The Ghost Beside The Bat
A batman x vigilante!reader
Summary: "Every muscle in his body went stiff with shock. And then he broke. Not in a dramatic way. Not loudly. Just enough that when he tried to pull himself together, his throat closed hard and he had to blink fast because the pressure behind his eyes was suddenly unbearable."
-> Bruce Wayne x vigilante!reader , Dc x Marvel crossover, recounting of old memories, jail breakout, reunion, description of violence
IV <- V->VI
Red Hood was shaking.
Not on the outside.
Not where anyone could see it.
Inside.
Where it mattered.
Where it hurt.
He stood on the slick rooftop across from the children’s hospital, rain from an earlier storm still clinging to the ledges and draining in silver threads down the brick walls. Gotham’s night air was sharp and cold, full of sirens in the distance and the faint, ugly smell of smoke drifting up from somewhere lower in the city. The hospital glowed across the block like a giant pale lantern, all clean windows and warm light that seemed almost offensive in a city like this.
Joker had chosen it for exactly that reason.
Of course he had.
Jason’s hands tightened around the grips of his guns as he watched the building.
A children’s hospital.
He wanted to set the entire city on fire.
He wanted to tear Joker apart with his bare hands.
He wanted—
No.
Not now.
He swallowed hard and dragged in a breath that did absolutely nothing to steady him.
Because she was here.
Standing beside him.
Alive.
Real.
And she had no idea who he was.
That part hit worse than the rest.
It hit in tiny, precise cuts.
Every time she turned her head and called him “Red Hood” instead of “JayBird.”
Every time her voice carried that same familiar warmth but never the recognition he desperately wanted.
Every time she looked at him like he was only a dangerous ally and not the child she had once patched up in her kitchen while telling him to stop trying to die on her.
He had missed her so much it made his teeth ache.
He had missed her laugh.
Her hands on his armor when she was adjusting his stance.
Her sarcasm.
The way she used to flick him in the forehead whenever he got too cocky.
The way she would call Bruce “an emotionally constipated menace” when she thought no one was listening.
Jason had loved her before he ever understood what that love was.
And now she was here, in Gotham, at his side, and she didn’t even know it was him.
It almost broke him.
Almost.
He saw her glance at the hospital entrance, jaw clenched, shoulders tight beneath the black-and-red tactical layers of her suit. The hood she wore shadowed most of her face, and the domino mask only made her expression sharper, more unreadable. The utility belt sat snug at her waist, packed with gear Jason knew she was already mentally counting.
She always counted exits.
Always.
His chest hurt.
He heard her breathe out slowly.
Then she spoke under her breath, too low for anyone else to hear.
“Too many cameras.”
Jason’s head turned slightly toward her.
She wasn’t talking to him.
She was muttering to herself.
Jason almost smiled.
Almost.
Then the hospital doors burst open two stories below them and the night exploded into movement.
Joker’s goons flooded the entrance in bright, ugly masks and mismatched gear, all of them moving with the frantic energy of men who knew they were expendable. One of them shouted something obscene. Another kicked over a tray cart. Somewhere inside, a child screamed.
Jason moved on instinct.
The girl moved with him.
He dropped from the rooftop ledge first, landing in a crouch on the concrete steps below. She hit the ground half a second after him with barely a sound, cape flaring behind her before settling against her back.
The first thing she did was look at him.
Not the building.
Not the men.
Him.
Assessing.
Measuring.
Then she glanced back toward the doors and said, “I can clear the west hall.”
Jason gave her a flat look. “I can help.”
She immediately shook her head. “Absolutely not. I can handle Joker alone.”
Jason stared at her for a long second.
There it was again.
That tiny flicker.
The one he’d seen before whenever he tried to help and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with the offer.
Not distrust.
Not rejection.
Something sadder.
Older.
He saw her jaw tighten a fraction.
Her shoulders stayed square, but not loose. Not relaxed. Like the idea of anyone standing too close to her in a fight still made part of her body lock up before she forced it to cooperate.
