#this doesn't go for stories where he ditches his revenge quest because he realizes what he's actually been looking for is proof he's loved

[autisticrosewilson]

Every time I see a story, be it canon or fanfic, where Jason is like "wow my morals are kind of fucked up I should never kill again" I have to put it down, close the tab, ect. Because HE WOULD NOT FUCKING DO THAT. We're talking about Bruce's number one fan turned antagonist.

Do you not think he's maybe already considered such a thing?

The thing about Jason is that he's as devoted to his views and sense of justice as Bruce is, maybe with a little more flexibility (i.e. he's willing to temporarily stop killing if it's necessary for his overall goals where Bruce wouldn't be able to kill even if it would benefit everyone in the long run) and any run or story where he completely disregards his own moral compass and personal experience to follow Bruce's rules is just a disservice to his character.

His whole thing is that Batman's methods are ineffective and his unwillingness to either do what needs to be done or let someone else do so is a clear sign that he's not the hero Gotham needs. Jason genuinely believes everything he says about the system, and Bruce's ineffectiveness.

His crime lord era wasn't just a silly little thing he did to fuck with Bruce with the final confrontation as the REAL point of Under the Red Hood, he became a crime lord because he believed it was the best way he could help. The point of Red Hood is protecting Gotham, fucking with Bruce was just a bonus. Like the confrontation wasn't even initially planned, Jason haphazardly threw that at the end of his to-do list after he realized he couldn't just blow up the Batmobile.

Stop reducing Jason's motivations to "get Bruce's attention/make Bruce kill".

[bestwishes86]

Chapter 1 - The Extra Room

There is a common misconception about Hit Men. To be one you had to fit some almost mythical criteria. Anyone can be one, Suzie homemaker with two babies can pick up a ringing phone. Get a name and an address. Get a gun from the local supermarket and drive in that minivan to a location. Wait patiently for so and so to step out and shoot him in a place that causes enough blood loss to end his life. Then back to that modest two-story, bleach her hands so the gunpowder residue is gone. Check on her two babies that were sleeping safely, then get that notification. Her bank account received a deposit of more than zero.

There, little Suzie down the lane is a Hit Man. There isn’t an actual requirement to be one: unfortunately.

Kevin

Two men sit in a white Kia Hybrid a few meters away from a simple Greek revival home on Wisteria Lane in the town of Bakersfield, TX. It’s a little past ten at night and nothing is happening. They have been sitting for two hours in what Kevin Barton wished was silence. The sounds of skin slapping skin of a porno playing on the oversized smartphone of his partner in crime Fish was driving him out of his fucking mind. He a twenty-two-year-old man with pale skin, short spikey dark hair and baby fat rounded face was doing his best to ignore it. But his forty-two-year-old mentor was determined to break his concentration. So he just focused his attention on the lights in the home coming on one by one as a person moved from room to room.

The two had met years ago when Fish had been dating his mother, Glenda. Kevin had been a small, unruly teenager back then. Smoking cigarettes, staying out late, mad at the world with little faith in humanity. Fish had noticed one day that he was reading a book by Keats and stared at him. It had gone on until Kevin could not ignore the blue eyes on him and looked up. Fish, a tall lean man with wild salt and pepper curls that frames his sun-kissed golden skin with its wrinkles around his eyes watched him. Fish always wore a button down and slacks though for the life of him, Kevin had no idea what Fish did for a living.

“Do you need something, my mom is in another room?” Kevin asked before turning the page.

“Why did you do that?” Fish asked, looking thoughtful. His long eyebrows raised in confusion.

“You turned the page before you finished it, ” Fish said to the silence that Kevin responded with.

“An international sign for ”Fuck Off”, ” Kevin had stated in response. Fish chuckled but walked out of the brightly lit living room.

Glenda, a short dark-haired woman with a swimmer's body worked as a nurse at the local hospital and loved her son. But they had reached Kevin’s teenage years so their relationship was strained. She couldn’t understand him and he didn’t want her to. But Fish was their bridge it seemed. Everything he did. Fish knew and reported back to his mother. It became annoying to Kevin as conversations happened against his will. A box of condoms appeared in his sock drawer when he started staying over at friends’ homes. Little things that showed someone was paying attention to him.

