Chapter Text
The Joker was a slippery beast. Soon after escaping near-death at Jason’s hands, thanks to Deathstroke’s machinations, he disappeared into Gotham’s fog, like a nightmare. Again. Who would think the crazy clown, with a penchant for explosions and gunfire and dramatic fanfare, could manage to hide so well from the combined forces of all the vigilantes in Gotham?
Soon after, a flurry of bodies flooded the morgues, filling them to capacity with corpses missing heads, arms, and other unsavory parts, the ones that make men cringe in sympathy. The ME’s were kept busy with a rotating door of cold inmates, and the folks living day-to-day in Crime Alley slipped cautiously into a new normal. Red Hood, the villain who had burst onto the scene with a deadly entrance rivaling any of the Rogues, had turned out to be less of a villain than expected. Definitely not a hero, but not quite a villain either.
Red Hood had rules. Very clear-cut rules. Follow them, and you would live without fear. Break them, and any day might find you zipped in a black bag.
The nightly violence helped stave off the jitters that seeped into Jason’s muscles when he was still for too long, but it was not nearly enough to sate the gnawing hunger inside him. Jason’s frustrations with the lack of intel and the lack of Joker became so ingrained that he was starting to feel like a broken record. Kill the Joker, Kill the Joker, Kill the Joker.
Every goon, every trafficker, every drug dealer who sold to kids, their postmortem faces blurred together, painting them pale, stretching their lips in a bloody smile. Their deaths became Joker’s death, and he killed Joker every night, over, and over, and over again.
But until the real Joker died, Jason would have no peace.
Months passed and the worst of Crime Alley were purged from the streets. The days following Batman’s return were filled with blood and tension; not that the average Gothamite saw anything different than their caped crusader battling a deadly rogue. Though, Crime Alley fought for its new rogue, which was a strange change in pace. Red Hood had the glory of watching one of the ladies who worked the streets absolutely whammy Batman in the head with her purse and then yell at him for fighting the street’s champion.
Not long after, Batman and Red Hood fell into a flimsy truce. Tone down the killing, and in return, Batman wouldn’t shove his ass in Arkham. Not so much a truce, if you asked Jason, but when Tim broke into his safehouse with a powerpoint detailing just how much good Red Hood did for Crime Alley, and why his incarceration would lead to a deadly power vacuum, he didn’t have much choice but to accept the so-called “truce.”
The other reason he accepted the truce was that Jason couldn’t exactly hunt his prey from a cell. The Joker was out there, and though there were no bodies in the morgues that fit his M.O. it was only a matter of time.
Barbara scoured the cameras and set up algorithms to search for Joker or Deathstroke. Dick searched Joker’s usual haunts before returning to Bludhaven. Batman did what Batman always did. Handled more “priority” cases and left the search for the killer clown to everyone else. Jason had stuck his nose in the air at seeing the neutral look on Bruce’s face, and he hadn’t returned to the Batcave since.
Tim… Jason wasn’t actually sure what Tim did. After the clusterfuck at the theater, Jason had looked more into the new Robin’s tenure, reading up on some of the cases he’d cracked. He hadn’t spent much time learning anything about the new Robin other than the immediately relevant information, too caught up in his own vengeance to care, and too annoyed at the idea of his suit being shunted to the next kid on the block. Looking now, he could admit the kid did a good job. Plus, Tim had helped him by hacking Black Masks’ servers and retrieving the information in a few minutes, what took Jason an entire night and a lot of fighting to achieve.
Tim was the only one of the bats (excluding Barbara – especially now that she was becoming something more than a bat) to actively keep in touch with Jason.
Unfortunately, Tim’s version of ‘keeping in touch’ meant sending a slew of memes and random candids of Dick and Bruce fucking up. Not that Jason didn’t enjoy it. Who wouldn’t like waking up to find a picture of Bruce laying face down on the stairs, like he’d fallen and decided getting up was too much effort.
But Jason had been hoping Tim would offer his services to locating Joker, the same way he had previously. Could he ask the kid to help? Sure. Was he going to? Absolutely not. Jason was three years older, and like hell was he going to debase himself by asking for a literal child’s help (nonwithstanding that Tim was not technically a minor).
Then one morning it happened.
Jason woke up and there weren’t any messages from Tim. No memes. No video of Dick burning one of Alfred’s pans and whisper-screeching for Tim to save him before it’s too late. No pictures of disfigured corpses from case files with a ‘Dis you?’ attached to it. Nothing.
