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He heard the news within an hour of getting back into Gotham.
The Joker had escaped from Arkham. Again. Several days ago, if the feel on the street was anything to go by. Everyone was tense, anxious. Even the enforcers, dealers and pimps were keeping a low profile. Given that it had been nearly five days since Joker had escaped and no one had heard or seen him?
Yeah...
Red Hood didn’t blame them.
He was contemplating just turning back around and getting the hell out of Gotham when he noticed the number of Bats running around the city.
While not exactly unusual per say, he knew for a fact that Orphan was supposed to be in Taipei. And Red Robin was meant to be on assignment with the Teen Titans. And Batwoman should have been out with a pair of broken ribs and broken wrist. And Huntress had been called to Europe as a favor for her former Spyral pals.
What were they all doing flitting about the streets of Gotham?
So, he stuck around.
Listening and watching and keeping out of their sights, he observed their near frantic actions over the next two days. Batman was a terror – more so than usual – and there had been more than one occasion where Red Hood thought the old man was going to let his Demon Spawn actually kill a few of the criminals that were stupid enough to be out.
It was nearing midnight on his third night of watching them, eight full days with no sight or sound from the Joker, when a cold knot began to form in his gut as his mind finally connected something he had overlooked.
There was no sign of Nightwing.
Not in Gotham. Not in Blüdhaven. Not in New York.
His brother predecessor was nowhere to be found.
And hadn’t been for almost a week.
He felt the bile burning at the back of his throat as he put the pieces together.
Joker had the first Robin.
It didn’t take long after that realization for him to give in to the temptation and hack into the Bat’s comm signal. He didn’t talk to them – didn't want them telling the black sheep of the family to stay out of it – just listened to their reports and updates. After a few hours he had a general idea of where they had searched, but none of them knew the darker corners of the Joker’s mind like Red Hood did.
Not even Batman.
You can’t be tortured over a period of days by someone, and then murdered by them, without getting to know what motivated them.
Joker wanted to push Batman to crossing that line. To become like the Joker. It had nearly happened when Joker had killed Red Hood when he had been Robin. Batman had apparently gone on a rampage when he couldn’t touch Joker due to diplomatic immunity. For a while, from what Red Hood learned after the fact, he could barely tell friend from foe some days. It got so bad that when Joker resurfaced in a very Joker-esque way, Batman put him in a body cast and had Joker getting his food via eating-tube for nearly a year.
Still, Joker remained on the living side of the dirt, so it wasn’t enough.
Joker hadn’t won.
The game continued.
For far too many years, the pair of them had played this game. How far could the Joker go before Batman would finally give in to that darkness and snuff the clown? Robin’s murder hadn’t done it. But then, Red Hood always believed Joker had picked the wrong Robin.
And apparently, the Joker had figured that out this time around.
Because Batman was getting worse.
As the minutes became hours and then days, Red Hood could see the man’s control slipping.
All of them were.
He could see it in their actions, hear it in their voices.
Feel it in the way the night was feared more than it had ever been.
It was now nearing the two-week mark since Joker’s escape and the demented clown had still not made his move. Ten days since Nightwing was last heard from. Gotham was on the razors edge as every man, woman, and child waited for the hammer to fall.
“It’s been too long.” Tim said that night across the comm as he was once again searching the Bowery. “At this point he’s probably-”
“Don’t.” Helena snapped. She was across the river in Blüdhaven patrolling in Nightwing’s absence. “Wing’s not about to let that bastard do what dozens of others have tried and failed to do.”
“He’s right though.” Kate said a moment later from where she had just finished interrogating a former member of Joker’s crew for the third time in as many days. “After what happened the last time that he and Joker tangled...”
What happened last time? When was that?
“What he did to Red Hood is going to pale in comparison.” Helena agreed. “Joker killed him after only two days. It’s been ten. Even if Wing’s alive-”
“He’s alive. Joker will drag it out as much as he can.” Barbara’s voice was taught with worry as she monitored everything from the Clock tower. “And then he’ll want us watching... he’ll want to make a big show of killing the one that killed him.”
Wait... what!?
“I know why he did it,” Tim sighed. “But I’ve never wished Batman hadn't revived Joker more than I do right now.”
… oh.
Well, Fuck!
“Enough.” Batman’s voice (there was no Bruce tonight, only the Bat) snapped across the line, effectively silencing all chatter.
But it didn’t matter. Jason had heard more than enough.
Apparently, his death hadn’t gone as unavenged as he had believed.
