Chapter Text
Jason Todd, the Red Hood, surveyed his territory. Though it was no Wayne Tower, the roof of The Park Row Theater was high enough that he could see the entirety of Crime Alley from his perch. It was ugly, rundown, and smoky, but Jason grinned at the sight.
After two long years of death and training, Jason was home. Now it was time for revenge.
One of the first things Talia told him once Jason had gained consciousness after recovering from his dip in a Lazarus Pit was that Batman had not avenged him. The Joker is alive and still killing, she said. Bruce never loved you, she didn’t say, but they both know it was what she meant.
That fact alone had driven him into a rage. When he next came to, the room he was in was destroyed and ninjas lay unconscious around him. It was far from his last blackout rage episode, but it was by far his worst.
For weeks, he had gotten no new information. No matter how much he yelled and interrogated and needled, no one would tell him more about Gotham until he had his anger under control. So Jason dedicated himself to calming himself, to getting a handle on the green that felt like it infected every cell of his body. He learned to hold it, to shape it, and, most importantly, to direct it.
Jason had been trained by Batman. Anger management was hardly new to him, so it was only the scale that he had trouble grasping. In fact, even that only took him a week to handle. However, as Jason learned how to cope with his new emotional issues, he remembered his other lessons from Batman as well.
Look for the truth beyond the facts, Bruce had said constantly. Everyone has a goal. Listen to what they say, but never take it at face value, even if it’s factually accurate. People rarely have such straightforward goals.
So, Jason pretended to struggle longer. It wasn’t hard to pretend; the Lazarus Pit was a beast of its own, apparently. But in those weeks, he observed his watchers, watched his trainers, and looked for why he was here. Why resurrect a street rat? Why immediately tell him that Bruce didn’t care?
The answer was obvious: to make him a weapon against Batman.
But Jason knew there was more here. He just needed to find out what.
When he outwardly showed enough control to satisfy his teachers, Talia returned. She waxed poetic about how tragic Jason’s death was, about how she found him roaming Gotham, alone and almost unresponsive but alive, about how she had to resurrect her beloved’s dear child, even if he didn’t care himself.
Three weeks ago, somehow alive but insane, Jason would have eaten it right up. Even now, he was almost inclined to accept it, to just take the love offered here, even if it was fake, but he had spent the last few weeks searching for traps. And this was one that would kill him, if he let it.
“Why not send me home now, then?” Jason asked, wondering what her excuse would be. “I’m stable enough, and I’d hardly be a danger to Batman.”
Talia hesitated, though whether it was genuine or for effect was difficult to gauge.
“My beloved would not take kindly to such a thing,” she said vaguely. Jason was half tempted to roll his eyes at the non-reason, but she continued, “He has already replaced you, after all.”
It took every inch of self control that Jason had clawed back over the last few weeks to not relapse at that. Green rage screamed in him, thirsting for blood, and answers, and pain.
“How?” The words escaped through his gritted teeth. “There’s a new Robin?”
Even saying that name was painful, but he had to know. He didn’t know what he would do if the answer was yes.
Talia hesitated again, but this time he could tell it was real. There was a spark of annoyance in her eye, like she had expected him to be unable to ask more. That redirected the rage slightly towards her, but did nothing to soothe it.
“Not exactly,” she said, quelling some of the fury. “There is another vigilante child who follows my beloved around. It is only a matter of time before he steals your colors.”
More rage flared, but Jason had an opening now. There was something here they didn’t want him to know, which meant that he desperately needed to know it.
“Oh?” he snarked around his anger. If he played it right, he could make it seem like he was mad at Bruce, not at the League for whatever bullshit they were playing at. “What’s this kid’s tragic backstory then? Dead parents are a given, but what drew Batman to him? Did he steal the man’s shutters instead of his tires?”
Talia seemed irritated that Jason was questioning this much. It only fueled his desire to do so.
“It’s unclear,” she admitted, almost shocking Jason out of his rage. “The boy is elusive. Even we have had trouble pinning him or his origin down.”
The League of Assassins doesn’t know who the kid is? Jason thought, stunned. The League knows Bruce’s identity. If they don’t know who the kid is, then the kid doesn’t live with Bruce. He really isn’t a replacement at all. Then why does the League want me to know about him? Why make me angry at a kid?
