesight whipped along with the blow, before everything starting moving too fast for him to decipher in the first place, and the hit drove the back of his helmet hard into of the brickwork. The collision produced an earsplitting crack, like a starting gun firing deep inside his jaws, then his head ricocheted forward with the impact, his skull surrendering complete control to the hit.