Hood was keeping a low profile at the moment, which was admittedly not difficult to do in Burnley. All of Crime Alley had gotten used to checking over their shoulder for a flash of red whenever they were up to no good, but their increased caution hadn't percolated beyond Somerset. Out here, Hood was free to casually stalk a group of dealers as they discussed their plans for selling new product.
Gotham's chemistry education had gotten out of hand while Hood had been gone. There was a new designer drug on street corners every few weeks, half of them byproducts of the Rogues' experimentation and all of them lethal. They didn't start in Crime Alley, no, the criminals had gotten a little too smart for that, but they ended up there all the same. Clogging up his streets and poisoning his people with their toxic castoffs.
Hood watched the pack of lowlife scum tasting the bright pink crystals and eagerly plotting to flood every rave for the next week with little baggies and wondered if it wouldn't be easier to have a little chat with the head of Gotham U's chemistry department.
But since he was already here and his guns were loaded...
Hood straightened from his crouch and braced a foot on the parapet. The decorative facade of the next building over gave plenty of notches to lock his grapple and descend into the pack. The idiots hadn't looked up once—it would be child's play to shoot them before his boots touched the ground. Maybe he'd miss one, let the man think he'd escaped death by the skin of his teeth. Let him beg for mercy. Let him flee, fast enough to carry the tales of Hood's vengeance to enough ears so that by the time Hood caught up to him and murdered him in his own home, all of Gotham would understand what Crime Alley had already taken to heart.
The Red Hood ruled crime in Gotham and no one—not the cops, not Black Mask, and certainly not Batman—could stop him.
Before Hood could unholster his grapple, his attention was caught in the distance by a building a block away. The yellow cape he recognized, fingers tightening painfully on his grapple, the purple one less so, and the last, a shadow dark enough to be mistaken as a trick of the light—that one made a jagged smile split his face under the helmet.
Batman was a block away. A block too far to save the criminals Hood had marked for death. Too late. As always.
They hadn't noticed him, the Bat or his brightly feathered flock, and Hood paused for a moment. Something about the scene was niggling at him like a popcorn kernel stuck between his teeth and he couldn't quite put a finger on it. The three figures were arrayed facing each other instead of peering into the night and as he watched, the shadow unfurled, a dark smudge on the horizon. The other two fell back slightly.
All three fixed on each other with no attention to their surroundings.
Shame that. You never knew when a murderous crime lord was watching you. When an enemy was lurking in the shadows, just waiting to break some wings. It was practically Hood's civic duty to remind them of the consequences.
When the Bats stopped paying attention, people died.
Hood made to the last building before the street split without notice, pressed against the HVAC with his gun pointing around the side. He was close enough to hear snatches of their conversation—the Replacement's voice shrill, the new Batgirl almost angry, the Bat's inaudible growl—and close enough to make the shot.
The only question was who first? The Replacement Robin, who'd left his back unguarded so foolishly after Hood had proven in Titans Tower that nowhere was safe? The Replacement Batgirl, who Hood didn't know much about, but who certainly should've taken the lesson the old Batgirl had learned the hard way? Or Batman himself—Hood still seethed with rage at the memory of how Br-Batman had dismissed him in the same breath as the Joker, just two Rogues fighting for his attention, as though Jason hadn't died, as though Robin never mattered, as though he and the Joker were one and the same.
"—you both jeopardized the mission and each other," Batman's growl reached his way, the argument growing louder. "Never in all my years have I seen such rampant disobedience and here are the consequences. Our objective is fled, his base lies in ruins, his plans are unknown, and when he finally puts them into action we will be too late to stop it. Because of you."
Hood paused. It was mighty satisfying to hear Batman yelling at someone else, especially his shiny new Robin. The Replacement stepped forward to protest and Hood holstered his gun. This was too entertaining to spoil.
"B, we—"
"Enough." It was the night air that sent a chill down Hood's spine, not that icy tone. "I do not want to hear your excuses."