Jason knew that hesitation.
Knew it in his bones.
It wasn’t about capability.
She could kill every goon in front of her without breaking a sweat.
It was about the act of letting someone in beside her.
That was the part she still didn’t do easily.
Not after what happened to him.
That was the part Gotham had taught both of them to treat like a weakness.
Jason kept his voice steady.
“Yeah,” he said. “You can.”
She looked suspiciously at him.
He tilted his head toward the doors. “And you’re still not doing it alone.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re very stubborn.”
“First day on the job?”
“I hate that you said that.”
“I know.”
She huffed a breath, nearly a laugh, but it didn’t fully reach her eyes.
Jason noticed.
Of course he noticed.
He took one step closer, lowering his voice.
“Listen to me,” he said. “We don’t know how many men he’s got in there. We don’t know how many kids are already inside. We don’t know if he’s wired the place.”
Her stare didn’t move from his.
Jason continued, softer now. “You don’t go in alone.”
The wind shifted.
A faint metallic clatter came from somewhere on the roofline behind them.
She looked back at the hospital, then at the street, then at the building again as if weighing the options against every old instinct screaming in her head.
Jason could see the answer forming before she said it.
Not because she wanted to agree.
Because she knew he was right.
Her jaw worked once.
Then she exhaled through her nose.
“Fine,” she said tightly. “But if you slow me down, I’m leaving you in a closet.”
Jason snorted. “That’s the spirit.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
He actually smiled at that, just a little.
Then she was moving.
She fired a grapnel line up to the second-floor fire escape and launched herself toward the side of the building with elegant force. Jason followed an instant later, boots striking metal as he climbed after her.
Inside the hospital, alarms had already started blaring.
Red lights flashed across polished floors.
Somewhere deeper in the building, a nurse screamed.
Jason pushed the door open with his shoulder and slipped into the corridor behind her.
The smell hit first.
Antiseptic.
Smoke.
Blood.
The sterile scent of a place built to heal now smeared with chaos.
Joker’s goons were everywhere.
Two at the far end of the hall.
Three near the nurses’ station.
One with a shotgun who looked up just in time to see Jason draw his pistol.
He dropped before he could fire.
The girl moved like a shadow beside him, all sharp angles and ruthless efficiency. She disarmed one man with a strike to the wrist and buried her elbow into another’s throat before he could shout. Her boots barely made a sound against the linoleum as she crossed the hallway, yanking a knife from her belt and slashing the strap of a gun holster off one of the guards with surgical precision.
Jason stared for half a second.
Then he heard her mutter, “Your stance is wrong.”
He blinked. “What?”
She ducked beneath a swinging crowbar and snapped her leg into the attacker’s knee. “Your weight is too far back. You’ll lose balance if you keep shooting from there.”
Jason shot the next man in the shoulder and frowned at her. “I’m in the middle of a fight.”
“And I’m helping.”
He barked a short laugh despite himself. “You always talk like this?”
“Only when I’m right.”
“Pain in the ass.”
“Extremely.”
Another goon rushed from the side corridor.
Jason turned, but she was already there, hook-kicking the man into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
“Better,” she said.
Jason stared at her. “You just corrected my combat form while we’re in a pediatric war zone.”
She slid a smoke pellet between her fingers and smirked faintly. “And you’re still standing, so it seems to be working.”
He should not have found that funny.
He did.
Barely.
Joker’s laughter crackled through the intercom system at the end of the hall.
Every light in the corridor flickered.
Jason’s entire spine went rigid.
There.
That voice.
Every muscle in his body went hot with rage.
The girl heard it too.
She went still for half a heartbeat before her expression flattened into something colder.
“The clown’s upstairs,” Jason pointed it out casually.
“I gathered.”
“Try not to say it like you’re disappointed.”
She glanced at him. “I’m saving that for later.”
Then she moved.
They advanced room by room.
Each hallway was a fight.
Each corner another ambush.
