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The cave hums with old electricity. Machinery breathes softly around him, familiar, unchanging. Screens flicker against the carved stone walls, casting long shadows that stretch like limbs.
He sits still in the dark.
The console blooms with data. Surveillance reports, GCPD chatter, intercepted communications three months condensed into a single, brutal summary. He skims it all in silence. No expression. Just movement: eyes narrowing, fingers sliding across keys.
Gotham hasn’t rotted in his absence. It’s evolved.
The Red Hood appears in twelve of the twenty-seven priority-level incidents. Arms trafficking. Territory disputes. Two disappearances flagged ‘high concern,’ no bodies found. The name keeps surfacing, always bolded, always underlined. Not just a problem anymore.
A presence. A force.
Some call him a crimelord now. Others use grander titles. ‘The ghost Crime alley.’ ‘The terror of the batless district.’
The Bat watches a clip of security footage blurry, black and white. Hood walks through gunfire like it’s weather. He doesn’t flinch when a man screams. Doesn’t hesitate when he answers.
Another feed shows a rooftop, two masked individuals crouched together, the smaller one passing a file to the taller. Timestamp: three weeks ago. The taller one is the Hood.
The smaller one... unknown.
He pauses the feed, then clicks through to the next file.
No sound in the cave but the steady, rhythmic pulse of systems keeping watch over the city. It never rests. Neither does he.
A single line of text appears across the bottom of the screen:
"Red Hood presence detected in East End bowery."
He moves, no words spoken, no signal sent. The Bat is back in Gotham.
And he has much to do.
—————————
The apartment was far too quiet.
Even the city outside, the usual sirens, the hum of traffic, felt like it had pulled away for a moment. Giving them space neither of them asked for.
Jason hadn’t touched the couch where he usually collapsed when he came home. He wasn’t pacing, wasn’t reading, wasn’t doing anything except standing near the window. Not like he usually would when he was being paranoid or suspicious. No, Jason has his arms crossed, staring at the glass like it owed him answers.
Damian didn’t look up from the book in his lap, but he could feel it. Something coming. Something serious.
“I used to wear a cape,” Jason said abruptly, breaking the unnerving silence like a gunshot.
Damian didn’t respond. Jason didn’t usually start conversations with nonsense, but there’s a first for everything he supposed-
“I was... Robin. The second one.”
That got Damian to look up.
He squinted. “Like... the Robin? Batman’s sidekick?”
Jason didn’t move, didn’t blink. “Yeah.”
A pause.
“I thought that was just some guy,” Damian said slowly. “Some trained orphan or something.”
Jason gave a humorless breath that might’ve been a laugh, once. “We were all orphans. That was the job requirement.”
Damian sat up straighter, alert now. “Wait- you- you worked for Batman?”
“I lived with him.” Jason's voice dipped lower. “I trusted him. Thought I was doing something important. Thought he saw me.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“I died,” he said. “Out there. Thought I could handle something solo. Thought I was ready. I was too upset to see I was wrong.”
Damian stared. There was no shock, just the slow turn of awful comprehension. Jason didn’t say this kind of thing lightly, nor did he joke with a face like that. If he was saying it, it was real. The real question was, why now?
“I waited for him,” Jason said with a calmness he clearly didn’t feel, his fingers quivering slightly in their hold.
“He didn’t come. I died thinking I’d been abandoned for storming off.” There was no drama in his voice. No bitterness. Just a kind of worn-out ache, like someone describing the shape of an old scar.
“I came back,” Jason paused, face scrunching enough for Damian to see from the couch.
“Eventually. Different. Wrong. Angry.”
He finally turned from the window, the soft hum of toxic green catching in Damians eyes. “I’ve spent years trying to figure out why he didn’t avenge me. Why I wasn’t worth it.”
Damian swallowed. Something about this was hitting wrong. Hitting close. Cause he knew Jason would drop anything to take revenge for him. He’s seen it. His baba has saved him from the red room. Had killed to get him out of there.
Then Jason’s voice dropped, quieter, heavier, Damian swallowed his nerves, expecting to hear anything.
“There’s something you need to know, before I do confront Batman.”
Damian frowned. “What?” Confront Batman?? Why would-
Jason looked away once more, then back with the blankest face Damian has seen in a while. “Bruce Wayne is... your father.”
The words hit Damian like a fist.
His breath caught, heart pounding in ways he couldn’t understand. This wasn’t just some shitty secret he had been ‘dying’ to know. This was like a lie being exposed to everything, he thought Jason... the words they had fought for before making the world crack apart beneath him.
“Bruce Wayne?” His voice came out quiet, trembling. Upset beyond words by this point because what? Did all that progress- all those patrols out, all that trust, bond, and love, mean nothing?!
