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loxare · 8 years ago

Text

Harm

Chapter 4 - Alice in High Definition and an Aside

Sniping was a waiting game. And while he waited, he was texting a contractor. Normally, meeting with contractors was a face to face thing, but in Bludhaven, a reclusive property owner could get anything he wanted, for the right price. Of course, he had also hired overseers, people to ensure the contractor didn't do a mediocre job and pocket the profits.

His target, one Johnny Grey, wasn't a drug lord or murderer or any of his usual targets. No, he was just an animal smuggler. He smuggled cats and dogs across the border, surgically implanted with certain chemicals that, when combined, formed compounds explosive enough to take out a major shopping center.

Fortunately, Grey was incredibly suspicious of his underlings, something Red Hood had been working on for a few months. As such, no one but Grey knew the names of the buyers, or who was stuffing small animals full of volatile chemicals. The entire organization literally relied on Grey to continue breathing. Unfortunately, he was about to disappoint a whole lot of people.

But first he had to show up. There was an exchange tonight, Grey paying off a harbormaster to maybe not look too closely at the animals the next ship was bringing in, and Red Hood had gotten here a whole hour early.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes. Ten minutes to kill and the contractor hadn't texted him back yet, so he had nothing to do. Without his permission, his mind started wandering back to his confrontation with Nightwing.

Pulling out his rifle, he started prepping it. “Who does he think he is?” The action opened with a click and he took a look down the barrel to make sure nothing was in it. “Family? Yeah right.” The magazine went in and the action closed with another series of clicks. “Why can't they all just leave me alone?” He laid down on the rooftop, lining up his sights. Red Hood sighed. He was going after a stuffed animal smuggler. Dangerous stuffed animals, but still. Not much choice though; all of the worst crooks were either fled or dead. Pretty soon, he would have no job.

By the time Grey and his posse showed up, he was very much ready to shoot some people. And he did. “Screw you Grayson.” Headshot. “I hope you get scurvy.” Knee, then headshot. “Get scurvy and all your perfect little teeth can fall out.” Knee, knee, elbow, shoulder, lung. “Fucking Nightwing.”

“Momma says that's a bad word and if I say it, she'll wash out my mouth.”

Immediately, Jason's rifle pointed straight up into the air. He rolled into a sitting position, staring at the little girl behind him. “And she's absolutely right. Swearing is a bad habit. Use big words, so whoever you're mad at feels like an idiot.”

She was about six, and wearing bunny pajamas. “Really? That works?”

“Yup.” Jason walked away from the edge of the roof and started putting his rifle away. She turned so she could keep facing him and, thankfully, not facing the horror show on the docks. “Plus stuff like malodorous dunce is just fun to say. What's your name?” He pulled off his helmet and started stashing his rifle.

“Alice. And Tammy said you ask if we need help, but I don't. I just wanted to say hi.” She rocked back on her heels and smiled at him, the tiny kid's purse at her side smacking into her thigh.

Jason smiled. Magazine out and away, eject round from chamber. “Hi Alice. Come on, let's get you home, before the angry men down there call for help.”

Alice nodded, holding her arms out in the universal sign for “carry me”. So Jason swung her up onto his shoulders, making sure the rifle slung across his back wasn't poking her, and handed her his helmet to carry.

She lived in an apartment building across the street, one he had considered for sniping on top of, but decided the pigeon wire would get in the way. And also really hurt. He couldn't really swing to her fire escape, not without risking dropping her, so he started climbing down his fire escape. “So Alice, how are you doing in school?”

“Not great. They keep talking about boring stuff like shapes and numbers and I just want to play outside.” She was using his head to balance his helmet on, and she kept turning it. “The thoranist said that I might have attention defo... defin...” She huffed in frustration.

“The therapist said you might have attention deficit disorder?” Jason guessed.

“No, there was another word in there.”

Ah. “Hyperactivity. It might be easier if you just call it ADHD.”

She gave out another frustrated huff. “Why couldn't he just call it that then? That's a lot easier to remember. And hey, what's that thing you said earlier mean?”

“Malodorous dunce? It means stinky dumdum. If you want, I can write it down for you.” They'd reached the bottom of the fire escape, Jason grabbing both of her ankles with one hand so he could climb the ladder. She grabbed his hair so she could hold on better.

Once they were at the bottom and starting across the street, she released his hair and went back to playing with his helmet. “Yes please. I wanna call the therapin that next time I have to go see him. I think he's right because a lot of stuff he said ADHD people have is stuff I have, but he's also a stinky dumdum and I don't like him.”