The hospital had too many hiding places and too many civilians trapped in the wrong places. Somewhere on the second floor a frightened child cried out for their mother. Somewhere else, glass shattered. Jason took out two guards in rapid succession while she reached over his shoulder to jam a blade into a security panel and disable the automatic locking system before Joker could seal off another wing.
He saw the way she handled the kids they passed.
Gentle without slowing.
A hand on a trembling shoulder.
A soft “Keep low, sweetheart.”
An urgent “Stay behind the nurses.”
No hesitation.
No fear.
The same woman he remembered.
Just older.
Sharper around the edges.
Too many years had passed and somehow she was still exactly the kind of person who would risk herself for children she had just met.
Jason’s chest tightened.
“You know,” he said while kicking a thug’s weapon away, “you could at least pretend this is new for you.”
“Why?”
“You make it look too easy.”
She glanced sideways at him while ducking under a pipe and sweeping a man’s legs out from under him.
“It is easy.”
Jason stared.
She immediately corrected herself with a flat look. “For me.”
He let out a rough laugh and nearly got clipped across the ribs by a pipe wrench for his trouble.
She saved him with a knife to the guy’s wrist.
Jason looked at her.
She looked back.
Then she muttered, “Focus.”
He tilted his head while spreading his arms out dramatically. Grinning like an idiot under his mask.
He just knew she was rolling her eyes at his behavior.
And that, somehow, made the whole thing feel worse.
Not because it was bad.
Because it was good.
Too good.
Like some part of them had always known how to move together even when they didn’t have names for the feeling.
They reached the main ward entrance and stopped short.
Too many men.
At least a dozen.
Joker’s guys were barricading the entrance, and behind them Jason could hear panicked voices and the sharp, frightened cries of children trying not to cry too loudly.
One of the goons looked up.
“Red Hood!”
Another spotted her.
“There’s two of them!”
Gunfire erupted instantly.
Jason swore.
She grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him down behind the wall as bullets ripped into the frame beside them.
“We need to regroup and think of a plan,” she said, ducking another burst of fire.
Jason glanced around wildly. “Where would we even hide?”
She pointed upward.
The vent.
He stared.
Then at the men.
Then back at her.
She already had a smoke pellet in her hand.
Jason’s mouth twitched. “You cannot be serious.”
She tossed the pellet directly into the center of the hall.
Smoke flooded the air in a thick white surge.
Gunfire coughed out in confusion.
She was already moving.
Jason cursed and followed her.
They pulled the vent cover off with a sharp clang and climbed into the tight metal duct just as the first screams of frustration echoed below.
Jason crawled after her, trying not to curse every time his armor scraped the metal edges.
He looked ahead through the narrow darkness.
“You do this a lot?” he muttered.
“Use vents?”
“Break into hospitals.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Only when the world gives me no other choice.”
Jason snorted. “That’s Gotham for you.”
“Unfortunately.”
The vent opened into a maintenance corridor lined with cleaning carts and supply lockers.
The second they dropped down, both of them froze.
Because the people in the corridor—
were dressed like nurses.
Jason stared.
She stared.
Then slowly turned toward him.
He slowly turned toward her.
A beat.
Then both of them had the exact same thought at the exact same time.
Jason spoke first.
“I hate that this makes sense.”
She was already moving toward the nearest supply closet. “Less talking. More disguising.”
Five minutes later, Jason found himself standing in a stolen nurse uniform that looked absurdly wrong over his armor while she had somehow managed to slip into a matching set of scrubs with a surgical mask pulled over her mouth.
He stared at her.
She stared back.
Then she motioned at his helmet.
“You need to take that off.”
Jason’s entire body locked.
He looked at the floor.
Then back at her.
“You’re joking.”
She crossed her arms. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
“A little, yes.”
She stared at him with that same infuriatingly direct expression that had once made him confess things he had not planned to say out loud.
He swallowed.
Because this was where it got dangerous.
This was the part where he had to trust that she wouldn’t recognize him before he was ready.
The part where everything could shatter.
He looked toward the closet door, then back at her.