The answer, of course, was to make him mad at Batman. To aim him as one aims a bullet. He put on a sharp smile, but vowed to himself that whatever happened, he wouldn’t become their weapon.
Now, home in Gotham, not becoming their weapon was harder. Though the bullshit about the kid replacing him was obviously a load of crap, the stuff about Bruce not avenging him hit home. The Joker was still alive, after all. It only made it harder not to go to Bruce and demand to know why he hadn’t done it (why Bruce didn’t love him enough).
With the influence of the Lazarus Pit, it was difficult to keep those emotions from turning into anger and madness. So, for the safety of everyone, it was best to keep away from Batman.
Of course, it helped that Jason was now a murdering crime lord, which Bruce would try to put a stop to if he knew. Hell, Bruce was trying to put a stop to it, but it was easier to deal with a disapproving Batman than a worried and disappointed Bruce. Jason was proud of the work he was doing, but Bruce wouldn’t be.
(And quietly, to himself, Jason could admit that he was scared of disappointing his dad. That he’d look at Jason and regret taking him in all those years ago, if this was what he turned out to be. He decided it was better not to know.)
Some days, when the rage still burned inside him as hot as ever, he considered enacting his original plan, the one he’d pitched to the League so they’d let him leave: he’d drop hints of his identity, target the new kid, and antagonize Black Mask so he’d break Joker out of prison to deal with him, only for Jason to capture Joker himself and force Batman to kill him. It was convoluted and complex, but he knew it would work. Or — it would have, except…
“Joker? He’s out of the game,” one of his new henchmen said when Jason mentioned the man.
“Out of the game?” Jason repeated incredulously. “That maniac would never walk away. I’m not even sure death could stop him, some days.”
“That’s what we thought too,” the guy shrugged, “but then Crow got to him. The bastard's blind and paralyzed now. I thought everyone knew.”
“I’ve been out of Gotham for the last few years, missed a lot of current events,” Jason defended, mind reeling. That definitely hadn’t been part of the League’s dossiers, and there’s no way they wouldn’t have known. Speaking of things the League may or may not know, “And Crow did it? Isn’t that the little kid who follows Batman around?”
“Ha!” the henchman laughed, then winced as he realized he just laughed at his crime lord boss. Luckily for him, Jason didn’t care about disrespect. “Sorry boss, but saying that is like saying Harley Quinn is just Joker’s ex-girlfriend. The kid’s a force of nature in his own right, not to mention creepy as hell. Little fucker just appears out of nowhere and disappears just as fast. I don’t know much though. I think Anderson used to know more about the kid though.”
“Crow? Yeah I know some shit,” Anderson nodded when Jason asked him. “Well, as much as anyone knows. There were a few weeks where I tried to get some info on him for the Maronis. Not that it did them much good, Crow wrecked their whole operation.”
“By himself?” Jason asked skeptically. “How’d he pull that off?”
“Not by himself, no,” Anderson laughed, though he didn’t sound amused. “The kid’s an informant, first and foremost. From what we’ve gathered from watching the Bat, Crow is his eyes on the ground while Oracle is his eyes in the sky. Or behind the screen, if we wanna be realistic.” Oracle, Jason already knew, was Babs’ new alias. “Crow’s effective cus he’s untraceable and unpredictable. You know how Bat guides work?”
“Yes,” Jason answered, gritting his teeth at the thought of them. Bat guides were the underworld’s name for teams that specialized in misdirecting Batman and Robin. They’d sell their services to gangs who wanted the Bats’ attention elsewhere for the night. They varied in effectiveness, but he remembered hating them as Robin; from the other side, it was nearly impossible to tell what was real or fake.
“Well, they don’t work on Crow,” Anderson said. “He could literally be anywhere at any time. Try to hold a meeting somewhere remote? Crow knows it. Send a squad to distract the Bat? Crow’s where he needs to be anyway. Make a trade during the day? Crow was there and listening to every word. Worst part is, unlike the Bat, he doesn’t act on everything. He might watch a drug trade silently, only to follow everyone back to their hiding places. Operations will be convinced they’re secure for months only to find out GCPD has been given photographic evidence of the whole ordeal.”
