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The wolf goes first.
It walks into Gotham like it belongs there, like the darkness, blood and smog are familiar to it, even though it had appeared in the high mountains of Asia. It pads into place like it’s known the alleys longer than Jason has. It’s long and lean, a little narrow in build. Its coat shines, but when it needs to, it disappears into the shadows with ease. Black as a pitch save for the pale scars that cut through its head and belly. The eyes spoke violence, they were an electric blue that stood out for an animal, they were too sharp, watching the world with precision and intensity.
It moves ahead of him, always. Across the city, even the rooftops. It leads, Jason follows. It stays behind sometimes when a battle comes, it looked peacefully at him while he cut the head of several people. An strange contradiction, seeing it so serene between so much bloodshed.
No commands binds it. Jason is lucky if it ever listen to him. It simply moves and he follows, Jason is more the shadow than the other way around.
The city breathes around them. Thick with summer heat and the bloody humidity.
And Gotham watches. Most importantly, the scumbags hold their breath in terror.
He’s Red Hood now and the city has learned of him.
The wolf though, that’s new for everyone.
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There’s a moment, between A and B, between the laugh and the silence, between the sound of the crowbar hitting flesh, that Jason wonders why he is doing this. In the back of the room, the wolf growls. It’s a warning to finish what he started.
Not a snarl, not a bark, a low reverberating growl that starts in its chest and echoes through Jason’s body.
There had been a plan.
Joker.
Batman.
Him.
Choose.
Kill me.
Kill him.
That plan lasted about as long as it took to say it out loud.
Jason looks at his right hand, the one he’s not currently using to torture Joker, it’s been bitten by the wolf now growling at the clown. Trembling, like it’s afraid, but ready to fight anyway.
It didn’t like the original plan. It didn’t like anything that involved Batman. To the point it flat-out attacked him when he tried to ignore it and leave to do it.
Good luck, Jason. You can’t ignore your soul apparently.
————————————————————————
Joker goes back to Arkham with a severed spinal column, paralyzed from the neck down, wearing the most satisfying expression of horror Jason’s ever seen in him, at the realization that he’s not dying today. He’s not going to get the honor of going out with a bang. Not here, not ever.
Because Jason realized, somewhere between dodging fangs and having his plans shot down by an overgrown puppy, that every step he was trying to take, was a step against himself.
Or at least that’s what he told himself after the damn wolf wouldn’t let him do anything. That was the one and only time it ever went actively against him, after having to stitch himself, he figured there’s a metaphorical, spiritual lesson there, somewhere.
The Joker isn’t laughing anymore and it’s alive to suffer.
Jason might admit, it feels like a victory.
——————————————————————————
Somewhere in the Himalayas, Jason dreams of clowns, robins and fire. There’s a distant voice, hoarse and pleading, warm, talking to him but he can’t ever heard what it’s saying, sometimes he can feel that same voice holding him.
He wakes to a new weight beside him, the wolf resides there, head on his chest, its own is rising and falling with his. Existing in tandem. He feels loved for a second when he looks at it.
Druca called it a manifestation of his soul. It’s happened after he got the All blades. A rare gift, or a curse, she is not certain about that.
“It’s you” Ducra had said, then she had looked at the big fluffy. “Your soul, your whole truth outside for all to see, you are going to hate it at some point.”
Jason had laughed, a little bitter, not really knowing at all at the time what Druca meant, but he’s learned enough to know the woman tended to be right, life tended to show it by ramming him into a wall.
—————————————————————————————
The wolf didn’t like Batman.
No, that’s not right.
It growled at batman with a lot of anger, Jason tried to say hate, but he nearly got thrown from a roof when he did.
The wolf was angry at the bat.
But it was terrified of Bruce.
Jason sees it in the way its hackles rise when the Bat drops from the shadows and tries to reason with him, he still doesn’t know who he is, but he’s clearly suspecting something more than just a cut black and white crime lord, specially with all of his rules and after calming down his plan with Joker out of the way.
When the mask between bat and bruce is the thinnest, the wolf recoils like bitten by a snake. It whimpers and hides behind Jason’s legs, and completely ruins its reputation as the big bad wolf to his Red Hood.
At least it never runs, never leaves. Jason comforts himself believing that lets him keep some dignity.
And Bruce, of course, notices.
“That’s not a wolf”.
Red Hood just leaves.
———————————————————————————————————
It was bad to learn that it loves Dick.
Jason is red, like his helmet, and praises that his face is hidden. He doesn’t understand it, not at first.
But then again, everyone loves Dick. Even Jason, in denial.
He was the first Robin, his pseudo big brother, the leader all the Titans looked up to. He was an angry ball of precision and and incredible acrobat. Even if he’s had his assholy moments and completely missed his funeral, there was some hero worship there that never left.
Coming back to the present, Jason still wonders why that subconscious part of himself was still there. Nightwing had appear a few nights ago, not in his territory but near, and Red Hood had found him because Wolf had decided to stroll around without direction.
Or maybe it just had not notified Red of his plan.
The point is that by the time he had jumped on a rooftop, Wolf was next to a figure in black and blue, ears flicking, tail rotating nearly like an helicopter and looking at the first Robin like it hanged the moon.
Dick had a face that said: Bruce is gonna kill me, but this is just a big doggy and looks friendly, so he was petting him in the face, and Wolf was letting him.