It also explained the distance between Bruce and Dick that hadn’t existed before. Before Jason died, even when they had fought, even when Bruce had kicked Dick out, there had been an undeniable connection between the pair. But when he’d come back? Sure, they still worked together, but Batman was colder to Nightwing than he was to a lot of the League members. It hadn’t made any sense.
Until now.
Nightwing had broken Batman’s number one rule: don't kill.
Hopping onto his cycle, there was new urgency to finding the missing Bird. There had been a few locations across the city that he had intended to look, a few informants to questions, but they had been done in the earliest days of Joker’s escape and again when Batman had noted that Nightwing was missing. Red Hood had dismissed the idea of searching and questioning them as redundant, but now he didn’t care. Red Hood’s gut was telling him that he needed to find his brother predecessor before sunrise.
Otherwise, they’d be finding his corpse.
Hours later, he was pissed off. (It was better that than letting the growing fear through.)
The crooks and thugs he questioned had no new information. Nothing on Joker’s whereabout. Honestly, they were as terrified as the rest of the city. Even the threat of ending up on Red Hood’s shit list couldn’t get anything from them.
He was heading for the Ace Chemical’s storage facility, a few miles north of the Archie Goodwin International Airport, when he heard the bulletin across the police scanner in his helmet. He slowed down the bike as he listened to the update that Joker had just turned himself in at GCPD headquarters. Glancing back toward the city center over his shoulder, Red Hood could see Batman’s signal casting across the sky. Listening to the clan all heading for the Precinct, he nearly turned the bike around when the sick feeling he’d had all night screamed at him to keep going.
This is what he wanted.
Joker wouldn’t have shown himself now if he wasn’t ready for the big reveal. He wanted them all – wanted Batman – front and center when he pulled back the curtain. Nightwing wasn’t dead, not yet. But Red Hood knew, without a doubt, that he would be within the hour. Gunning his bike to its limits, he could only pray hope that he was heading to the right location. He was far enough from the city that he’d never make it anywhere else before his gut was telling him it would be too late.
As soon as he turned the cycle onto the gravel road that led to the facility, he knew he was on the right trail. There were no guards at the entrance, the security lights had all gone dark, and there was an oppressive atmosphere surrounding the building. It felt like pain and suffering.
Like death.
Inside was no better. Although he did find the guards. Their bodies were days old, rotted and decomposing and filling the air with a smell that would have had him doubling over if not for the filters on his helmet. He spared the corpses a long enough thought to make sure Nightwing wasn’t among them before pressing on.
He found him in the center of the compound. Naked and chained on his knees, arms stretched out to either side, his chest pressed against the metal of a chain-link cage that contained dozens of barrels of hazardous chemicals. Eyes were closed and there was no movement from the man when Red Hood started running for him.
Nightwing...
No.
Dick.
The mask was gone.
Not that it mattered. The older hero’s face was unrecognizable as Dick Grayson. Bruises and swelling, cuts and burns; Jason felt the bile rising the closer he came to the man and saw the blood-soaked fabric of the gag silencing him pulled beyond the lips and into the slices at both corners of his mouth.
The left hand was missing two fingers, the right three, and those that remained were obviously broken and missing the fingernails. Both of the man’s feet were purple and swollen grotesquely, and several of the toes had begun to turn a rancid greenish black. Both shoulders had been dislocated to stretch his arms out unnaturally.
There wasn’t an inch of the man that wasn’t stained with blood.
His back was a tapestry of pain. What appeared to be raised welts from a whip were interlaced with oozing and infected knife wounds. Caricatures and words were carved into the flesh from shoulder to waist, including the words 'JOKER WUZ HERE’ sliced across Dick’s lower back. His buttocks... even at a distance the blood and other fluids stained and dried to the inside of Dick’s thighs was proof the Joker had gone over the edge this time.
In all the years of chasing the Bat and his partners, is had never been sexual for the Joker. It had always been about the game, about him and Batman, about pushing and punishing Batman. About the pain the psychopath could cause Batman. Never had Joker crossed that line.
Never had Joker ever raped one of them before.
His approach faltered with that realization, and he stumbled to his hands and knees still several yards from his predecessor brother. He tore the helmet from his head only to violently expel the contents of his stomach next to a stack of crates. His arms were trembling as they fought to keep him from hitting the cement as he heaved again, and he could feel his eyes burning with surging grief.
With nothing left to purge, Jason started to crawl the last few feet toward the body. There was still no movement, no sign that he was alive.
Jason knew.