“My father?” Jason nodded slowly, eyes unreadable. Turning a little to the side, as though seeing something.
Damian’s hands clenched into fists, jaw tight. After everything- “Why did you tell me this now?” After everything.
Jason’s eyes darkened. “Because I wasn’t ready. Because... maybe you still aren’t either.” There were words left unsaid, Jason’s face almost giving it away.
Silence filled the room, thick and heavy.
Damian stood suddenly, the weight of the revelation, his baba was just hurting! He didn’t mean-, pushing him over the edge. He stormed out of the living room, the bedroom door slamming hard behind him.
The sound echoed loud in the apartments living room, final even to Jason’s own ears, as stuffed and cloudy as they felt.
Inside his room, Damian curled up on his bed, pulling the covers tight like armor. Hot tears burned behind his eyes, and the silence pressed against him like a wave. His chest tightened with a thousand questions that had no answers yet. whyWhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhyWHYWHYWHYWHY!
Downstairs, Jason stood at the window, staring out at the dark city streets. Memories flashing through his mind like a PTSD episode he couldn’t quite get out of.
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the sting of what he’d just done.
He didn’t want to break Damian’s trust- he just…
Some truths couldn’t wait, not when he wasn’t sure he’d come back unscathed. Emotionally or otherwise.
Turning away, he reached for his gear, already setting his sights on the next move, provoking Black Mask, drawing the Bat out, turning Gotham’s shadows into his battleground. All for a revenge he had been putting off for ages.
The red hood was back to his main purpose once more But at what cost?
—————————
The city always felt too loud until it didn’t.
Damian sat on the edge of the rooftop, hoodie pulled low and fingers clenched tight around the fire escape rail. Gotham wind was wet and cold, brushing over him like a ghost. He didn’t shiver. Not even when the voices in his head refused to shut up.
"Your father is Bruce Wayne."
The words rattled like bullets in his ribs. Jason’s voice hadn’t wavered, hadn’t sugarcoated. Just dropped it like a grenade and walked off to gear up. Frustrating but so, so typical.
Damian had locked himself in his room for a day. Maybe two. Told himself he didn’t care. Told himself he should be angry. Except the anger didn’t sit right, and now he was here, freezing on a rooftop like a stray, staring down at the alley below like it held the answers.
His dad was out there. Not that one. His real one. The one who raised him. And whatever dumb suicide mission Jason was on tonight? Damian would be damned if he let him go at it alone.
“I can just shadow him,” he mumbled, pulling the hood tighter. “Just keep an eye. Doesn’t mean I forgive him. Just means I’m smarter.”
He moved like smoke across the rooftops, retracing the spots Jason had been setting up the last few nights. Storage lockers. Rooftop caches. Quiet zones in East End where cops and capes often didn’t dare tread.
Then he heard it.
.
*THUD*
.
*SHATTER*
.
The sound of a body slamming through porcelain. The crunch of glass under boots. Skin meeting skin like the bones underneath needed no protection.
Damian dropped into a crouch, boots silent on impact. The old apartments old windows were mostly blown out, but one high window still held. From the shadows, he peered inside-
And froze.
Red Hood and Batman were already mid-brawl, and it was ugly. Brutal. Close-quarters and mean like it wasn’t about skill anymore- just exhaustion and hate. Armor cracked. Blood sprayed. Fists blurred. He could hear when Jason’s rib cracked, when the dark figure he was facing took a right hook to the chin so hard he had to stumble into the next punch.
Jason landed a hit that sent Batman into a pile of boxes near Damian’s window. The noise of old objects being broken under the weight echoed like a car crash.
“You don’t get to lecture me!” Jason snarled, voice hoarse, raw, but finally loud enough for Damian to easedrop. “You lost the right to that a long time ago!”
Batman didn’t answer. Just pushed himself upright again.
Damian’s nails dug into the window frame, heart punching against his ribs. He wanted to scream. To run in. But something about Jason’s stance stopped him. Something about the edge to his voice.
“I died,” Jason said, panting now. “And you let him live.”
He opened a storage closet- Damian hadn’t even noticed it- and dragged out a slumped body. Purple coat. Pale skin. Green hair, matted with blood but still recognizably him.
Damian’s stomach dropped, reminded of the countless sleepless nights Jason had to deal with, the cries of agony Damian could hear when he sometimes curled up with him late at night. "The Joker."
Jason threw the bastard to the floor like a trash bag and kicked him once, hard, for good measure. The joker already a bloody mess, clearly being hit by some sort of metal rod repeatedly.
“He’s been in my custody for two weeks,” Jason hissed. “Didn’t kill him. Didn’t touch him much. Just kept him here. Waiting.”