Jason laughed. “Yeah, people who are right all the time are like that.” Pulling out his grapple, he used it to grab the ladder to her fire escape and bring it down. “Hold on again Alice.”

She did, and they scaled the ladder. “Yeah. And! He said I need pills to focus in class, but then I saw Mom and Dad looking at the bills and being sad. So I don't think we can afford it.” There was a squeaking noise coming from somewhere.

Jason hummed, thinking. “Maybe... ask your Mom or Dad if they'll quiz you when you get home from school. But while they do, play a game. Catch or something. That might help it stick better.” He'd try and see what he could do about their money troubles. Jason had a thing about drugs, understandably, but something like Ritalin could help Alice focus in school, so he'd help out. After he made sure she did have ADHD and it wasn't just some crack shrink who diagnosed every kid because they had energy.

Alice laughed, swinging her legs as much as she was able with him holding her ankles. “That's a good idea Red! Thanks! Oh, and this is my window! Um. I decorated your helmet.”

Confused, Jason set her on the fire escape in front of him and yup. It was decorated alright. There was an empty sticker sheet in her hand, probably one she had kept in her purse. The stickers, a variety of star, butterfly, car, dinosaur and heart ones, were all over his helmet, as well as some drawings of dogs and cats in sharpie. Also, a drawing of Jason's helmet. On his helmet.

“I love it!” Jason said honestly. “But I don't want it to get damaged when I'm working.”

Alice nodded solemnly. “Yeah. This is art and Daddy says that art should be protected.”

“Protected but seen.” Jason added, and she nodded again. “I'll put a picture of it on the website. Sounds good?”

“Yes! Goodnight Red!” He wrote malodorous dunce on the back of her sticker sheet, as well as a few other insults. Then, she climbed in through her window and bounced into her bed. Jason smiled, put on his newly decorated helmet and grappled away.

On the RedKids website, the user Red added another photo to his profile page, for a grand total of two. The first one, uploaded a month ago, was of a cast, covered in names and drawings in a rainbow of permanent marker ink, leaving almost none of the original white visible. The comments on it were of kids claiming them as their own. The second, and newest, was of a shelf, and on the shelf was a interestingly decorated Red Hood helmet.

When he realized he was chewing on the inside of his cheek, Dick stopped, firmly pressing his teeth together. It was a really bad habit, one that could lead to him biting the inside of his mouth really badly, especially if he was in a fight, but it's one he had never been able to shake. Luckily, it only came up if he was particularly conflicted.

Because Jason was a murderer. And that wasn't ever something he could excuse. But was Dick any better? He had let Tarantula shoot Blockbuster. Then again, not stopping someone from shooting someone else was a lot different than the murder and torture and general bloodbath that Jason was causing in Bludhaven. Wasn't it?

No, it was. And besides, comparing their situations wasn't fair or right. Dick had been emotionally devastated for weeks, months, after the incident. Dick had seen Jason, looked into his eyes, and Jason didn't regret a thing. The kid he had seen as a little brother had died and come back a sociopath.

Maybe Jason was right about one thing though. Dick hadn't seen him as a brother, not when he'd been alive. It had only been regret and melancholy that had him remembering it differently. And guilt. Which was the entire reason he was trying so hard with Tim. Not just because Tim was a great kid, but also because if something happened, he didn't want the survivor to be left with no good memories. Which was a morbid way of thinking, but kind of necessary in his line of work.

Jason had threatened Tim. Tim was safe for now (as safe as one could be on a deep space mission with his team) but as soon as he got back, he'd have to be told that Jason was dangerous. Because he didn't know. Because he'd told Dick that Jason was alive and then blasted off in a rocket with the Teen Titans. Because he had been so excited to meet Jason he would have skipped the mission if it wasn't galaxy-saving.

And Dick was chewing his cheek again.

“Again.” Bruce said in that tone he used when he doesn't want to demand but he's also not asking.

Dick's lip curled into a snarl. He was getting tired of this. “We go over it every time I visit Bruce. Do we have to do it again?” Bruce just leveled a flat stare at him. “Fine! Jason looked older. About the age he would be if he had never died. Massive. Almost as tall as you, with muscles to match.” More muscles than Dick anyways. But Dick tried to keep on the lean side so he could continue his acrobatics. “His gear was as good as it could be without access to our resources. The grapple gun was definitely a few generations down, so he probably built it himself from memory. Didn't see his eyes, he had a domino under his helmet. And he'd dyed some of his hair green and blue and pink.” An odd choice, not one the Jason he'd know would ever make.