"It's not an excuse!" Batgirl shouted, voice almost cracking. "We were handling it until you dropped in! You were the one who ruined it, just because you couldn't comprehend that we're just as capable as you."
Batman loomed over the girl, frustration evident in the stiff movements of his cape. "You weren't handling it. You aren't capable of handling it." Ouch, Hood felt that one and judging by Batgirl's balled fists, she had too. "You are nothing but a bad influence."
That felt a bit harsh, but who was Hood to judge?
Batman rounded on the Replacement and cut him off before he could speak. "And you—I expected better of you, not to be so easily led astray by base manipulation." Both the kids reared back at that. Batman's voice was cold and final, "You're clearly not the detective I thought you were."
Something about the scene was making Hood uneasy. It was a pit in his stomach he couldn't name, a feeling achingly familiar but lost to the sands of his memory. Something about the way Batman postured, big and broad and towering over the two smaller vigilantes. Something about the way the two replacements faced him, carefully keeping him in their line of sight as they covered each other. Something about the tenor of the argument, the kids defensive, the Bat angry.
The Replacement recovered first and stepped forward, empty hands open and out, posture conciliatory. "Batman—"
"Enough. I don't want to hear it."
"B, I think there's something wrong. You were closest to the explosion. You—"
"I said enough."
"You need to come back to the Cave, B—"
Hood was close enough to see the flash of his gauntlet. See the way the Replacement's head snapped to the side.
Hear the sharp crack of kevlar on skin.
Hood's fingers creaked on the HVAC and he realized he'd straightened to his feet. The Bats weren't paying attention though—Batgirl had advanced on the Bat with a shout as the Replacement fell back. It wasn't his problem. The Bat swung at Batgirl but she ducked, though not fast enough to avoid the second punch. It wasn't his problem. The Replacement grabbed her and pulled her back, covering her as they both stumbled too close to the edge of the roof. It wasn't his fucking problem.
So Batman had decided to start hitting his kids. So what? They weren't special. Plenty of children in Crime Alley had learned to fear their fathers. Plenty of children in Crime Alley learned to fear Batman. And these kids would learn that fear as one and the same.
Batman advanced on the two little birds as they shrank back away from him, all of them too involved to notice Hood standing there in plain view.
It wasn't his goddamn problem.
Except for the voice in the back of his head, the kid he'd long thought dead or drowned, the kid who stared appalled at a man he'd trusted succumbing to violence.
Jason thought he had nothing left for Batman to betray, but he was clearly wrong.
The shouts and scrabbles paused in perfect unison when Jason's boots touched down on the rooftop and three pairs of white lenses landed on him.
Batman's focus immediately shifted, lasering in on his helmet, but both replacements backed up, keeping him and Batman still in their view. As though the both of them were threats.
"Hey, old man," Jason greeted, "you wanna take on someone your own size?"
so this is inspired by the latest chap of @frownyalfred's lovely fic 'hold me loosely' (chapter 4, jason POV) — but i feel like i've also seen other people use this scenario? like, i feel like it's an oddly common recurring bit of bruce characterization in fanfics. anyways, what i'm actually referring to is bruce, when someone around him gets injured on the job, defaulting to listing random facts at them as a way of keeping their mind occupied/off their injury. [fairly often, but not always, it's specifically facts about said injury (ex. "on average XX takes X number of days to heal in a healthy person" "Y% of people will experience XX in their lifetime" etc. etc.)]
