Chapter Text

Chapter One

Jason had been gunning for the Joker for months. Well, longer than that, but it was harder to get to the asshole when he was in Arkham and his last breakout was five months ago. It had been years since he last tried to kill the clown. He had more on his plate than avenging his own death, which sucked, but someone in this idiot family had to be a responsible adult and actually clean up the streets.

Which is how he ended up here, five months later than he wanted to be, fighting a kid – at least Jason thinks he’s a kid, he’s built like a brick shithouse – with white face paint, a big red smile smeared over his scowl, hair as disgustingly green as the Jokers, and venomous spikes coming out of his wrists. He also bent a metal beam trying to punch Jason in the head, so Jason is super glad that he ducked out of the way in time.

The others are doing just about as well as Jason is with their guys. Nightwing and Red Robin are facing off against the newest Joker Jr. and another kid the Joker called Able. Considering the guy he’s fighting is called Cane, Jason has a feeling he’s not going to like the finale that the Joker has planned for them. Sure, it’s impossible to tell if Cane is legal to drive, drink, or rent a car, but Able is, like, twelve.

Batgirl and Batgirl – It’s not Confusing™ – are fighting two teenage girls, Mini Mimi and Poppet. Mini Mimi is not looking good, despite that the one punch she landed on Spoiler shattered her collar bone. She’s wheezing like standing hurts and is spending most of the fight hiding behind Poppet, who is giving Black Bat a serious run for her money.

They’re in an abandoned warehouse, a dime a dozen of them in Gotham, and Joker’s second favorite spot to disturb some shit. If Jason had just had time to track him down and put a bullet in his head like he wanted from the get go, Joker wouldn’t have had time to A) make a bomb as big as the one they were all fighting around, B) make twelve other bombs to scatter around the most populated areas of Gotham, and C) find and tortured these kids into being his own fucked up band of Marionettes to ‘compliment’ Batman’s Birds.

“My demands are simple!” Joker cackled. “Batman gets here so I can blow all of you to Timbuctoo, or twelve high rises full of kittens and puppies and orphans go… BOOM! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“God, I fucking hate this guy,” Jason snarled, ducking under a stab from Cane and tagging him with a rubber bullet. It just makes the guy angrier. Jason has a sinking feeling that if he was packing heat like he used to, it would have the same effect. It’s like fighting a polar bear on roids with poison knives taped to his paws.

“B, what’s your ETA?” Dick asked, tagging Able with an escrima stick, only to have to pull back as Joker Jr. moves in to try and snap Dick’s arm off.

“Five minutes, hold on,” Batman’s voice crackles over the coms. “Can you last?”

“Yes but… confusing,” Cass answered. “I can’t read them. Their body and body language are saying different things. They don’t want to fight, but their bodies move anyway.”

“Mind control?” Dick asked.

“No telepath,” Cass said. “Body language and body would match, only eyes are a give away then. Something else.”

“He’s got two things in his hand,” Tim grunted as Joker Jr. grabbed an old fire extinguisher and chucked it at him. “Holy shit, these guys are fast. Where did Joker find them?”

“They aren’t something he made, that’s for sure,” Steph said, almost collapsing when Poppet momentarily turned her attention from Cass to try and get a jab in when Steph got too close.

“What I’m saying is that Joker’s got the switch to the big bomb in one hand and a voice modulator in the other.”

“Brain washing?”

“I can think of a few methods that look like this,” Tim said. “But that doesn’t explain why they’re so strong or so hard to hit.”

“I’m hitting my guy just fine,” Jason grunted.

“Danger Sense,” Cass says, moving away from Poppet’s hand as it shoots out to decapitate her. Jason’s positive they’re strong enough to do it in one motion, too. “And training. Assassin.”

“Damn, there’s no way Joker just found these guys, they had to come from somewhere,” Steph also moves out of the way, just in time. Mini Mimi is slower than her siblings, if they even are related and not disparate mutants or metahumans that Joker rounded up.

“Mutant Trafficking?”

“They’d have mutant collars,” Tim said. “Which Oracle could have already hacked into, disarmed the bomb inside, and blocked their powers until we can gain control of the situation.”

“Oracle, do you have anything?” Dick asked. “One hit from these guys in the right spot… it’s not gonna be pretty.”

“The makeup is too thick and they’re moving too fast to get a good enough picture to run face ID,” Oracle said over the coms. “Oh, Signal just diffused the last of the twelve bombs scattered around the city, by the way. Yours is the only one left, but it’s gonna be a bitch to disarm.”

“I’ll manage!” Tim yelped, then screamed in pain. Joker Jr. tagged him in the upper arm. “Fuck, that’s broken. That’s really broken.”

“Have any of you gotten to the Joker yet?” Batman asked.

“No, these freakin puppets are getting in the way,” Jason growled. “I could probably get a bullet in his brain but by the time I pull the trigger Cane over here’ll probably Hulk Clap my brains all over this shit hole.”

Batman growled. He hated it when Jason talked about killing, being killed, or swore. And also breathed, probably. Daddy issues were great!

“I’m at the warehouse, just stay calm.”