“Bruce is gonna kill me for this.”
The words came out quieter than he meant.
She blinked.
Then her expression shifted.
Not in the obvious way.
Not immediately.
But Jason saw the tiny crack in her calm.
Saw the tenderness trying not to show.
He reached up slowly and removed the helmet.
The second he did, the air changed.
Her face went utterly still.
Jason’s own breath caught.
The surgical mask covered half her face, but her eyes—
her eyes widened first.
Then softened.
Then filled.
No words came out right away.
Neither of them moved.
Jason thought, stupidly and helplessly, that this was what it felt like when a door you had left open for years suddenly opened again from the other side.
Then she inhaled sharply and crossed the room in three fast steps.
The next second she had both arms around him.
Jason froze.
Every muscle in his body went stiff with shock.
And then he broke.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not loudly.
Just enough that when he tried to pull himself together, his throat closed hard and he had to blink fast because the pressure behind his eyes was suddenly unbearable.
Her hand was on the back of his head.
Her other arm had tightened around him like she was afraid he would disappear again if she let go.
“Jason,” she whispered.
God.
He had not realized how much he needed to hear his name from her until now.
Not Hood.
Not Red Hood.
Jason.
He let himself fold into the hug, forehead dropping briefly against her shoulder.
For a second neither of them said anything.
Then her voice shook very slightly when she spoke again.
“You’re alive.”
Jason made a weak, humorless laugh. “Yeah.”
Her grip tightened.
“I knew there was something wrong about the way you held your knife.”
That made him laugh properly this time, though it came out rough and broken.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I noticed.”
“You noticed my knife stance?”
She drew back just enough to look at him, eyes wet now, and gave him a look that was equal parts devastated and furious.
“I noticed a lot of things.”
Jason’s chest hurt.
She reached up and touched his face with one hand like she was verifying he was real.
Then her expression changed.
The warmth in her face hardened instantly into something dangerous.
Jason immediately knew exactly where this was going.
“Wait,” she said slowly. “Did Bruce know?”
Jason went still.
He tried to look away.
She saw it instantly.
“Jason.”
“Don’t.”
“Did he know?”
“Can we not do this right now?”
“Jason.”
That tone.
That look.
She had always done that to him.
And Bruce too.
That calm, terrible stare that meant she already knew the answer and was deciding how much violence she was going to unleash about it.
Jason lasted exactly two seconds.
Then he folded.
He looked at the floor.
She went very still.
“Oh my God,” she said quietly.
Jason winced.
She stared at him like she could not decide whether to cry or kill someone first.
“He knew.”
Jason didn’t answer.
She let out one sharp, disbelieving breath and put a hand over her mouth.
Then the hand dropped.
And the fury arrived.
Full force.
“I am going to kill him.”
Jason flinched despite himself.
She looked up at him, eyes blazing now. “He knew, and no one TRIED TELLING ME?"
Jason raised both hands defensively. “I was trying to tell you the plan—”
“The plan,” she repeated, glaring.
“Yes, the plan.”
“The plan where all of you apparently thought I would just fall into line and trust everyone’s weird little emotional hostage situation?”
Jason winced harder.
Because yes.
That was exactly the plan.
And she was right to be angry.
And this was very, very bad.
Because her being angry at Bruce now meant the entire emotional reunion setup he and the others had been trying to build for weeks had just gone up in flames.
He saw it all too clearly.
Dick was going to be miserable.
Barbara was going to curse for a week straight.
Tim-well honestly he didn't know how Tim would react.
Damian was going to become personally offended by the existence of consequences.
And Bruce—
Bruce was going to have an apocalypse-level nervous breakdown.
Jason shut his eyes briefly.
“Great,” he muttered. “This is going fantastically.”
She folded her arms. “You should be worried about Bruce.”
“I am worried about Bruce.”
“No, I mean you should be worried because I am going to tell him exactly what I think of him.”
Jason made a sound halfway between a cough and a plea for mercy.
She nodded once, satisfied that the universe had become correct again, then turned sharply back to the mission.