Batman’s breath was ragged from the fighting, but from where Damian was he could see the broad of Batman’s shoulders tense tighter. “What the hell are you doing.”
Jason pulled two pistols from the back of his belt and tossed one toward Bruce’s feet. It clattered like broken promise Damian didn’t know about but could feel the weight of.
“You get to decide now. Me, or him.”
Damian’s breath hitched as Jason raised the other gun to the jokers head, barely audible even to himself.
“What the fuck are you doing, Baba?” he whispered so quietly he almost didn’t hear himself. Eyes wide, his chest felt too tight. His dad was playing Russian roulette with his own goddamn life. He knew Jason didn’t take his life nearly as seriously as his own, but this was a whole new level.
Jason was still talking, but it was slipping into something else- something cracked and fast and jagged. He was loosing his mind in grief-
“I came back, Bruce! And I still tried to be good. You could’ve made it mean something. But instead you let him breathe while I dug my way out of my own grave.”
Batman tilted his head down at the guns, then at Joker, and though Damian couldn’t see his face, he could still see his back. His back which was still tense, ready to strike- this wasn’t going to go well.
Then at Jason. As Damian followed the gaze he was Jason’s now bruising face, his wild eyes and spasming stance in which the gun in his hand kept from falling apart.
“I couldn’t make that choice,” he said, voice low with a stiffness that made even Damian tense.
Jason’s head dropped just enough to show he was done. Done hoping. Done waiting. Done trying to save something unsalvageable.
Damian knew, in that exact second, what his father had really meant earlier: he didn’t think he was worth the right choice being made. And fuck if that didn’t hurt to think about, about how Damian had missed this and hadn’t helped at all-
It broke something in Damian’s chest.
But before he could move- before he could yell or do anything- Batman moved first.
A flash of silver.
A batarang caught Jason’s neck, slicing deep. Blood sprayed.
Jason staggered.
“NO- ” Damian choked, launching toward the glass, too late.
Batman tackled Jason, both of them colliding into support beams. Sparks flew. The building groaned.
Then everything exploded.
Flames rushed up through the structure like breath through lungs, fire chasing air and swallowing it whole. The blast knocked Damian backwards to a nearby fire escape, glass shattering, his body flung into the wall like a ragdoll.
Everything was smoke. Screams. Sirens in the distance. The world spinning out from under him.
But through the ash and chaos, Damian clawed to his feet, blood running from his scalp, heart hammering.
His dad- his baba- was in there.
And he wasn’t letting him die like this.
Not again.
—————————
Damian’s feet pounded across the alley as he neared the smoking ruin, heart hammering in his chest. The metallic scent of blood was thick in the air. There- on the ground, was Jason.
The Red Hood’s helmet lay discarded nearby, cracked and smeared with dark streaks. Damian knelt, hands shaking as he touched Jason’s battered face, pulling the mask off fully. The blood on his hands was sticky, warm, real. Oh fuck.
Jason’s eyes snapped open, wide with shock. For a moment, Damian thought he’d see anger or confusion, maybe rejection, but instead, those hard eyes softened. A flicker of relief, maybe even something like gratitude.
Jason’s voice was raw as he tried to make noise beyond the blood, barely more than a choking sound which echoed in the alley. Damian seeing his vision blur slightly but not realizing the cause was the hot tears flooding his vision as his hands hovered in an almost shocked state above the corps- HES NOT DEAD YET- the body of his dad.
“I… ve .. o...” He was here, Damian was- his kid, his baby, showing up when no one else had. He almost felt like that boy who died in that warehouse all over again, but Damian came to save him, came to reassure him that he was worth saving- that he’d come on time even if he could feel the life draining out of him.
Panic clawed at Damian’s throat. His breaths came fast and shallow as he continued to scrambled with what had just happened. “That’s my-” he thought, horror and disbelief mixing like acid. That thing is my father.
Jason’s chest barely rose and fell, shallow and weak. His eyes fluttered closed again, exhaustion winning over the agonizing battle before them. Damian’s heart spiking at the action, spurring him on.
Damian finally stopped hesitating. He ripped open the family emergency first aid, hands trembling but precise as he pressed bandages to deep cuts, improvised stitches to close jagged wounds, doing everything he could to stop the bleeding that was choking his dad out and keep Jason alive. Once the emergency tube was shoved through and Jason was finally able to breathe a bit, Damian started to pack up and get his ass into gear.
He dragged Jason away from the crumbling alley, every step heavier than the last as the weight of that nights events came crashing down on him. Damian’s tear stained face getting even more went and red the longer he pulled the limp body of- of his baba.
“He promised he’d always be here,” Damian whispered fiercely, voice breaking in his struggle to haul his dad out of the alley and to safer ground by the armpits. Cursing his small body as he struggled around some more burning rubble as tears finally fell.