Fish rarely spoke to him directly but he never missed anything important to Kevin. High school permission slips for field trips had his mother’s signatures on them. They sat in the key bowl on the Deacon Bench by the front door when needed. Or when there was a parent teacher conference and Glenda had work, he would go. He listened to tired adults explain how they thought Kevin worked. It was frustrating hearing their condemnation. But Fish listened and then responded, explaining Kevin’s motivations and more than once pointing out when he felt a teacher was overstepping their role in Kevin’s life.

Kevin like most people his age, accepted this in a way someone accepts a new brother or sister. He had never met his father, so Fish’s presence in his life just was. As he leveled out at 17 years old, he accepted Fish’s invites to movies he felt Kevin would enjoy. They took trips with Glenda to local places in their small Texas town and even drove up to Dallas. At some point, Kevin realized from his place in the back seat that his family was whole.

Glenda had been working late when a beautiful woman in a nurses outfit she had never seen pulled a small handgun from beneath her cupboard. The silencer made the gun seem larger as a bullet tore through skin and bone and burst through Glenda’s heart. The woman walked on as if she had not just shot someone in the chest. She slipped the gun into a trash can as she moved to the elevator.

Kevin and Fish had been in the small cluttered kitchen making lasagna when the wall phone rang. Kevin had been talking about a girl who was a friend and not his girlfriend while Fish had been laying the home made strips of pasta. The ringing had cut through the uproarous conversation like a hot knife through butter. Kevin had rushed to answer it in case it was Tiffany. He had stolen her Geometry book when they had been together an hour ago. It was his plan for her to call and he would walk it over. He would get a kiss at least or die trying.

The call had not been from Tiffany, but from the police informing them of the shooting. The pair of men had grabbed their coats and were out the door in no time. The winter chill had come to Texas harsher than most years that year. Kevin had mumbled about mistakes, that someone else could have been shot from where he sat in the passenger seat. While Fish had been silent, his eyes forward but his mind somewhere else. Somewhere dark and cold, he had retired from his former line of work because Glenda had asked him to. But as they came to the hospital with it’s brightly lit entry way colored in reds and blues of flashing police lights, Fish felt that coldness creep into his soul. He told Kevin to go on inside and he was going to park the car. Which wasn’t a lie, he just had a call to make first.

Kristine Chapman was and is a handler. Her job is a finder of jobs and for people to perform them. When Fish had been discharged from the Army she had appeared on his doorstep. Dressed in a white skirt that showed her long shapely legs in a set of ruby red pumps. Fish had followed the pearl white legs to the form fitting white skirt and up to the large black leather belt there only for appearance and then higher to the magenta blouse of silk. She wore no jewelry but none was needed as he looked at her half halo face and the simple blonde curls, styled to fall over one eye from beneath a round black hat. Her red lips smiled at him and he knew nothing good would come from her presence in his life. A decade later he wasn’t wrong.

“Why?” he asked as he sat in the car with his eyes on the police cars.

“Why what?” Kristine answered, her strong voice making his blood boil.

“Nothing happens in Texas unless you sanction it. So let's not pretend either of us are dumb.” he barked into the phone.

“I still have no idea what you're talking about or why after nearly a decade you’re calling me.” Kristine said as she paused the episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” and looked at the image of Patrick Dempsey on her large television.

“So if I go in there and see my girlfriend’s body there won’t be any sign of a hit.” he said it as a statement.

“A multimillion dollar company choosing to expend numerous resources to track you down and kill...not you, but a homemaker? That doesn't sound like something I would do.” Kristine said though it was in fact what she had done. She hung up and pressed play and Meridth stepped into the elevator with Derek. Kristine smiled to herself and waited, for a second call.

Kevin had been crestfallen with the news it had not been a mistake and his mother was in fact gone. Fish had held him as the boy cried against his flannel shirt. In his mind he ran through so many possibilities. Ditching Kevin and going on a one man revenge quest seems entirely impossible. The boy was like a son to him, there was no way to just leave him. So he had let him grieve, watched Kevin invite his bestfriend Eben Barzuk to their home. Tiffany had come as well and the trio stayed close to one another as the two strangers to him had tried to help ease Kevin through the process of grief.