“And what makes you think Joker is gonna hesitate when he sees you?” Jason growls.

“Because he has to monologue,” Batman grunted. “When he’s distracted, Red Robin needs to get to the bomb and disarm it.”

“Yeah, I can… do that one handed, no problem,” Tim hissed. “No… ow… ow…”

“I can cover you,” Dick growled. “These guys are nothing.”

“Owie,” Tim mumbled.

Jason always forgot how formidable Nightwing was. It only took a single clip from these guys to shatter their bones, they were stupidly fast, and they were impossible to hit, and yet Nightwing had avoided everything they threw at him and landed a lot of his own hits. Not that they did much other than piss them off, but still.

Jason was about to consider switching to live rounds when the skylight overhead exploded. The Batman, cape splayed out like a massive black cloud, figure obscured by the moonlight, descended from above and slammed into the Joker, full force, yet still not knocking the wind out of him.

The Joker cackled, pulling the voice modulator to his face and shouting, “Now the show can really begin! Cane, kill your little brother.”

Cane roared in anger, slamming an open palm against Jason’s chest, knocking him back with enough force that Jason slammed into the wall thirty feet behind him and everything went black. He came to only seconds later, but chaos was already unleashed. Joker Jr. was holding Cane’s arms desperately, Able was scrambling away from them, and the Joker was cackling. The two girls were rushing to reach the fight in time, but the Joker managed to roll out from under Batman and cackled some more.

“Junior, I told you not to interfere. Let him go. We’re putting on a show for Batman! Girls, stop moving.”

Joker Jr. eyes widened, a strangled sound escaped his throat, as he let Cane go. The girls literally stopped moving, falling to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. Cane lunged for Able, but they were all too winded to do anything about it. Cane’s fingers closed around Able’s throat, the little boy clawed at his arms desperately, but Cane was an immovable object.

Jason loaded his gun, wondering if trading one kid’s life for another was even something he could do, but the only thing he could think to do was put a bullet in Cane’s head to save the younger kid.

Joker had gotten free of Batman for a moment, spinning close enough to Cane to pat him on the back and he trembled with rage.

“It’s biblical, isn’t…”

With a mighty roar, Cane ripped himself away from brother and slammed into the Joker with all the might and grace of a derailing train. Jason’s fingers slipped on the magazine of live ammo and the world turned white for the briefest moments.

Then everything went red.

Cane pinned Joker to the floor, screaming with each breath, raising his fists in the air like an enraged gorilla and bringing them slamming down on any part of the Joker he could reach. Blood, guts, brains, and bone fragments splattered over him and in at least a ten-foot diameter around him.

They saw violence every day, and Jason dreamed of the Joker being beaten to a pulp, but it had always been more of a figurative pulp.

Cane turned the Joker into something that looked like spaghetti meat sauce.

And he kept slamming his fists down, screaming, until he only had red, cracked concrete to hit. Whatever the Joker did to them, it was more than what he did to Jason, if that rage was anything to go by. And the Joker tortured Jason to death.

Jason wasn’t sure he ever wanted to find out just how low the depraved little coward of a clown would go to ‘put on a show for Batman’.

They watched in silence as Cane exhausted himself, eventually staggering away from what could barely be called a body at this point. He fell to his knees and threw up. Jason was pretty sure he was gonna hurl up something himself. He skipped lunch and it was past dinner so, scrambled eggs, probably.

Jason tries to look at something else, anything else, and looks away from the red smear on the ground and up towards where Tim is disarming the bomb, only to shout a warning. Joker Jr. is right being Tim. He’s going to…!

Junior picks Red Robin up by the scruff of his cape, and places him away from the bomb panel like he’s a puppy that got into something he shouldn’t have. Joker Jr. rips the panel off and jams his hand into it, his brows furrowed in concentration, a surprisingly stubby tongue stuck out for a moment, then there was a crunching sound and Joker Junior ripped the bomb apart, diffusing it and removing the trigger in one fluid motion. He handed the jumble of parts to Tim, who took it in his good hand and frowned down at it then looked up, confused.

Joker Jr. patted him on the head then walked over to where the modulator had rolled and stamped on it, shattering it into a million little pieces.

Jason looked to where Batman was standing, watching them quietly, judging the situation, assessing threats, being broody. Nightwing was standing next to him with a sneer on his face.

“Hey, B,” Nightwing punched Batman’s shoulder almost playfully. “You gonna try CPR now?”

Jason starts laughing. It’s a weird, uncomfortable, bubbling laugh. It builds in his throat until he can’t hold it in anymore. He has to take his helmet off just to try and stop laughing, but he can’t. He gets up and his ribs scream in protest. He’d be surprised if there a single one not at least bruised. Laughing hurts, but he can’t stop.

It’s over.

The clown can’t hurt anyone ever again.

The Joker is well and truly dead.

He must have blacked out because the next thing he knows is that he’s outside and Bruce is standing over him. B is breathing heavily, each breath desperate and ragged, but the moment Jason looks up at him, he snaps back into focus.

“Why were you laughing?”

Jason looks away and shrugs.

“I thought you got gassed,” Bruce hissed.