Jason whistled, impressed. Bruce had always been too absorbed in his mission to bother with that kind of patience, and Jason had shared a similar disposition. He’d never been able to see injustice and look away. He’d never even considered that it might be a strategic flaw until now.
“And the Joker?” Jason asked.
“Technically, no one knows it was Crow,” Anderson shrugged, but was clearly thrilled to rant about the vigilante. “Word on the street is that Arkham was out for ten seconds. Then, when the lights are back on, everyone’s on high alert, but nothing seems to have happened. The guards do their little rounds, everything’s fine. Except, an hour later, Joker is missing both eyes and is paralyzed from the waist down. No one heard a thing, but Joker was raving about birds the whole time after, so probably Crow.”
“So he’s good in a fight then?” Jason prodded.
“He doesn’t fight,” the man corrected, to Jason’s surprise. “He only intervenes when he’s stalking Batman around and the man needs help, or if he sees a rapist trying something. That’s another reason people think he did the Joker: he likes to maim the ones he does take down. Some nerve damage here, an eye there, that kind of thing. And of course, no one knows who he is. I mean, no one knows who any of the Bats are, but people think that even Batman doesn’t know. There’s some theories that he’s a meta, but a lot of people think he’s the ghost of the second Robin.”
“The second Robin?” Jason repeated, his blood running cold.
“Yeah, you know,” Anderson said, hesitant as he picked up on the Red Hood’s apprehension. “The first Robin became Nightwing, everyone knows that. And the second Robin just disappeared one day. There were rumors, of course, but then Joker broke out of Arkham bragging about how he killed Robin. Two weeks after he’s back in, he loses his eyes and legs. Crow started showing up around that time, so…”
It was, for Gotham standards, a sound theory. Ghosts weren’t common, but they were hardly unheard of. Hell, Jason might have bought it if he didn’t have insider knowledge of the situation.
“Anyway, boss, if you want my advice to the Maronis on Crow?” Anderson continued nervously. Jason nodded at him. “Assume Crow knows everything. He doesn’t, obviously, enough information slips through the cracks that we know he doesn’t. But he could be anywhere, so you gotta assume he’s everywhere to cover all your bases. Any secret said out loud isn’t a secret, y’know?”
“I take it the Maronis didn’t like that?” Jason grinned, remembering how the crime family operated in his Robin days.
“Nope, didn’t even pay me,” Anderson said, but there was a smirk on his face. “‘Course, they went under a month later. Karma’s a bitch, and all that.”
Naturally, Jason paid him a little extra for his time.
The next logical step was to see Crow in person. It was a difficult step, since the boy was known for being unnoticeable, but it was an important one. Luckily, Jason knew one place Crow frequented often: Batman’s side.
So, as painful as it would be, Jason would have to watch Batman from a distance and see if Crow appeared.
He couldn’t do it as the Red Hood, obviously, but a civilian disguise wasn’t hard to set up. Moreover, Jason knew how to play situations to have multiple advantages. Soon enough, he’d set some of Black Mask’s goons to fail during one of their trade-offs by tipping off some friends of “Matches Malone.” Now all Jason had to do was bug the spot in advance and watch from a distance.
Sure enough, Batman arrived right on time to beat the False Facers into the ground. As always, the Bat was a sight to behold, whirling and punching and kicking with unearthly grace and power. After training with the League, Jason was only more in awe of it; that kind of fighting was almost impossible. He would know, since that was how Jason learned to fight too.
(He stamped down any other feelings he had about seeing Batman again.)
Soon enough, the False Facers were tied up, unconscious, or both. Batman prepared to leave, but paused. Jason froze, terrified he’d been made even at a distance, but Batman didn’t turn towards him.
“Crow,” the man called out, only slightly louder than normal speaking volume. Jason only heard it thanks to his bugs.
“Sir,” a young voice came from the shadows and Crow emerged.
Jason’s first impression was that the kid was young, maybe 11 or 12 at the oldest. His eyes were covered with a large domino, one that looked distinct from Robin’s due to its larger size and the extrusion around the nose, giving the impression of a beak while hiding more of his face shape. His hair was black, but with an unnatural sheen that implied it might have died from a different shade.