That was fine. Tim probably decided that texting Jason and constantly hunting down the number of the new burner phones he bought each week was too much effort. Even if Jason had given Tim the new number two nights ago, something that Tim made a big deal out of for no reason.
“You’re giving it to me? What’s the catch?”
“No catch, baby bird. Saves me a headache when you hunt down the number and remotely change the ringtone to something obnoxious and embarrass me in front of my lieutenants.”
“Oh, please, you love Avril Lavigne. Are you sure it’s not because I’m growing on you?” Tim teased with a shit-head grin.
“Do you want the number or not?”
Jason wasn’t worried. Noon came and passed. No word from Tim.
Jason opened the messages and typed out a ‘Food reminder fuckhead’ before hesitating. His fingers hovered over the screen. He’d never initiated a conversation before.
He deleted the message and tossed the phone to the couch, resolving to ignore it and leave it be. Just ignore that gut feeling that something was very wrong. Easy peasy. Not like his gut feeling had saved him countless of times on the streets or anything.
Jason cleaned his guns for the second time, making sure to really get in all the grooves.
That night, everyone seemed that much more antsy around him. Normally, drug dealers and thugs jumped out of his way when he did a street-level patrol to talk with the women and the street kids. Tonight, everyone seemed wary of him. Even the kids he talked with often enough to know how sassy and spit-on-authority they were, were careful to stay out of arms’ reach.
“What’s wrong?” Red Hood asked, the modulator hissing softly. The three children cowered, their knees knocking together.
“Ya scarin’em, Hood,” one of the street girls said, the same one who’d bludgeoned Batman. She hiked her purse higher on her shoulder, and Hood eyed it warily. According to Batman, she carried at least one brick in there. She lifted her chin staring defiantly at him.
“Scarin’ ‘em?”
“Yeah, yah got a kind of… energy ‘bout yah at the moment,” she said, waving a hand at his general figure. Jason blinked (hidden by the mask) and slowly rolled his shoulders. Tension he didn’t realize was hiding there ached as he loosened them. He let his posture sink into something less intimidating. A flash of relief spread over her features and she relaxed as well.
“I see. Thanks for letting me know,” Hood said. “Jus’ had some things on my plate today.”
The woman smiled and waved him off. “We’ve all had those days.”
After that, the kids let Jason escort them to a safe area. They seemed much happier to talk to him, now that he didn’t carry whatever ‘bad energy’ was tainting him earlier.
The first thing Jason did upon returning to his safehouse of the week was to check his phone. There were no new notifications, and Jason tossed all precaution to the wind.
Jason shoved some leftovers in the microwave and took a blurry picture of it. Send. He waited, staring at the messages. No read receipt. No bubbles for a return message. The microwave beeped loudly in the silent kitchen, startling him.
Tim will answer by the morning. The kid probably got benched for something stupid and didn’t tell him. Or he forgot to sleep for a couple days and spent the entire day in what sounded like a coma, but Tim assured is “perfectly normal.”
The next morning came. With it was the sound of a car backfiring outside his window, the jingle of an ice cream truck that had no business being in Gotham, and the soft plink, plink, plink, of the leaky faucet in the bathroom. There was a glaring lack of return messages or any kind of message from Tim.
He hazarded another text, this time of the backend of the ice cream truck as it reached the corner of the street outside his window.
When no response came through, Jason started a new message. This time, he put in a number that he memorized a while ago.
“Where’s Tim? Dumbass forgot something,” Jason texted. He didn’t mention that the thing forgotten was messaging Jason.
Barbara answered relatively quickly. “idk. U need his #?”
“Hes not answering.”
Bubbles appeared, then disappeared.
“in two days,” Jason elaborated.
“One sec.” was the response. Jason paced the room. Jason was a patient man. He had to be to slowly build his empire from the ground-up, working on systems that will not only stop the perpetrators seeking to do harm but also create safe places for people in need to get help. He’d spent months building a wall to pinpoint Joker’s whereabouts, and though his plans got sidelined at the end, he was more than ready to start again from square one. Every plan he’d ever made was the slow conclusion of patient data-gathering, analysis, and testing.
Even patient as he was, Jason struggled with this wait. Something about it felt more immediate. Like every second was one second too many. His fingers tingled with phantom memories of the nails being ripped off. He shook out his hands, willing the feeling to go away.
His phone rang. For a call. Not a text.