Bruce took all that in, changing his report by a word or two. “Anything else?”

“What does it matter?” Dick stood abruptly, his chair crashing to the ground behind him. “Jason is dead, and a serial killer came back in his place! We should just go and take him down before he hurts anyone else!”

Standing slower than Dick had, Bruce saved and minimized the file he had on Jason, revealing the rather large graph in the window behind it. For all they two of them had been working around the clock to figure out a way to arrest him without him spilling their identities, it was a pitifully small file. And while neither of them had ever though their identities would come under threat from someone in the family, they also hadn't thought someone in the family would become what Jason has become. “It matters Dick. You should know more than anyone, the more information you have on someone, the more power you hold over them.”

Dick flinched. Either that was a reminder of his lessons of when he was a Robin, or it was a reminder of what had happened when Blockbuster found out who Nightwing was. “And the more time we sit down here, the more people die. He killed six people in the past two days Bruce. And tomorrow, it could be a dozen, or a hundred, and you would be down here twiddling your thumbs and trying to get information that doesn't exist!” Better to leave now then to let them continue pushing each other's buttons. Better to leave now than after one of them punched the other. With a sharp wave, Dick stalked over to his motorcycle and roared out of the Cave.

Bruce watched Dick leave sadly. He wished things were different. He wanted to be able to have a conversation with his son without one of them stomping off mad or coming to blows. But they had made up before and they would again.

He sat down again and looked at the graph on the screen. Either Dick didn't see it or he chose to ignore it. It was a murders in Bludhaven versus time graph, and if a criminal psychologist saw it they would swoon.

The first few months of data had been gone over so many time that Bruce could probably draw it free hand from memory. It's while Jason is in hospital that things get interesting. A week of nothing, then the murders spike. Overlaid with a violent crime graph and a drug related crime graph, and it's easy to see that the crooks of Bludhaven are running wild. The numbers rival the ones from the first month, the ones Bruce suspected were Jason's alone. But where Jason had tapered off, become much less violent in the months following handing out his cell phone number, the criminals of Bludhaven kept the numbers high.

The night Dick had gone to Bludhaven there was one murder that was confirmed to be Jason's. After that there was chaos. Murder went up drastically, violent and drug related crimes plummeted. Reports naming Red Hood as the shooter skyrocketed, more than there ever had before. But within two weeks, Jason settled down and went back to his pre-hospital numbers. A jump every week or so when he took out a gang, but he didn't kill every member.

Bruce sat with his elbows on the console, fingers laced under his nose, staring at the data. Specifically, the spike. Was Red Hood making up for time lost, killing the criminals who had rampaged in his absence? Or was it because Dick had come to Bludhaven? How stable was Jason? Most non-specific methods of resurrection messed with the mind. Magic either left the resurrected a zombie, slave to the whims of the resurrector, or neglected to revive the soul, leaving the resurrected a fraction of a person.

And he couldn't really think of another way for Jason to have been revived, not without triggering the sensors on his coffin. The only reason they didn't go off was because Jason came back to life inside his coffin and dug his way out. Any sort of tech would have had to have been inside the coffin, either added later (not possible without tripping the alarm) or in the coffin before he was buried. The Lazarus Pit was a possibility, but again, one would need to get Jason out of the coffin to expose him to one. And all other methods of resurrection were specific to the person. Kryptonian birthing matrix, Spectre, escaping Tartarus, caught in an eternal cycle of birth and rebirth, et cetera.

With a huff that was as close as he got to a sigh, Bruce quickly checked the incoming reports from Bludhaven. One murder and sixteen assaults, five of which were critical, were attributed to Red Hood. The crime rate in Bludhaven had once again plummeted to where it had been before Superman decided to take matters into his own hands.

Dick was right in some things. This could never be excused. But Bruce would also never give up on the idea that he could someday bring Jason home. Under twenty-four hour watch and severe restrictions on his activities until he could be trusted again, but home.

For now though, Bruce pulled on his cowl and headed for the car. There was crime in Gotham that had to be stopped, and while Batman would never stoop to Jason's methods, he would also never give up on Gotham either.

AN: Hooray! Some of Dick and Bruce’s thoughts on the matter!

No news besides that. Read and enjoy! Loxie out~!

#Jason Todd #Red Hood #Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Loxie's fics

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