He’d been too late.
Just like Batman.
Dick was dead.
Tortured and brutalized.
Raped.
His brother was gone.
Pulling a glove from one hand, not even bothering to ignore the shaking of his fingers as they pressed against the side of Dick’s neck, Jason activated the comm device in his ear with the other. “I’ve found him.”
Hollow, empty, cold... nothing.
“Where are you?!”
Never had he ever heard such desperate urgency in Bruce’s voice. It had him flinching and he nearly missed...
There.
Faint and weak and far too slow...
Dick’s eyes opened.
“Somerset!” He gasped, his relief palpable. “Ace Chemical storage.”
“Ten minutes.”
Crystal blue eyes, glassy with pain and tears, looked away from Jason and into the cage.
His own gaze followed and any relief he felt fled at the crimson numbers on the display within.
2:04
2:03
2:02
“Goddamn...” The breath left him, and his chin dropped to his chest. The length of chains, the heavy locks, even if by some miracle he got his brother free from the restraints they would never make it out of the blast zone.
2:00
His hand fell away from Dick’s neck. In his ear, he could hear Bruce yelling and demanding to know what was going on. Jason took out the comm and tossed it aside before shifting and sitting next to his trapped brother.
1:53
Looking over at Dick, he took a knife from within his jacket and carefully cut the gag away. The wounds at the corners of his lips weren’t as bad as he feared they would be.
1:42
Not that it would matter.
“Go.” Dick rasped, his voice not even a whisper.
Jason shook his head and pried the domino mask from his face even as he shifted as close as he could to the battered and broken body. “I won’t leave you.”
Tears streaked through the blood marring his face. “Please.”
“No.”
1:28
“I know what this is like, Dick.” The words came without conscious thought as he reached out and let the hand without the glove carefully wipe the tears and blood away. “The waiting and hoping and then realizing... he’s not going to get here in time.”
1:19
“Please!”
It hurt to hear him sobbing and begging. Dick had always been so strong; the rock the rest of them leaned against when they faltered and fell.
Even Bruce.
Jason cupped Dick’s face gingerly and turned his head, so the side of his face was resting against the cage and no longer looking at what lay within. “I’m not leaving you alone. I was alone, and that was the worst part.”
1:12
He watched Dick close his eyes, tears leaking steadily from beneath the lids.
“I never blamed you, you know.” He leaned his own head against the cage, staring into the face of his brother as they waited together for the end. “For how I died. Never blamed Bruce either. Wish I did, sometimes. Goddamn, it sucks how much I still love the sanctimonious prick. It would be so much easier if I hated him. And you.”
0:59
“Fuck! I couldn’t! As much as I wanted to, I was never capable of hating you! You were my Big Bird; my big brother.” Jason gave a soft, wet laugh and felt a tear escape his control and cascade down his cheek. “You taught me more than the old man ever did. Bruce may have given me the mantle, but you? You made me Robin! I flew with your blessing and gods, did I fly!”
0:44
Dick opened his eyes and blue met green. Jason’s breath stuttered inside his chest when, despite everything he had gone through and had to be feeling, the older man smiled. It was soft and warm and filled Jason with something he had long forgotten how to feel. “…my... little wing...”
Jason felt the sob break free of his chest. He let his hand clasp at the back of Dick’s head and brought their heads as close together as the chains and injuries would allow Dick to be moved. He closed the last of the distance, stretching his neck until their foreheads were touching and he could hold his brother as best as he could. “I should have said this sooner, so many times when you would say it to me: I love you, too. You never gave up on me. You kept pushing and pulling and being my brother when everyone else walked away. Even when I was at my worst and such an asshole to you. You kept coming. You didn’t leave me, and I am not leaving you!”
0:29
“It'll be quick.” It was hard to catch his breath past the tears that fell and mingled with those that dripped from Dick’s cheeks. His words were barely a whisper, but he knew they were heard. “Keep your eyes closed and you won’t...”
0:23
“You won’t feel it, Dick. I promise.”
0:20
“There’s a bright light, then nothing. It all just ends. It stops. All of the pain, the doubts, the loneliness. It all goes away. And no one will ever be able to hurt you again!
0:13
“And I’m going to be right here. I am not leaving you!”
0:09
“It’ll finally end.” He closed his eyes with a sigh.
0:06
“We’ll finally rest.”
0:05
“Come find me.”
0:04
“On the other side.”
0:03
“…love you, Jason.”
0:02
“I love you too, Dickie.”
0:01
0:00