The pit in Jason’s stomach grew ten times.
“Babs?”
“He’s not at Wayne Manor or Drake Manor. His suit is missing from its place but none of the trackers are working.”
“His suit is missing? Have you called B?”
“No. I haven’t talked to him in weeks.”
“Me either. So what do we do? Was he kidnapped?”
“I’m not sure,” Barbara said, her voice tinged with frustration. “I’m running the CCTV for facial recognition right now. Hopefully it gets a hit back soon about him.”
“You haven’t heard anything about Tim being missing before now?” Jason asked.
“How would I? The bats only talk to me when they need me,” Barbara said. Jason winced as he reviewed his own behavior.
“We should start doing lunch every week,” Jason said. As he said it, the more excited he was at the prospect of regularly seeing the woman he viewed as a big sister.
“That sounds nice, Jay,” she said, a hint of a smile coming through her tone. “First, let’s find Tim. Ok, I got a ping on him. Thirty hours ago, he was on patrol in the Bowery. He went solo into a warehouse on 3rd and never came out. The cameras on the far side of the warehouse are busted, but his bike auto-piloted itself back to the cave. I’ve not no visuals of him after he goes in.”
“Can you back up the footage and see if we can find out who’s in there?”
“Scrubbing the previous forty-eight hours. Except a couple homeless men going in and leaving right after, there’s no trace of who was inside.”
“Is it sitting on top of an entrance to the underground? Or sewers or something?”
“It is on top of a sewer tunnel, but there shouldn’t be an opening in the building.”
“It’s possible the floor was busted through,” Jason pointed out.
“That’s true. But I don’t have eyes inside. You’ll have to go check it out.”
It took him twenty minutes to reach the warehouse in question. He was in and out in less than five.
The warehouse itself was empty. A couple smashed crates in the corner; some animal droppings, a heavy layer of dust, old bullet casings, and used needles littered the floor. The ground was intact, no connection to the sewers.
What got his attention was the message on the wall in front of him. Written in dark substance.
“I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Joker” A bloody smile underlined the message.
With shaking hands, Red Hood scraped some of the blood onto his gauntlet and let it run a quick analysis. Barbara, who was watching through his hood footage, sped up the analysis by lending her own processing power. It came back as Tim’s.
Great.
Jason went outside and puked in the dumpster. His skin burned like fire, itchy under his armor.
“Hood. I know this is a bad time to say this, but we need to loop in Batman and Nightwing,” Oracle said.
“Where the hell are they? How does Batman not know his own Robin is missing?”
Oracle was quiet for a moment and when she spoke, it was a hiss. “I don’t know. They would have called me about this. Batman is still in Gotham, and Nightwing is still in Haven, so I don’t know how they missed this.”
“If B can’t be bothered, then fuck ‘em,” Jason grunted. “We’ll find him. Me and you.”
Oracle hesitated. “If we don’t find him before Batman goes on patrol, we’re calling him in. I’m not risking Robin’s life.”
Jason looked at the sky, the sun was reaching its zenith. That gave him a solid half-day to find Tim.
He shut his eyes and concentrated. “Fine. The message-”
“It’s a bastardization of ‘I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice scream.’ I’ve started looking for ice cream shops nearby. Maybe there’s a connection there.”
Why had Jason been thinking about ice cream lately? “O, there was an ice cream truck on my street this morning. I think it might have passed by yesterday, too. Can you track it?”
He returned to his bike and headed back to his safehouse.
“I see it. The truck is called… oh my god, it’s called ‘Smile and ‘Scream Ice Cream.’ The mascot is a jester in purple.”
“Really hiding in plain sight. How did we miss this?”
“It looks like the truck popped into existence two days ago, no prior records. I’ve got it driving along the street behind the warehouse about two hours after Tim went in.”
“That’s it, then. Can we track down where it goes at night?”
Jason stood at the bottom of the spire, staring up at the tall tower with trepidation. Of course, the ice cream truck returned to good ole Amusement Mile at the end of the day. The spire in question was an old park ride called ‘Scream and Shout’ which was the type of ride to lift up the riders and then drop them straight down. The ice cream truck was parked at its base. The control booth was at the top of the tower, at least five stories in between the two.
Late afternoon sun turned the world around him golden. A summer shower had passed through, and his boots disturbed puddles along the cracked cement. Heat waves shimmered above the sidewalk, but despite the warmth and the heavy armor, Jason felt ice cold.