...so i was thinking about the thought process bruce would go through in order to arrive on that being his go-to strategy for this kind of scenario, and if you think about it, it actually makes perfect sense? bc i can totally imagine him being like "hmmm so a Normal Person incapacitated in the manner of scenario 259(c)(iii) would likely appreciate/require a distraction from their condition" —> "the most appropriate/comforting distraction that does not hinder my ability to actively continue assisting them is to fill the silence —> "slight problem: i am bad at making conversation" {the genuine kind, not the brucie frivolous-lifestyle-bullshit kind} —> "i can speak about a subject that the injured listener has an interest in" —> "i can speak about a subject that will already be on my mind and will be directly relevant to the listener, as well as assure them that i have the requisite knowledge and am therefore capable of taking care of their injury properly"
...of course, the part that bruce forgets to anticipate is what Injured Party makes of him suddenly turning into an audiobook encyclopedia, and how they might actually respond to that beyond just shutting up and listening to him monologue lmao. thankfully, he gets plenty of practice individualizing his Distraction ManeuverTM accordingly on all of his batkids!
dick: EFFECTIVE. the one this strategy was invented for in the first place — does not deal well with tense silence, also just really loves listening to the sound of his loved one's voices, finds it super relaxing/comforting. used to fall asleep easiest in his family's tent at the circus when he could listen to his mom and dad chat about anything late into the night. he had the perspective to recognize that batman monologuing at you all about the mechanics of the injury you've just received yourself is more than a bit morbid, but hey, he was a bit of a dark-humored morbid kid himself, he doesn't mind 🤷🏽♀️
jason: EFFECTIVE. isn't averse to silence in the way dick is, maybe even prefers it mostly — but, when he started out as robin bruce monologued at him when he got injured the first couple times out of habit, and jason definitely noticed and picked up on the pattern. then bruce stopping would have made it weird, so after that he comes to find it comforting in the sense that it's like an endearing habit of bruce's/a familiar routine. so like, he ignores it mostly, but if bruce ever didn't start monologuing at him while he's trying to hold it together he'd definitely notice and be all "hey what the fuck happened" lmao
tim: NOT EFFECTIVE. does not like just listening to bruce growling out mildly-alarming injury statistics, thank you very much. if he can talk, he'll do the talking himself; if he can't, he'll take silence. (also a hand to hold— which bruce eventually learns to provide.)
steph: NOT EFFECTIVE. bruce learns the hard way that steph will interpret him going on about her injury as condescension (which tbf, by definition it kind of is?). his second try is to talk about her performance in the field re: whatever she was doing right before she got injured, which is unsurprisingly received equally poorly. if she can talk, she's definitely talking, and bruce reluctantly learns to tolerate the fact that said chatter is 99% of the time completely unrelated to their current situation. the first time post-war games that he ends up stuck with a steph injured badly enough that she can't fill the silence on her own, in a fit of panicked inspiration he starts telling her about the historical value/sourcing of purple dye, which she teases him endlessly about once she's able to later, but he's just glad that it seems to be implicitly approved of.
cass: SITUATIONALLY EFFECTIVE. cass comes in after tim (and i guess kind of during steph's initial integration into the fam?) so bruce has already been made aware of the possibility that she won't appreciate it. but it turns out that whether cass prefers or dislikes silence varies by the day, honestly, so bruce tends to go for it, and then about 60% of the time he'll get a soft "batman, stop talking, please." (or the equivalent in sign) after a couple minutes lol. (also, even though cass is generally not particularly impolite about it, bruce somehow always feels very effectively chastised by the specific way she tells him to stop: it's like her version of the 'alfred voice'.)
damian: EFFECTIVE. with the unfortunate caveat that if he's capable, he'll certainly be snarking back at bruce the whole time about how he "knows, Father, i memorized the relevant information on these topics when i was five" — but he likes it. he'd never say anything about it, of course, but bruce realizes after some time that being left in silence when bruce is there kind of makes him feel like he's waiting for punishment for being sloppy enough to get injured in the first place.
duke: EFFECTIVE. he doesn't particularly mind silence, but he loves having random general knowledge in factoid form, so he definitely appreciates the monologues. he tends to mostly be content with listening, but he'll also pipe up with corrections occasionally bc he'll tend to have read more recent data.