“Oh,” Jason huffs. “No. I…” I’m just fucked in the head, he wants to say, but he doesn’t. “Just thought it was funny.”

“A man died, Hood.”

“Sure,” Jason snaps. “Sure, a man died. This is why I don’t… just leave me alone. I’m fine.” Jason pushes away from Batman and starts to gather his bearings, trying to figure out where he parked his bike so he can get out of here. He needs a shower. Or a bath and good book and some heavy metal.

“Hood…”

“Don’t…” Jason spins on him. “A man died? Is that all you have to say?”

Batman doesn’t answer.

“A man died? That wasn’t a man, Bruce, that was a monster. A… a kid was forced to do something that you refused to do.”

Batman still doesn’t answer.

“And… and I don’t know whether I’m relieved that he’s finally gone or upset that you… I will never know if you would have avenged me or not, because you aren’t the one that stopped him from hurting anyone else.”

“Jason,” Bruce’s voice is so quiet, Jason pretends he didn’t hear him.

“You let him stay alive long enough to do that to more kids!” Jason screams at him. “You…”

“Stop,” Batman turns from him, his tone leaves no room for disobedience. Bruce doesn’t use that tone with Jason anymore, he knows better. He should know better, so…?

Waller.

Jason recognizes her voice. God, he hates her. He doesn’t deal with her often, she’s more concerned with the big fish rather than local grown crime lords with no powers. But he remembers how slimy he felt whenever he had to interact with her when she messed with the League; back when he was still Robin. That was a lifetime ago.

“Where are they?” Waller is shouting at Commissioner Gorder.

Jason hates that he looks to Batman for context.

“The Marionettes escaped while we were… concerned that you were having a reaction,” Batman admits.

“Thanks for the concern,” Jason snorts. “Least it did something good.”

“It’s not good that there are five unknown metahumans in Joker makeup running around this city.”

“But Waller’s after ‘em.”

“Yes, she seems to be,” Batman growls.

“What does that change?”

“A lot, but… not the things I’d like it to,” Batman says.

“Is the rest of the brood already following them?”

“Hn,” Batman grunts.

“They wipe that paint off, get the die out of their hair, you don’t have enough on them to find them.”

“I know,” Batman sighs. “Stay here, I don’t want her near you.”

“I don’t want her near me, either.”

Despite that, Jason can’t help but lurk in a dark shadow nearby where the tech in his helmet allows him to listen in. He knows Bruce knows he’s doing it, but he doesn’t care. And Bruce doesn’t react, so he probably won’t get lectured. He’s not Robin anymore, he won’t take being lectured for lurking.

Waller is throwing a fit, demanding that Gordon allow her men into the city or she’ll send them in without his permission. Gordon, to his credit, isn’t cowed by her. Jason can tell Batman is about to step in, but a man appears almost out of thin air and holds up a badge.

“Hello, I am Agent Coulson, I’m with Shield.”

“Damn spooks,” Gordon sighs. “I can manage my city better without outside interference.”

“I am well aware of that, Commissioner Gordon,” Coulson says. He sounds familiar, maybe Jason met him when he was Robin and it’s one of the memories he still haven’t gotten back yet. “I’m here to tell Waller that the… project that concerns the missing children is no longer under her department’s control.”

“Under who’s authority?”

“General Ross,” Coulson said.

Waller snorted in amusement, “Sure he did.”

“I am aware that you may consider General Ross one of your friends. Information about your project was brought to him and he changed his mind. He transferred the project to SHIELD.”

“Bullshit,” Waller snapped, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

They watched in amusement as Waller called Ross, started yelling, stopped mid-sentence, pinched her face like she’d sucked on a lemon, and stormed off.

“What was that about?” Gordon asked.

“One the people harmed by the project was a very close friend of General Ross. He described her as a second daughter to him. He’s not currently happy with Waller at the moment,” Coulson said. He looked amused. Jason decided he liked this guy.

“I want to know everything you know about them,” Batman growled. “They’re lose in my city and…”

“They won’t be for long,” Coulson said. “Shield has ways of keeping tabs on them.”

“Where did they come from? Joker definitely didn’t make them. He doesn’t have the experience to make super soldiers on his own.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“I assume Waller had a hand?”

“Yes, she did,” Coulson said. “Shield is working on rectifying the situation.”

“Not in my city they aren’t. I don’t like rogue metas lose in my city.”

“I wouldn’t either, if I had a city,” Coulson smiled. “They’ve been through a lot. I promise you, SHIELD has done a thorough threat assessment and determined that they don’t pose a threat to the public. At least, the public that doesn’t dress like clowns and mind control children.”

“I want that assessment and any info that lead them to that conclusion,” Batman growled.

“You’ll have it,” Coulson said. “I might even be able to leave in some redacted info. But I’m afraid I can’t say any more.”

“And why the hell not?” Gordon asks.

“That’s not for me to say,” Coulson assures them. “Believe it or not, despite everything they’ve been through, they do have civilian identities.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gordon sighs.

Batman already disappeared.

Jason figured his pull his own disappearing act. He had a date with Jane Austen and a warm salt bath.