Jason pretends not to care. He watches from the rooftop’s edge, arms crossed, trying to not make a sound, heart aching in a way he doesn’t want to name.
He tells himself it’s fine. That it doesn’t matter.
But when the wolf stands against Dick’s side and looks like it’s at home, Jason swallows hard and turns around and leaves.
He found out some time ago, that going away from Wolf actually hurts. It’s an insistent pain straight in his chest, next to his heart.
Tonight, he just ignores it.
———————————————————————————————
It protects Robin.
Jason hadn’t planned that.
He’s been, you know, actually angry at the bird, at Bruce, at what Robin represented after his death.
But then some of his actions had started a gang war, small, some scrabbles, but ugly enough that Robin ended up caught between two opposites sides ready to kill.
And Jason reacted.
Pulled him out, dragged him to safety.
Wolf had ripped a hand or two.
It now trails Tim like a shadow when it sees him. Growls when people get too close. Batman tried to catch him because the damn wolf would actually leave his side and follow Robin if it saw him across the city when patrolling, but big hairy would slip away like the damn supernatural entity that it was.
Jason tried to call it back once.
It stared at him. Long. Unblinking. Like it didn’t understand what he was telling it to do.
He didn’t try again.
“So, why does Red Wolf follow him?” Dick asks him one day, Nightwing was clearly feeling brave today if he got that close.
Ignoring the ridiculous nickname, Jason doesn’t answer.
He knows why.
Because Tim is young. Too reckless. A Robin. And Jason might be angry at the unfairness in life and death, might try to convince himself he doesn’t care, break reality and say that Robin’s not a kid.
But wolf knows the truth: that’s just a kid.
So it protects him.
Because that’s what Jason always wanted for someone to do for him.
——————————————————————————————————————
“You’re not very subtle, you know,” Dick says to the wolf, crouching beside it on the rooftop. He scratches behind its ears and gets a satisfied tail-thump in return.
Jason stays in the shadows. Watching.
Dick doesn’t look up, but his voice carries. “You, though. You’re subtle. Not many people sneak up on me without a sound.”
Red Hood doesn’t respond.
“B’s pretty perplexed by you,” Dick continues. “You show up, stir the pot, rewrite the rules for the entire Gotham underworld, leave Joker in an even worse state than usual, not that I’m complaining,” he adds, tone casual. “And you do it all while pulling a Red Riding Hood act with a wolf that I’m fairly sure has killed people I sometimes hesitate to call people.”
He glances down as the wolf rolls over.
“So, yeah. Seeing this side of him? Bit of a trip. I gotta ask,how the hell did you train him?”
Still silence.
“What’s your angle?” Dick’s voice is quieter now. “What’s your endgame? I’d like to know whether I should be thinking about sending you to Blackgate. Especially if more severed heads are coming.”
The wolf sits. Watching Jason now. Waiting.
Jason shifts, voice low and distorted through the modulator. “I believe my actions speak clearly, and you have heard what I’m doing in Crime Alley, I’m not hiding it.”
Dick finally turns to look at him. His gaze is serious, but not hard.
“I’m assuming you’re not here to kill me,” he says gently.
“No.”
“Good.” Dick bends down again and ruffles the wolf’s fur. “Because I don’t think you’re entirely lost yet. And I’d hate to kill that theory.”
The wolf presses closer to Dick’s side, tail wagging lazily. Its head tilts just so.
Jason clenches his jaw behind the helmet.
“I can’t say I approve of everything,” Dick adds, still not looking at him. “But if you ever want to talk,come to a middle place, maybe even have some backup, this guy always seems to know where I am.”
Jason doesn’t answer. He leaves without a sound. But the ache in his chest lingers long after the rooftop is behind him.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
A warehouse was burning.
Jason was not lost on the irony.
An hour ago a little bird had come into Crime Alley hoping to see if Big Red Hood how some information on Bats being kidnapped. Kid had false hope in his eyes and complete trust that he would help to find the bat.
Jason wasn’t about to care.
Until the kid had mentioned the torture videos they had started to send to make Robin and Nightwing suffer. Then the anger he harbored for Bruce turned to worry.
He wouldn't be able to still be angry if the Bat died.
So, back again.
A warehouse was burning.
Caused by the idiots that he was going to kill at a later time.
When they realized their hideout had been compromised by no other than Red Hood, they went nuclear.
Flames curl up the walls like greedy fingers, swallowing beams, wires. Smoke chokes the rafters.
In a corner, further from all of it and near an open window that left the wind blow the smoke away, Bat was against the wall, tied to a column, armor shredded, cape decimated as if someone had had fun cutting it. Blood drips from his mouth, slow and rhythmic.
The wolf finds him first. Like he always does.
It emerges from the smoke like the phantom it was, eyes glowing in the fires nearby. It grows, urgently and paws at the man, trying to keep him awake.
Bruce is there, but he’s clearly exhausted and he’s lost a lot of blood.
Jason cuts the ties and puts his father on his own back and leaves the place before it falls on them or the smoke becomes lethal.
Bruce groans, breath rattling. “Didn’t… think you did rescues… at least not me.”
“Surprise,” Jason mutters. The modulation hiding just how uncomfortable he’s feeling right now, making it sound more like sarcasm.
Wolf walks beside him, afraid of Bruce but equally worried.
He eventually finds Nightwing and throw him at him.