“Later,” she said. “We finish this first.”
Jason stared at her.
Then let out a breath and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “We finish this.”
They got moving again.
This time with helmets and masks back on, bodies hidden again beneath the anonymity of the mission.
But something had shifted.
Jason could feel it in the way she moved beside him now.
Less distant.
Less careful.
As though she had finally let herself remember who he was under the armor.
They took down the next line of goons disguised in hospital gear with brutal efficiency.
One by one.
Silent.
Fast.
Jason caught on quickly to her signals.
She used hand motions that he recognized from years ago before she had even realized she was doing them.
Left shoulder meaning go.
Fingers brushing her belt meaning smoke.
Two taps at his wrist meaning cover her line of sight.
He followed each one instinctively.
Because somehow, after everything, they still worked like this.
A man rounded the corner and saw them in the doorway.
Too late.
Jason struck first, knocking the weapon out of his hands.
She finished the takedown.
Another came after her from behind.
Jason shot out his leg to trip him.
She twisted, grabbed the man’s collar, and slammed him into the wall hard enough to rattle the light fixtures.
“Nice,” Jason muttered.
“You sound surprised.”
“I am a little.”
She gave him a look over the top edge of her mask. “Don’t make me regret mentoring you.”
Jason barked out a laugh.
They reached the final ward just as Joker’s voice blasted through the hospital speakers again.
“Oh, this is delicious! Children, hide your tears! Heroes, hide your heads! Daddy’s here for the fun part!”
Jason’s whole body went rigid.
He heard her inhale sharply beside him.
Her knuckles cracked around the weapon in her hand.
Then they kicked the ward doors open.
Joker was there.
Standing in the center of the room amid overturned beds, broken toys, and terrified children huddled behind the nurses’ station.
He turned slowly, grin spreading impossibly wide.
“Well, well,” he crooned. “If it isn’t Gotham’s favorite little resurrection project and one of its old bats.”
Jason moved before the man could finish the sentence.
The fight exploded.
It was brutal.
Fast.
Ugly.
Joker’s men tried to swarm them, but it didn’t matter.
Jason was all rage and precision.
She was all control and fury.
Together they carved through the room like a storm.
Jason heard her calling out directions to the children.
“Under the beds!”
“Stay low!”
“Do not look at him!”
He nearly smiled despite the blood pounding in his ears.
Joker tried to slip toward the back emergency exit.
Jason went after him.
One of the goons intercepted him and got thrown bodily into a medical cart.
She appeared beside him an instant later, knocking the knife out of another thug’s hand.
“Left!” Jason shouted.
She ducked.
A blade missed her cheek by a hair.
Then she drove her elbow into the attacker’s throat and moved on without breaking stride.
Joker made one last desperate lunge toward a detonator clipped to the wall.
Jason fired.
The shot knocked it free before his fingers could touch it.
The resulting spark was enough to send the man stumbling back into the center of the room.
She was already there.
The takedown was fast.
Merciless.
Precise.
When it was over, Joker lay on the floor groaning and swearing while his remaining men were unconscious, tied, or trying desperately not to cry.
The children were safe.
The nurses were shaken.
The room had gone quiet except for the faint hum of emergency lights.
Jason stood breathing hard in the middle of the wreckage.
Then one of the children peeked from behind the nurse’s station.
A little girl.
Maybe seven.
She stared at Jason.
Then at the girl beside him.
Then at the clown sprawled on the floor.
And very carefully said, “Are you the good guys?”
Jason looked at the girl beside him.
She looked back.
Then she crouched slightly so the child could see her better and said, in the softest voice he had heard her use all night, “Yes, sweetheart. We’re the good guys.”
The little girl took another cautious step.
Then several more kids came out from hiding.
One boy with a stuffed rabbit clutched to his chest stared up at Jason with enormous eyes.
“You’re scary.”
Jason gave him a flat look. “Thanks.”
The boy considered this.
Then nodded. “You too.”