The rest of his outfit was painfully ordinary. Jason’s trained eyes could spot the armored sections of his clothes, but to an average or even lesser trained person it would simply look like black jeans and a black hoodie, no different from what any civilian would wear. Between that and his 5’ even height, Jason instantly understood how he could disappear silently, even in crowded areas.
“What relevant information do you have on the False Facers?” Batman asked, his voice relatively gentle.
As a former Robin, Jason could hear a whole treasure trove of information in that single question. Most stunning was the word “relevant”: Jason could count all of the people who Batman trusted to sort information by “relevance” on one hand, because those people were Jim and Barbara Gordon. Though it looked like Crow made that list too, now.
“Black Mask has been having issues with the Red Hood,” Crow reported. His voice was eerily calm, like nothing could phase him. It sounded unnatural in a voice so young. “I believe the Red Hood may have set up the False Facers to be here, at this time. Probably so we could do his dirty work, but there may be another motivation at play.”
Batman grunted in acknowledgement. “Keep an eye on the Red Hood.”
“Sir,” Crow agreed with a nod, then stepped back into the shadows and disappeared. Jason blinked at the space he had been, almost uncomprehending.
Jason knew how to disappear; he’d been taught by both Batman and the League of Assassins, but that level of sudden nonexistence was nearly unheard of. It was possible Crow was a meta, but some intuition told Jason that wasn’t the case. This was a talent of skill and practice.
In the back of Jason’s mind, he remembered that there was someone with the League who was said to be able to do that. “The One Who is All,” they called her, but little was known about her except her deadliness. Unsurprisingly, she disappeared one day on a mission, never to be seen in the League again. Jason supposed that was what happened when your operatives were too skilled: if they wanted to leave, they just did.
Jason quickly learned that Anderson had been right: Crow was definitely the most dangerous threat to his operation. Not his drug and crime operation — that was still Black Mask — but it immediately became clear that anything said aloud was fair game to the tiny shadow Batman seemed to know more and more about them every day. Any hints Jason wanted to leave secret about his identity had to be carefully hidden, never spoken. Maintaining a secret identity was even more difficult, since Jason could never be sure when he was being followed.
Nevertheless, his operation slowly grew, until he finally had control of every gang, dealer, and pimp in Crime Alley. Batman tried several times to foil him, even succeeding on a few occasions, but Jason avoided personal confrontation. Bruce was a master at gleaning too much from too little, and Jason didn’t want him to figure anything out.
In order to avoid the Bat, Jason sometimes went solo to run his own errands or take out the competition. It was during one of these times that shit really hit the fan.
Jason had been taking care of a small crew of human traffickers in his own, personal way. The victims had already been freed, but Jason had gone back to take care of the remaining trash. Normally, he settled for a bullet to the head for these types of scum, but today he was feeling angry, so barefisted it was.
He felt the Lazarus Rage surge in him as he beat those fuckers in the head. They were small timers in a fight, worth nothing, but it was almost fun to pull his fanciest tricks on them and watch as they cowered and tried to flee. Not that he let them.
Eventually, though, it was over, and Jason felt his rage and their bodies cool. Absentmindedly, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and tossed the lighter in the air, catching it and lighting it in the same movement as he’d done a hundred times before.
“Robin?”
The small, astounded gasp came from the shadows, and Jason recognized it immediately from a few weeks prior: Crow. Jason immediately lunged towards the voice, quickly spotting the tiny vigilante now that he knew where to look. Crow was quick to recover, though, and darted away just in time, slipping under his arm and past him.
Jason cursed, knowing that the bird would run straight to Batman. He gave chase out of the warehouse, but slowed as he exited. Crow, and any trace of him, was long gone.
Jason cursed himself for showing off. How Crow had instantly known Robin’s fighting style was unclear, but it was possible he’d either seen Jason fight frequently when he held the position, or else Bruce had shown him videos of Jason. That notion hurt too much to contemplate, so he shoved it aside.
Speaking of things too painful to contemplate, there was no way Crow wouldn’t report this information back to Batman. It was a miracle Batman wasn’t coming to confront him already for his crimes, now that he knew it was Jason.