“We should loop the bats in,” Oracle said again. “This smells like a trap. I don’t like you going alone.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to face things head-on,” Jason said with false bravado. Oracle let out an unconvinced hum.
“You boys are so damn stubborn. You do realize that Robin went solo, and that’s what got him caught, just like you were two years ago. You know what they say about history? It repeats itself.”
Jason hung his head, as the reprimand struck. Barbara always knew what to say to knock sense into their heads.
“Do what you want, but I’m going in right now.”
“Batman is thirty minutes away. Stay safe for thirty minutes,” Oracle said.
Thirty minutes was a lot of time. Enough time for Joker to incapacitate Tim or Jason, enough time for the clown to escape the country, enough time for too many things to go wrong. Jason wasn’t about to turn around and twiddle his thumbs. Tim might be inside, facing any number of horrendous things.
Taking the stairs was asking to be spotted, so Red Hood did the sensible thing and scaled the side of the tower, picking the side that was backed by a strand of trees and hid him from ground view. The rusted metal scaffolding, half-hidden by ripped up and faded royal-purple tarp, was surprisingly sturdy.
In a few minutes, he reached the top. Glancing in the busted-out viewing window, he saw Robin. The kid, dressed in his suit, was propped up against the far wall, head drooping forward, body limp. He didn’t see anyone else, so Red Hood slipped inside. He ignored Oracle’s warning to be careful.
“Robin,” he whisper-yelled. The room was indeed empty, the door to the stairs was closed and locked.
Robin stirred and lifted his head. Blood coated half his face, and a piece of cloth was tied tight between his teeth. His arms were chained to the ground behind him. Robin’s eyes widened and he made frantic noises, feet scuffling as he tried to throw his body towards Red Hood in a panic.
“It’s ok, Robin, I’m here,” Red Hood assured, bringing a finger to where his lips would be outside of the helmet. “You have to be quiet, though.” He crept forward, the old, water-rotted wood under his feet groaned at his weight.
Robin didn’t seem reassured. He shook his head violently, body struggling against the chains, making them rattle. The metallic jangle set Jason’s nerves on fire. The unstable floor dipped and warped under Robin’s desperation, threatening to give way any second. His eyes were bloodshot through the domino, his nostrils flared wildly, and the cords in his neck stood out as he screamed hoarsely into the gag.
Jason tried to calm Robin down, but he refused to settle. Then Jason realized Robin’s eyes were fixated on something over his shoulder at the same time the gag came loose.
“BEHIND YOU!”
The blow landed on the back of his neck, right in the spot unprotected by his body armor. Next thing he knew, Jason was staring at the bloated wood grain pressing against his mask.
“Hello again, lamb chop,” Joker said, his laugh filling the small room. Pain bloomed on the back of Jason’s neck, and then another blow rained down on his head. The helmet cracked.
Someone screamed.
Jason’s senses were overwhelmed. The smell of rotted wood and blood. The echoing laugh, like a hammer in his brain. The rattle of chains that would not give, that trapped him, kept him pliant, left him vulnerable. His lungs filled with the smell of smoke, choking him as blood coated his tongue.
Starbursts of pain exploded around him, covering every inch of his skin with fire. He twitched and writhed, desperate for the flames to die out, to let him whole, please. God, please, it hurt.
“JASON!”
With a Herculean effort, Jason managed to look up. The Robin suit stared back at him. It was covered in blood. A dead boy in a suit, a suit that promised invincibility until the magic was shattered by a crowbar and a clown.
“Let him go,” Robin said. “I’ll go with you. I won’t fight. I’ll just go with you, Joker. If you let him go.”
“Ohohohoh, the little birdie is negotiating with me? How cute!” The Joker laughed.
“I’m being serious, Joker,” Robin said, his voice managing to stay steady.
“Serious? You’re being serious, with me? That is quite the punchline.”
“Do whatever you want to me, just let him go,” Robin said.
Jason groaned. His head was filled with cotton, and his body was weighted with lead. The world turned pink as blood dripped into his vision. Robin’s jaw was set with a determination that he shouldn’t have. Robin had no right to give his life up for Jason. This was just like the theater; the kid prepared at a moment’s notice to throw away his life for Jason. It’s not okay! No more dead Robins, dammit!
“Anything I want? Oh, come now, birdie, don’t be a water-foul. I like a dancing partner with fire.”