The girl made a sound that was very clearly a laugh trying not to be loud.
Jason looked at her.
Even with the mask, he could see the warmth in her eyes.
The one he remembered.
The one he had missed.
He realized then that the mission had shifted without him noticing.
It was over.
The danger had passed.
What remained was the aftermath.
And somehow that was the most dangerous part of all.
Because when the kids started asking questions, they had to answer.
And when the nurses started thanking them, they had to stand there and take it.
And when the hospital doors finally opened and the police came rushing in with Gordon at the front, the whole world was about to become far too interested.
Gordon stopped dead when he saw her.
Jason saw it immediately.
The way the commissioner’s face changed from tired to shocked to deeply, deeply pleased in the span of about one second.
He looked like he wanted to say a thousand things.
Instead he just exhaled.
“Well,” Gordon said, staring at them. “You two sure know how to make an entrance to a party.”
Jason tilted his head. “You’re welcome.”
Gordon shook his head and turned toward the nurses, already taking control of the scene.
The children, however, had other ideas.
One of them latched onto Jason’s leg.
Another grabbed the edge of her suit.
“Don’t go,” the first little girl whispered.
Jason froze.
The girl beside him lowered herself to one knee again and gently rested a hand on the child’s shoulder.
“We have to go check the rest of the hospital,” she said softly.
The child’s lower lip wobbled. “But you came back.”
The room went very still.
Jason looked at her.
Her expression had changed.
Something tender and broken and nearly unbearable crossed her face before she smoothed it away.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I came back.”
Jason’s throat tightened.
Then the second child, a boy with bandaged fingers, looked up at Jason and asked the question that made everyone in the hallway stop breathing.
“Are you coming back too?”
Jason felt the whole room tilt.
He had no answer.
The girl beside him answered first.
She put her hand on his shoulder.
And said, “Yes.”
Jason looked at her.
She looked straight ahead at the children.
But when she spoke again, the words felt like they were meant for him too.
“We’re coming back.”
And for a moment, just for a moment, Jason believed it.
Bruce heard the news alert before the Batcomputer even finished loading the feed.
Arkham escape.
Children’s hospital.
Joker.
Red Hood and a black-and-red vigilante on scene.
He was already moving before the system stabilized.
The monitor in the cave flickered to life.
The live news feed came up first.
Gordon on camera outside the hospital, rain still wet on his coat.
Police barricades.
Ambulances.
Civilians crowding behind the tape.
And then the camera caught movement.
Bruce stopped dead.
Her.
She came out of the hospital with a small cluster of children trailing after her like a flock of frightened ducklings, one little girl holding onto the side of her jacket as if she were afraid she might vanish if she let go.
Jason was beside her.
Alive.
Visible.
Too alive.
Too visible.
Bruce’s hands curled at his sides.
His first thought was fury.
White-hot, immediate fury.
Jason had gone in without clearance.
Jason had gone in with her.
Jason had clearly not told her who he was.
And Bruce was going to have a very serious conversation with him that involved several deeply unpleasant words and possibly a wall.
Then the camera shifted again.
The children were laughing now.
Not all of them.
Some were still crying.
Some looked stunned.
But they were moving.
Escorted.
Alive.
Safe.
His anger faltered just enough to let the rest of the scene hit.
She had gotten them out.
She had taken down Joker in a children’s hospital and gotten every single one of those kids out alive.
Bruce’s jaw clenched painfully.
Of course she had.
Of course she would.
He watched her crouch to speak to one of the children, saw the softness in her posture, the care in the way she kept her body angled so the kid could stand closer without fear.
It hurt.
God, it hurt.
Because he knew that posture.
Knew that version of her.
Knew how many times she had done that in Gotham before she ever left.
He knew it the way one knew a song they had spent years trying not to hear.
Jason said something to her on the sidewalk.
She looked at him.
Bruce saw the exchange but not the words.
Then Jason did the thing Bruce should have known he would do the second he was overwhelmed.
He hugged her.
Not a casual bump.
Not a rough one-armed gesture.