Jason sighed as he entered his favorite safehouse, exhausted from the long patrol. He flicked on the lights and immediately aimed his gun forward on instinct.
Crow sat in the middle of his shabby living room, clothed in his uniforms sans the mask. His eyes were an unnatural shade of yellow and his hair was now tinted blue. Contact lenses and dye, undoubtedly, and Jason was willing to bet he was wearing contouring makeup. None of that changed the fact that he knew Jason’s safehouses as well as his identity as Robin.
“I just want to talk,” the boy said calmly, holding his hands up placatingly. “I haven’t told Batman what I know, I promise.”
Jason lowered his gun slowly, unwilling to shoot a kid. He doubted the kid hadn’t told Batman, but he wasn’t going to begrudge the twerp his job. Lying about it was a little rude, but Jason would’ve done the same thing at that age.
“How’d you find me here?” Jason asked. The kid dealt in information, but this place was top secret.
“I’ve been following you for nearly a week,” Crow admitted casually. “I was never able to see inside, but I knew which building. After that, it was simply a matter of checking the records and seeing which apartment lined up.”
A week, the kid said, like it wasn’t insane that Jason hadn’t noticed him that entire time until today. He wasn’t as paranoid as Bruce, but Jason knew he wasn’t the most reasonable of people when it came to security either. The thought that Crow could follow him home was unsettling.
“It is you, isn’t it?” Crow asked, and for the first time Jason heard traces of emotion in his voice. “Robin?”
“Robin died in a warehouse, kid,” Jason sighed, but he sheathed his gun fully.
“It is you,” the kid practically whispered, reverence and grief tinting his voice. “I thought it was when— but you died. We were so sure of it.”
“Yeah, I did,” Jason said harshly. The kid flinched, so he softened his voice. “I got better. Or worse, depending on your viewpoint.”
“It’s better,” Crow said, his voice full of unshakeable confidence. “We’d take you alive over anything. Whatever the price, everyone would pay it happily. If you came home—”
“I don’t have a home to go back to,” Jason interrupted, barely keeping his rage in check. Crow’s face smoothed over immediately, his hopeful expression returning to one of eerie calm. “Look kid, some things are better left in that past.”
“You aren’t,” he retorted, only a fraction of that previous emotion lingering. “They would accept you home in a heartbeat. The only reason Bruce isn’t here now is that I haven’t told him yet.”
Jason sighed, but the use of Bruce’s real name at least indicated that he didn’t have to keep his helmet on, so he removed it to look the kid in the eyes.
“Bruce has a habit of raising the dead on a pedestal,” Jason said wearily. “He did it with his parents, he did it every time he thought a teammate on the Justice League died, and he’s doing it with me. If I go back, he’ll remember that we didn’t have a good relationship in the end. I’m not his perfect little soldier anymore.”
“No, you aren’t,” Crow agreed calmly, tilting his head. “But I think you underestimate Bruce’s grief. Losing a child changed him. Losing you changed him. For better or for worse, I’m not sure, but he’d burn the world to get you back.”
“Would he kill the Joker?” Jason challenged, his rage flaring up. It dropped slightly when the kid concealed a flinch.
“Is that what you’re mad about?” Crow asked, back to a full monotone. “He tried, once, before we met. Superman stopped him. And now, there’s no point, is there?”
“There’s always a point,” Jason retorted, though he was surprised by that information. Yet another thing the League kept from me. “Joker is a threat even blind and paralyzed. Death is the only thing he deserves.”
“That’s probably true,” Crow nodded, his calm facade holding. “Regardless, Bruce might have killed Joker to bring you back, if he thought it would’ve, but obviously that’s not how death works. Though, I think it would have killed him. Given how suicidal he was after your death, that easily would have pushed him over the edge. He’s sensitive like that.”
Jason froze. That hadn’t occurred to him, that Bruce killing someone might lead to him killing himself, but it made a painful amount of sense. The man’s greatest enemy had always been himself, and if he thought he was going even a little off the deep end? Bruce was far too self-sacrificing in the first place.
He pushed that thought away, along with the tangled mess of emotions it had brought.
“Maybe,” he said instead. “But what about you? Where the hell did you come from?”