It wasn’t until the body of Glenda Barton was buried and he stood beside the young man that Fish explained who he was and what he used to do. Kevin had been shocked as Fish explained how hits worked and his plan for revenge. It had taken one year for Kevin to learn to shoot a gun, the location of pressure points and which could stop blood flow. He had watched the teenager recede into himself as this happened. There was no teenage wants left by the time he had broke Kevin of any of that shit. Eben had been like shit on a shoe with how much effort it had taken to get the young man out of Kevin’s thoughts. But finally it had been done.

Together they took a plane to Arizona where it seemed to always be sunny and went out into the desert in a rental car and saw Kristine together. She had answered the door of a square White House out in the middle of nowhere with a pearl handled gun and invited them in. Kevin had been a bundle of nerves at the sight of the beautiful woman who guardly let them in. Fish did the talking and soon both were employed by Kristine. Four years later and here they sat waiting for Marvin Gutierrez to finally settle on a place to die in his home.

The guttural moaning of men rutting snapped Kevin’s focus like a thin tree branch. He glanced at Fish who was looking at him. Fish silently studied Kevin as the gay porn continued to illuminate their features. Kevin’s storm cloud gray eyes looked at the video of two buff men slamming into one another like they were wrestling but the movement was repeated over and over and over.

“You need some more attention training Kev, also do we need to have a talk about boys?” Fish asked, a smile on those thin lips framed by stubble. Kevin felt his face grow heated as he turned back to the house.

“No and hell the fuck no. Now let's go, ” Kevin said getting out of the car. He closed the door quietly, his psyche stilling as he focused on the layout of the home. Before every job they both looked at the blue prints of where the kill would happen. It wasn’t until they could draw them from memory that they reached the next stage of planning. Which was the most effective ways to kill their target. Kevin had been naive in the beginning and believed guns were best. Soon he knew better, a bullet doesn't always put someone down. Sometimes adrenaline running through a body can give them more time on their feet to get at him. Or raise alarms and things got more messy very quickly.

He opens the trunk and looks around the different containers of their weapons cache. Fish came round and instead of grabbing things just watched him pick. Kevin chose a modified Browning handgun, a silencer, two knives and a flash bomb.

“Interesting.” Fish said offhandedly and Kevin groaned. After year's of doing this he had come to learn many of Fish’s idiosyncrasies. This was his disappointment ‘Interesting’.

“What would you pick, ” Kevin asked with an annoyed tone.

“A gun, a knife.” Fish said. Kevin put everything back and grabbed the gun, silencer, and a switchblade and closed the trunk. They had the cover of night around them, dressed in black shirts and slacks the pair make their way down the street to the home. Days of survelilance had taught them Marvin’s schedule so they knew he was starting dinner. Scaling the wooden fence thanks to their leather gloves and tread safe shoes, they drop soundlessly into his backyard. Kevin breaks away from Fish and slips into a side window left open for a breeze to pass through the home.

Fish had taken Kevin on a tour of the home while Marvin was at work. So he knew that though the floor was wooden it still made noises in certain places. Fish came through the living room through his own window on the other side of the home. Using sign language the two communicated doing a sweep of the bottom floor before going for Marvin. Fish went back the way he came and Kevin creeped left down the hallway. As he moved he checked the two rooms on his side. A library and a guest room were both empty. He used to think the two should wear masks, but Fish explained that so many options could occur in the space of 30 seconds based off what the victim interpreted.

The psychology of a intended target went back to association. Many saw a person in a mask and instantly think robber. Which gives them the illusion of having a fighting chance. If they see a person bold enough not to wear a mask, there mind would try and place the face in their memories. During that time of uncertainty, he was instructed to strike. Walking along the halls he saw the authentic Spanish paintings on the walls in ornate polished wooden frames behind glass. Kevin used their reflections from the glass of the frame to see if anyone was in rooms as he checked each. He came to the kitchen and looked around but didn’t see Fish. Confused but confident, he pushed open the door silently.

A bullet whizzed past his cheek, Kevin dived to the right as a second struck the doorframe where he had been seconds before. Taking cover behind the island he scrambled to his right as Marvin came around the island. Kevin dived forward rolling under the metal dining table and rising lifted it off the ground and slammed it down so it was vertical as plates of food crashed to the ground. Another bullet slammed into the metal and Kevin gritted his teeth against the force of it shaking the metal table.

“Where the hell is Fish!?”Kevin thought as he unholstered his own gun and waited. He thumbed off the safety and breathed. But there was a silence in the kitchen, he raised his head a bit and saw the room was empty save for him.