“He promised—”
—————————
What does he do now?
Damian’s fingers trembled as they held on to his baba’s hand. The slow beeping from the heart monitor forever in his ears as he just stared at the face of the man who raised him, who- who loved him so much that he couldn’t believe Damian could love him back.
It had been a week with no changes in Jason’s health other than the surface level injuries healing. The bruises that marred his dad’s face healing over in the first few days. Unfortunately that could not be said for the still healing neck wound.
The doctor Damian had kidnapped had said it would be at least a month before the scar finally settled in, along with the many other wounds which dug deep into the patient’s flesh. He also said that waking up would be either soon or never.
Damian almost killed that doctor for the terse words he had spoken, but knew deep in his heart it was true.
Jason… may never wake up again. And Damian could feel himself crumbling all over again. It all lead back to his first question…
”What do I do, baba?” Damian practically begged an answer to the unconscious body laid out before him. He was stuck in his own head, had been all week. Without Jason, what does Damian even have? The shadow? That was red hoods partner.
Nightwing? The man Jason was still annoyed with and, if one listened closely, scared of? Bad idea without Jason’s protection- fuck he missed nightwing- but he missed his baba more.
Damian was stumped. Truly and utterly stuck in a rut for what seemed like the foreseeable future, and so, a week passed by. Damian barely eating, if only the reheated leftovers from their final dinner together. It wasn’t final! He’ll wake up- he promised!
Curled up in blankets that smelled of Jason, holding onto his dad’s hand like a lost child. He felt- weak… so utterly helpless in the face of- facing the world without his baba by his side.
The downwards spiral couldn’t last forever though, as a knock at the apartments door two weeks into the depressive downdraft a lady named holly was there.
“What do you want.” Damian spoke with a malice and mask he hadn’t used since the doctor spoke a few weeks ago. What day was it now anyway?
“U-um. My name is holly, I was the representative sent to um… to get red hoods help?” Damian felt his almost foggy mind come to attention. Red hoods business?
“What of it? I’m his representative until further notice.” Holly looked to have straightened, body tensing as she put a few piece together.
”Shadow- no that isn’t important- because red hood hasn’t been seen in a few weeks, gangs have been trying to stake claim on our territories. We are trying our best to hold them off but without hood it’s just going to keep coming-“
Damian felt himself slide into place. Shadow was needed- he was- he could do something for Jason till he came back. Cause Jason would come back.
“I shall take over for red hood until further notice. Are you the secretary I heard much about in recent weeks?” Holly looked surprised.
”Secretary? Oh well I do manage a few things here and there-“ Jason knew- he was planning for something to go wrong. No way he’d hire a secretary otherwise- Damian knew it was fishy when he first brought it up! That meant he WAS going to get up… Right?
”We have much to do yes? Show the way.” If Jason was expecting Damian to step up, he would. Jason cared for crime alley. More than Damian knew himself, thus he too would become that hope for the desolate.
He just had to figure out what being a crime lord entails first.
—————————
Dick continued to nervously tab the counter as Tim typed and clicked around the bat computer for what felt like ages. Screens pulled up on gang activity and recent shadow sightings shooting up.
It was like red hood just… disappeared.
”There have been no sightings nor word of Red Hood in over a month, and now shadow is out doing work Red Hood usually would? Either the big man is out of town or he’s no longer… available, for the work anymore.”
As much as he loved his baby brother, he was more concerned with his suspicion turnned totally true. Rooftop kid was definitely shadow, only issue is where the hell was Red Hood?
Dick knew how much the kid cared about his dad, as well as how much he stressed over his dad’s rock bottom self esteem when it came to fatherhood. Knew Red Hood was protective as hell of shadow and was violent against anyone ever touching his partner. So then where the hell was he? Red Hood wasn’t the type to send his son into dangerous business like this without any build up or reasoning.
”-might be due to the new leader on the street but the number of deaths has significantly decreased since shadow took over red hoods gang. Hell even less kids have been seen on the streets. It’s all clearly connected, but how?” Tim was also, clearly not going to sleep any time soon. Dick sighed, pulling the work blanket over Tim’s shoulders, snapping the boy out of his mental spiral and getting him to meet dicks eyes.
“There’s no need to rush Tim, just slow down and remember to get some rest. Please?” Tim’s face scrunched up like he tasted something sour before melting into something softer.
“You look worried. Is this about roof kid again?” Dick ruffled Tim’s hair to get those beatty little blue eyes off of him.
”I’ll handle my business, you handle yours okay? I’ll be going back to blud for a few days due to all the gang activity reaching there too. Keep me posted.”
He has no idea what’s going on in Gotham right now, but he hopes his kid is alright.