“The shadows, of course,” the kid said smoothly. If it were anyone else, Jason would have laughed, but the unsettling calm made him wary. Something wasn’t right here. “I figured out Dick’s identity when he was Robin, then surmised the rest from there. After you died, Batman needed someone to watch him, and I knew where to look. Simple as that.”
“Please, like anything is ever simple in this family,” Jason huffed. “You got a name other than Crow, kid?”
“Just Crow,” he said, making Jason frown. “And I’m not really part of the family.”
“So it’s true,” Jason confirmed in awe. “You really have hid your identity from the big bad Bat. I didn’t think that was possible.”
“It’s been difficult,” the boy admitted in his same monotone. “The only reason I’ve avoided it is I got Oracle to promise not to help him look. The rest is simply not giving him enough information to work with.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Jason laughed. He had been trying to avoid being identified by Bruce for months now, and he was sure the only way he’d been succeeding was by avoiding the man outright.
“It isn’t,” Crow said simply. “I’m good at hiding, though.”
And, for some reason, something clicked in Jason. A child, good at hiding and better at disappearing. One who showed little to no emotion at such a young age, who was paranoid enough to hide his features from allies as well as foes. Who flinched at the smallest displays of anger, then masked his fear just as quickly.
This kid had been abused. Badly.
“I bet you're hungry,” Jason said, drawing out a suspicious look from Crow. “You look like you could use another meal or five. Let’s go out and get some street food. I promise I won’t try to figure out your identity or drug you or anything like that. Just some good, old-fashioned junk food from a mildly sketchy street vendor at 11pm. Classic Gotham stuff. I’ll even pay.”
Crow looked at him consideringly, head tilted but face blank. Jason could see why so many of Gotham’s underbelly found him unnerving, but all Jason saw was a kid who’d been hurt too many times. It was painfully obvious now that he knew what to look for.
“Fine,” Crow agreed after a minute of silence. “You pick the vendor, and I’ll meet you there.”
“Nuh uh kid,” Jason laughed, as he waved towards the door. “We’re walking together. I wanna hear more about you, or whatever you’re willing to share. No identity stuff, but maybe how you figured out Dickiebird’s identity, or some stories about your early days.”
“Fine,” Crow sighed, a hint of annoyance peppering his tone. Jason smirked; he would elicit any emotion he could from the kid, and annoyance was a great place to start. It was basically part of the healing process, in Jason’s opinion.
“Good little bird,” Jason said, opening the door. “Come on. I feel like some chili dogs, and I know just the place.”
Over the next seven weeks, Batman became less aggressive towards Red Hood and his operations in Crime Alley, choosing to focus on Black Mask instead. In any other circumstance, Jason would have been frothing at the mouth, furious at the lack of attention and questioning Batman’s motives, but Crow’s continued appearances told him all he had to know: Bruce knew.
Whether or not he’d told Batman before their first talk, Crow had definitely spilled the beans on Jason’s identity at some point, given how Batman was now avoiding him as much as he was Batman. It was an uncomfortable situation, far from how Jason envisioned his reveal, but there was significantly less violence involved, for better or for worse.
Despite his dramatic plans falling in the gutter, Jason couldn’t complain. Batman leaving him alone also meant leaving most of his operation alone, giving them — and therefore Crime Alley — room to grow and thrive. His newfound interest in Black Mask’s syndicate also helped matters, cutting down his competition dramatically.
Hell, Jason couldn’t even summon anger at Crow for narcing on him. The kid kept visiting him, showing up out of thin air when Red Hood was alone on slow nights. Jason was careful not to get too angry around the kid; he was all too aware of how Crow tensed at the slightest hint of frustration. As such, he wasn’t going to flip out on the kid for telling a huge secret to the man who was probably the closest thing he had to a positive parental figure.
His lack of anger paid off. Within a few weeks, the kid was already opening up, showing hints of annoyance at Jason’s more obnoxious jokes and even throwing around tiny, rare smiles in lighter moments. He found out that Crow had a wicked sense of humor, finding amusement in the way criminals tried and failed to evade his gaze like squirrels hiding from a hawk.