Jason knew that wandering Crime Alley when he was on the verge of a heat was a bad idea, but he had a tire iron in one hand to defend himself, and he managed to snag a whole week’s worth of the fancy special scent blockers Wayne Enterprises developed to block heat scent, so he was only in as much danger as a twelve-year-old normally was on Gotham’s streets.
Of course, there were common stories of omegas’ judgement being extremely impaired when they were in heat, but those were just stupid biased tales, Jason was thinking just fine, and he needed to grab some more food before he holed up in the little nest he made in the corner of an abandoned building.
He was proud of how he managed to keep himself safe. He hadn’t been caught once, not by the traffickers or the random alphas that liked to skulk around alleys for easy prey. He didn’t need a pack. He could keep himself safe.
(Jason steals the Batmobile tires for his nest. He ends up quite insistently arguing with Batman for them.)
(Hood ends up doing the same, which is how Batman figures out his identity weeks before his dramatic reveal.)
Bruce woke slowly and groggily, though long years of practice kept him still and limp as he returned to consciousness. He was bound to a chair, he identified easily by the points of pressure around him. He'd been drugged, by the mouth full of cotton. Still in his suit, the distinctive over-soured stink of body armor that no amount of baking soda could make a dent in. A small room, judging by the lack of echoes, and mostly alone. One other person was all he could detect, minute shifting and breathing and the occasional clink of metal kept deliberately quiet.
He didn't remember what had happened. His memories of patrol were fuzzy and out of order—he remembered Gordon asking for help with a new drug lord that had risen to prominence in Gotham's underworld with alarming speed and vicious ruthlessness, a mugging in Burnley, touching base with Robin in San Francisco. He'd spotted the distinctive red helmet on patrol, remembered chasing Red Hood into Somerset, but the Rogue was as good as any Bat in traversing the cityscape. Bruce had almost lost him twice, but he'd cornered him eventually, on the verge of Crime Alley's borders, and then—
A louder clank of metal and a muffled groan.
Bruce finally cracked his eyes open, blinking to adjust to the naked bulb as his head groaned with a heavy, dull ache. His head was slumped to the right as far as it could in the confines of his cowl and Bruce scanned his surroundings with slowly clearing vision.
The room was windowless and dark, with a singular set of steps leading up to a reinforced metal door. Bruce was bound to a metal chair welded to the floor, his hands manacled together and his feet shackled to another hook in the floor. He was missing his boots, his belt, and his gauntlets. There were unidentifiable stains on the floor and wall, all a rusty brown.
And in the center of the room, slightly to the left of the drain in the sloping floor, shackled to a hook that curved inches below the ceiling, was his target.
Hood had lost his jacket, his belt, and his boots, socked feet on tiptoes as he strained against the chains that kept him strung up. He'd kept the distinctive red helmet, which was now tilted towards Bruce.
“And if you could trade this one for the dead one, son for son, would you do it?”
For an instant, the image flashed into his head, seductive and alluring—Jason back, Jason home, Jason alive—before it vanished, leaving behind a young boy broken in pieces and Jason’s horrified expression.
“No,” Bruce said hoarsely, and it tore at him, but he could never trade one life for another.
“No?” Hood repeated, voice harsh.
“Because then I’d have no sons,” Bruce said quietly.
“Gave up on the dead brat already, huh.”
Bruce wished he could punch Hood and wipe the stupid sneer off his face.
“If I exchanged an innocent life to bring Jason back,” Bruce said, struggling to keep his voice level, “Then he would never speak to me again.”
Twilight-y thing where post Jason's death, Bruce starts hallucinating Jason whenever he's in a dangerous situation. So of course he gets into more and more dangerous situations, trying desperately to see his son again. This cools a bit when Tim joins up, but Bruce still sometimes puts himself into a dangerous situation to get Jason to show up, angry and worried and upset, lecturing Bruce on how he needs to take better care of himself and fight harder and all that.
Then one day Bruce gets rescued from an explosion by the mysterious new Red Hood. And man does that lecturing sound very, very familiar.