“Fuck!” He shouted as he rose to his feet and with his gun raised walked the length of the kitchen. A feeling of unease settled between his shoulders as he inched out into the hallway. In the space of two minutes Marvin could be anywhere in the home. He hadn’t heard a door open or close so he guessed Marvin had taken cover in the living room and was on a phone to the police but there was no sound of sirens in the distance. A crash of breaking glass came from further back in the home and he thundered towards it. His feet pounding the ground as he moved into the lit living room. Marvin had smashed the glass of a window and was attempting to get out that way but Kevin squeezes the trigger.

With a loud pop a bullet tore into the flesh of Marvin’s left leg. The large man in a brown suit shook half out of the window. With a cry Marvin fell to the wooden floor and rolled on his back and fired a shot at Kevin who had already taken cover behind the couch. He lay on the ground and shot again using the view of Marvin through the space between the floor and couch bottom. The bullet caught Marvin in the side. Standing, Kevin rounded the couch and shot Marvin in chest and the shaking body went still.

“Way to fuck this up royally,” Fish’s stern voice said from behind him and Kevin felt bile touch his tongue as he turned to look at his mentor leaning against the wall.

“Where the hell were you?!” Kevin’s demanded to know. This wasn’t how they worked, they were a team. Neither went lone Wolf on a job. It was Fish’s rule.

“I found a room not on the blueprints and thought it was a panic room. At the sound of gunshots I figured you would have missed and was waiting for him there.” Fish explained folding his arms over his chest indignantly.

“That doesn’t make sense.” Kevin said confused as he looked at Marvin who lay in his blood, eyes closed.

“What do you mean?” Fish asked stepping up next to him.

“If he had a panic room why try for a window to escape from?” Kevin murmured looking at the broken glass. He walked up to it and tried to lift the window, but it wouldn’t budge.

“C’mere I’ll show you the room.” Fish said, together they walked to the hall and down to what the blueprints had shown to be a closet. But when Kevin opened the door it led a few feet back to another door that had been obscured by hanging jackets. Kevin opened the second door and his eyes widened. There on shelves were pink plastic wrapped bags of marijuana and cocaine illuminated by an uncovered light. Each a foot by a foot in size. The two walked on back to a simple black safe with a spinning dial lock.

“Think you can crack it open?” Fish asked, out of the two of them Kevin was the lock pick.

“We should go.” Kevin said shaking his head.

“Why?” Fish replied flatly.

“The intel was wrong, Marvin was waiting for me in the kitchen, the millions here in drugs? Its obvious this is not a simple bookie. This is a drug dealer,” Kevin stammered that sense of unease turning to dread and his stomach twisted as anxiety set in.

“More reason to open the safe and take what’s inside,” Fish said patting Kevin on the shoulder. Kevin had to admit he didn’t dislike that logic, if the drugs weren’t in lock and key but the safe was then that meant there was something better in it.

Crouching in front of it, Kevin pressed his ear to the cool metal and tried different combinations. He listened for the pins to align. He worked hastily, his mind on how long it would take for a neighbor to report the gunshots. His forehead beaded with sweat as he continued to focus only on the lock. Fish waited, listening out for anything that could halt the process. Finally with a click the lock opened and the door swung open revealing stacks of cash.

“Holy…” Kevin whispered as he looked. There among the stacks were two photos and a stack of passports. He picked up the photos and stepped back. Fish busied himself grabbing the cash and putting it in a plastic garbage bag and Kevin knew he should wonder where the bag had come from but instead he was more interested in the photos. One was of his mother smiling at someone. The photo was curling at the edges with age and seeing it made Kevin’s heart hurt, the other was a Polaroid of a smiling bearded man in a white t-shirt. The man had olive skin with large brown eyes, his dark hair was straight and curly at the same time. He grinned broadly while gesturing at a shinny new car.

“Hey space cadet, we gotta go, grab a bag.” Fish shouted snapping Kevin back to reality as the sound of sirens in the distance finally reached his awareness. Kevin shoved the photos in his pocket and grabbed one of two heavy garbage bags. Together they moved away from the room, Kevin closed the door to the sad end then the room’s door as they moved. As they swiftly moved through the house the feeling of dread opened up in him as if a cavern he was falling into.