Which led Jason to an unexpected benefit of befriending the corvid: his intel. Almost immediately after their first outing together, Crow was happy to drop any details about any number of crime families and villains in Gotham. The information helped smoothed out his hold on Crime Alley, letting him connect with the people and shut out any traitors quickly.
Unfortunately, Crow seemed a little too eager to give out information to Jason.
“You know I’m not being nice to you just for intel, right?” Jason asked one night as they sat on a rooftop with an ice cream cone each. “Like, you could never tell me anything ever again and we’d still be friends.”
“You say that, but I find that that’s rarely the case,” Crow disagreed mildly. “Everyone wants something. Giving it to you is the easiest way to keep an eye on you.”
That was another reason Jason couldn’t stay mad at Crow for snitching: he was so upfront about it. He’d literally told Jason to his face that he was spying on him, uncaring that Jason was a deadly crime lord.
“Maybe what I want is for you to be happy and to have a reliable support network, how about that?” Jason countered. “You deserve to have people looking out for you.”
Crow rolled his eyes at Jason; a relatively new reaction from him, but an increasingly frequent one.
“You want to run a successful criminal empire and make Bruce uncomfortable,” Crow corrected. “I have the information and connections to make both of those goals possible. You can’t deny that the information is valuable. I’ve seen you implement it effectively.”
“That’s true,” Jason conceded, “but I’d still hang out with you even without all that. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Crow seemed startled at that.
“I… guess?” he said, confused. “I’m not really sure what makes someone a friend.”
And didn’t that break Jason’s heart?
“Well then, I guess I’ll have to be your first friend,” Jason said confidently. “Don’t worry, baby bird, I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
“You’re not, you know,” a mechanical voice chimed in Jason’s ear that night on patrol, making him freeze in place. His helmet had a rudimentary comm that he mainly used to communicate with his lieutenants, but he hadn’t expected anyone to care enough to break into it.
“I’m not what?” he asked, knowing his own voice would stay mechanized over the channel.
“Crow’s first friend,” the voice clarified, and it clicked for him. This was Oracle. Barbara Gordon. Barbie. And she’d been listening to his conversations with Crow, or at least his most recent one. “We were here first. You’re just the most recent addition.”
“I’m sure that’s going so well for you,” Jason snarked, a flash of anger running through him. “What’s his name again? Oh right, he still doesn’t trust you enough to tell you.”
“You can hardly claim to know as much yourself,” she countered calmly. “Not that I don’t appreciate the effort you’re putting in, of course. Crow could use more people in his corner.”
“That, I agree with,” Jason conceded, calming himself with a deep breath. The first step of controlling Lazarus Madness was identifying irrational anger, and he had no reason to be mad at Barbie. Yet. “So the invasion of his privacy counts as being his friend?”
“Please, the only person’s privacy I invaded was yours,” Oracle laughed, the distortion making it sound unsettling, probably on purpose. “Crow planted those bugs in your apartment himself. He’s been arguing for months that you’re not a danger to the city, so I figure he planted them there so I could make that judgment for myself.”
“I could damn well be a danger to Batman,” Jason grumbled, but didn’t argue. Again, it only helped his plans if the Bats didn’t bother him. Then, the rest of the implications hit him. “He’s been arguing for me?”
“Of course,” she said. “Not that he’s had to argue very hard, recently. Not everyone agrees with your methods, but your results have been speaking for themselves. I, for one, am eager to see how your strategy in Crime Alley plays out.”
“You don’t disagree with my ‘methods?’” Jason asked, one part mocking and two parts shocked.
“It’s not my personal MO, but I work with a variety of vigilantes outside of the Bats. Ones with looser moral codes. However, I’d recommend against your severed heads plan. It may scare the drug lords, but nothing will get you on the shitlist of every vigilante and hero in the country faster. It’s overkill.”
“How do you know about that?” Jason demanded. He’d only mentioned it in private to his second in command, in a secure location, when he had known for a fact Crow had been away.
“Did you think Crow is alone in our little network?” Oracle asked. She used the same tone she had used when he did something particularly stupid on his math homework, back when she was his tutor. “He’s quite good, but there aren’t enough hours in the day for him to know everything. And as much as he likes you, he’s still watching you. We all are. It’s nothing personal.”