A full, sudden, devastatingly real hug.
Bruce’s entire body went still.
The rage came back instantly.
Because Jason Todd had the audacity—after disappearing, after surviving, after returning, after everything—to hug her in front of a live camera like this was normal.
Bruce stared.
And then, because his life had apparently become a cruel joke, he realized something even worse.
He could not decide whether he wanted to strangle Jason or pull him closer.
The silence inside the Batcave stretched so long it turned brittle.
Then the live feed shifted again.
The camera zoomed in.
Someone from the press shouted a question.
“Can you tell us who you are?”
Another voice called, “Are you officially working with Batman again?”
A third asked, “Is this your return to Gotham?”
Bruce watched as she turned her head slightly toward the crowd.
Even at a distance, even through the grainy broadcast, he knew the exact expression on her face.
The one that said she had already decided this was too much.
The one that meant she was about to leave.
Then one of the reporters edged closer.
“Is it true you’ve been in Gotham for days? Are you here to stay?”
She stared at the microphone for one long second.
Bruce felt every muscle in his body lock.
A fraction of a second later, she shot a line to the rooftop beside the hospital and disappeared upward in a spray of motion and red-black blur.
The reporter yelped.
The camera jerked.
The broadcast lost her immediately.
Bruce exhaled once through his nose, sharp and disbelieving.
Clark, who had only just been halfway out of the cave after the earlier meeting, paused with his coat in hand and watched the screen with obvious interest.
“You know her,” he said carefully.
Bruce didn’t look at him.
The monitor showed the rooftop where she had vanished.
“Continue the interview?” Clark asked.
Bruce’s voice was too controlled to be healthy.
“No.”
Clark frowned. “Bruce—”
“She is not available.”
That made Clark pause.
He glanced at the screen, then at Bruce, clearly deciding not to push.
Probably wise.
Meanwhile the second screen in the cave lit up with Gotham’s emergency news ticker.
Live updates.
Footage.
Reaction.
Headlines.
And, because Gotham could never let a thing remain simple for even thirty seconds, the broadcast began showing edited clips from the hospital as citizens started flooding social media with shaky phone footage of her leaving the scene.
Children waving.
Gordon smiling.
Jason standing beside her in Red Hood gear with a posture that made him look like he had just been hit by a truck and had somehow decided this was still the best day of his life.
Bruce turned away from the screen before he could react too visibly.
Then the Batfamily group chat began exploding.
'Don’t Tell Bruce'
DihForBrains: WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED BrainCellHolder: I need everyone to stay calm. Overworked Intern: I am NOT calm. Barbie Bat: DID HE HUG HER??? Shadow Gremlin: :) Walking Flashlight: I just watched live footage of a civilian child ask if she was coming back?? WHAT IS THIS EMOTIONAL DAMAGE Hoodrat: She knows.
Silence.
Then immediately:
BrainCellHolder: Jason what do you mean she knows Hoodrat: She knows I’m alive. DihForBrains: OH MY GOD Overworked Intern: WAIT WAIT WAIT did you tell her??? Hoodrat:No. Barbie Bat: JASON. Hoodrat:I PANICKED. Shadow Gremlin: :) Walking Flashlight: Did she freak out??? Hoodrat:A little. DihForBrains: “A little” as in emotionally devastated or as in “I am going to murder Bruce Wayne” because those are different levels. Hoodrat Both. BrainCellHolder: Oh no. Overworked Intern: OH FOR FUCKS SAKE Barbie Bat: Is Bruce alive Hoodrat:Probably not for long.
Yeah Bruce was fucked.
A/N: Unironicly this took way to long cus I rewrote it like 5 times - Anywho hope you all enjoyed it and I hope you all have a lovely day! Any suggestions yall would like to see lmk Im open for em :)
Taglist:@crys4l @cantbecreative @whimsiecat @ilocuras24, @throughmylifetimesiwatchtheworld , @baileybae05 @lunarwisteria @calista-lad @diseasedclitoris @jvanilly