The laugh echoed, and Jason curled up on himself. He was on the floor. He couldn’t move his body. He couldn’t do anything. Footsteps danced around him, tapping against the wood floor like Joker was prancing around the room.
Jason was going to be nauseous.
There was a rattle of chains. When Jason managed to look up, he found Robin being led away.
“No, no, wait,” Jason slurred. “You can’t.” His tongue stuttered, too big for his mouth.
“It’s okay, Jay. It’s okay.”
“Listen to the boy, lamb chop. We had fun, me and you, but it’s time for me to move on. It’s not you, it’s… actually, it is you, HAHA.”
Jason scooted his body forward. Agony filled him, and the world turned watery.
“-say good-bye, ple-“
Voices faded in and out of Jason’s hearing. Then Robin was kneeling in front of him. “I’m sorry, Jason. But it’ll be okay, I promise.”
A hand pressed against Jason’s shoulder. A loud cry left him as fire licked the joint. A spike of pain flared as the shoulder was shoved back into place. Jason hadn’t even realized it was dislocated.
“Tim,” Jason said. He grabbed weakly at Tim’s hand, but the kid pried him off easily. He couldn’t see the Joker behind Tim, but he could hear the malevolent chuckles.
“I’m sorry, Jay.”
“NO.”
Jason’s other hand had snuck to his thigh holster. A loud BANG resounded around them, and a pained scream followed on its heels.
Jason hadn’t trained on guns, and precision hits, and anatomy for nothing. Even concussed and half blind, he knew where to hit to be fatal, and where to hit to minimize damage.
Blood pooled on the old wood.
Tim writhed on the floor; hands wrapped around his thigh. Wheezes escaped the kid as his body tangled with the unexpected agony coursing through him.
“That was strange. What did you go and do that for, lamb chop? Jealous that daddy Jokes was replacing you?” Joker propped himself across the doorway, framed menacingly in the dying sunlight.
“He can’t go with you now, Joker,” Jason grit out. He forced himself to make eye contact. A crazed smile spread over Joker’s face.
The gun shook in Jason’s hand. Not in fear, not in anger. Jason was nothing but calm as the muzzle aimed at the painted face. Anticipation tremored through him.
Before his fingers squeezed the trigger, a loud crack disturbed the tense atmosphere. The bullet Jason had shot through Tim’s thigh had buried itself in the weakened planks and destabilized the fragile system.
The weak floor of the control room gave out. Right where Joker was standing.
Loud shriek-laughs reached his ears before they cut short with a wet thud hundreds of feet below them.
“Tim,” Jason said. He pulled himself closer to where the kid was curled in a tight ball. “I’m sorry, Timbo, but we gotta go. The floor’s gonna give.”
He wedged himself under Tim’s arm, and they started to crawl across the floor away from the stairs and the gaping hole in the floor. They reached the window Jason entered through.
“Come on, baby bird. Just hop through the window. Here’s my grapple,” Jason panted. He unclipped the grappler from his waist and pressed it into Tim’s hands.
“Wha’ about you?”
“I’m right behind you, kid,” Jason said. Tim blinked at his face, uncertainty flickering over his features. “Come on, Timberlina, we don’t have all day. Grapple out, then send it back up for me.”
He pointedly ignored the hole getting larger, decades-old infrastructure finally crumbling to pieces.
Tim finally nodded. Slowly, he pulled himself up, putting his weight on his uninjured leg. The grappler whizzed and then Tim was gone.
The hole grew exponentially. The structure moaned against the night. Years of neglect had left it barely standing. Jason couldn’t tell if the tower was swaying or if the head trauma was making him dizzy.
There was a clink. The grappler hook bit into the window sill as Tim sent it back to him. Jason just had to get up and grapple to safety. Except his body protested every movement. His shoulder ached something fierce, and there had to be some broken bones in the mix. His hands were too weak to grip the sill; he scrabbled at the wall, uselessly. He tried. God, he tried.
The tower shuddered.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then it collapsed.
Bloated wood and rusted metal clamored as gravity took hold of the ride one last time. Jason shut his eyes, and let the weightlessness of free-falling pass through him. At least this time, Joker was dead. If he survived that fall, there was no way he would survive the entire tower falling on his head.
Jason let his eyes slip shut.
A few tears escaped.
Dead twice, before he even hit 25. Pathetic.
Jason grunted as his descent cut short. Strong arms looped around his body. The bat symbol stared him in the face.
“I’m not letting you down again, son.”