“I’m sure,” Jason deadpanned, but found himself believing that. Information gathering was most effective if you kept your friends as close as your enemies, after all. Speaking of which, Jason had his own information gathering to accomplish. “And Bats is watching him, isn’t he? Waiting to uncover his secret identity whether the kid wants it or not.”
“Batman has his reasons for searching the way he does,” Oracle said vaguely, annoying Jason. “I promised not to get involved either way.”
“So Crow said,” Jason hummed. Sensing he wouldn’t get anywhere on that front, he pivoted, “And the Joker? Batman has his reasons for keeping him alive, then? And I suppose you go along with that too.”
Silence fell over his comm.
“If you were anyone else, I’d cut you off forever for a comment like that,” she said quietly, her voice modulator turned off. Jason felt caught off guard at how much older she sounded. “As it is, you’re probably the only person alive who could demand more from me. So, with that in mind, let me frame it this way:
“Joker mocked Batman for losing his vision of the world, and he lost his eyes. He took my legs from me, and lost his own. As far as I’m concerned, the clown can rot in miserable insignificance for the rest of his sorry, pathetic life. If you feel like you need to take what he took from you, I won’t stop you. And as long as you don’t advertise your intent to do so, no one else will either. If you want something done, stop being dramatic for once and do it yourself. I’ll see you soon, I’m sure. Oracle out.”
Jason’s comm cut out. He didn’t know what she meant by seeing him soon, but the rest of the message had been pretty clear. It was probably the closest to an endorsement he’d ever get from a Bat not named Crow.
That said, he didn’t want to think about it. To process what she said would be to acknowledge its truth, and he was in no hurry to do that. He swung away into the night, determined to find someone to beat up.
“Boss, you may want to see this.”
The words brought Jason out of his paperwork (of which there was way too much). Before he could berate the man for such vague language, he noticed the stony expression on his face. Or more accurately, the fear beneath it. He followed the henchman with a nod towards the communal TV at his current headquarters. Several people were already gathered around with grim expressions, but they parted when he approached.
The face on the screen was one that had haunted his nightmares for years: the Joker. The mad clown wore his signature face-paint and grin, but the surgical scars over where his eyes used to be made him all the creepier. The background was generic, but it was obviously not the clinical white walls of Arkham. This was Joker’s broadcast, and he had gotten out.
Jason took a deep breath to calm the anger and fear in his chest before tuning in to what the monster was actually saying.
“...without involving our good old boys in blue, yes?” the madman continued. “Just me and a corvid, I should think. We have unfinished business, the two of us, don’t you agree birdy? In fact, let’s arrange a meeting: any civilian, criminal, or hero who brings me the elusive Crow will never have to fear me ever again. I’ll personally ensure you have a vaccine against my patented Joker gas, no problemo!”
“A Joker gas vaccine?” one of Red Hood’s workers exclaimed, only to look sheepish as everyone turned towards her. “I mean, is that a thing?”
“No,” Jason said coldly before anyone else can speculate. “Joker changes his formula constantly to avoid antidotes and ‘vaccines’ of any sort. He’s said the only vaccine to Joker venom is death, which is the whole joke to him. He’ll kill anyone who tries to bring him Crow, successful or not.”
“That won’t stop people from trying,” one of his lieutenants chimed in. “People are desperate enough against Joker that some of them will try anyway.”
Jason hummed in agreement. The situation was bad, especially for Crow, but Jason could use it to his advantage. If the Joker had already broken himself out, that just meant there was one less layer of security for him to hide behind. Jason would have to be careful, but this was the perfect opportunity for revenge.
Jason was still planning three hours later when the window of his safehouse opened. His gun was out instantly, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight before him.
Batman stood in his window, drenched from the downpour of rain outside. The man pulled off his cowl to reveal a desperate expression, the likes of which Jason had never seen from the man.
“Jason,” he gasped, making Jason’s heart beat in fear.
“What?” Jason tried to ask coldly, but his voice cracked. He wasn’t ready for this.
“Please,” Bruce begged, shocking Jason further. He’d never heard Bruce beg. Never. “You have to help. He has Crow.”
“Who?” Jason asked, despite already guessing the answer. The dread in his gut was too intense now, and he begged he was wrong.
“Joker. The Joker has Crow.”