Chapter Text
There was a gift basket on his doorstep.
Now, objectively, there wasn't anything wrong with that. Except for the fact that it wasn't on the doorstep of where Jason actually lived, it was on the doorstep of one of his safe house “apartments”. One that definitely shouldn’t be receiving presents in the middle of the night.
This was either a very out of touch gift from someone who just moved to Gotham, a strange information transfer, or a trap. With most evidence pointing towards the very last.
Jason would not put it past Joker, Riddler, Penguin or any other eccentrically-themed villain to rig a booby trap for him. However, the basket had already been tipped over from the weight of its contents when he found it outside.
It was one of those cheap gift baskets from grocery stores. There was a bottle of lotion, two bath bombs, a bar of soap, a tiny container for 4 chocolates, and a bottle of red wine which had obviously been shoved into the basket as a last second addition from the way it was squishing everything else and barely fit.
All in all, not a very impressive gift. So what the hell was it meant to convey?
Cutting the chocolates and bath bombs open revealed nothing. There weren't any hidden notes stashed anywhere. He put the wine through several bat-tests and nothing came back as particularly suspicious.
The wine was good at least, almost a sweet gesture now that he knew nothing was tampered with. But still the question nagged at him- who was it from?
What the fuck ever.
Jason kept an extra eye out on his next patrol but nothing fishy popped up. So he marked it off as a package sent to the wrong location and mostly forgot about it.
♡ ˚₊‧꒰ა ( Danny used Gift!) ( ദ്ദി ˙ᗜ˙ ) ☆ (ó﹏ò｡) (Jason is confused!) ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ♡
About two days later, he encountered another gift.
Equally on par with the other gift in its store bought glory, this one mainly sported a large bow with multiple fruits inside and a packaged wheel of cheese.
The card sported the words “Howdy Neighbor!” in a loopy font with a cartoonish looking cowboy waving and smiling wide. Inside was written ‘Please don’t decapitate me, I come in peace :,)’ with a small bad drawing of someone clasping their hands together underneath.
What the fuck, was all that ran through Jason’s head as he turned the card over and over again under a blacklight. Looking for fingerprints, a hidden symbol, something to tie this to a shady organization or even just a single guy he could preferably track down and interrogate.
The card had nothing, nothing but slightly smudged blue pen writing.
Who? Who are you???
The fruits didn’t have anything inside them either. Frustratingly, Jason found himself staring down at a bunch of cut up cheese and apple bits, feeling like he was making the world’s most fucked up muder-suspect charcuterie board.
‘Please don’t decapitate me?’ Was this some poor bastard's attempt at a joke? Leaving a note like that for the Red Hood.
If this was some hooligan’s way of trying to atone for somehow pissing Red Hood off, they were gonna have to go a lot farther than ribbons and Gouda wheels.
And then the third gift came. After that, the fourth. Then the fifth, sixth, seventh- all without any kind of card or message.
Jason continued to feel like a rabid dog pacing in its cage every time he found one. Always right outside the door of one of his safe houses, always somehow perfectly positioned so that he’d find it within a few hours. He started checking them like mad.
Nothing. He had almost nothing after 3 weeks, and he was beginning to feel like this entire farce was just a mad plot to lower his guard. Get him used to the harmless gifts, then plant poison in one right as he’s left himself wide open. Yeah right.
Unfortunately to his endless frustration he found no perpetrator. Yet somehow that was an admittance in itself, there were only a few people that knew his methods well enough to have any kind of success in avoiding them.
Coincidentally, this person also had good reason to want to worm his way into his good side- and a twisted sense of humor as well.
♡ ˚₊‧꒰ა (Jason is suspicious!) (⊙_⊙ ) ☆ (ᴗ_ ᴗ。) (Danny is unaware!) ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ♡
Red Hood threw the box of mini-chocolates on the ground in front of his perpetrator. The bastard he’d just caught trespassing into his territory again.
“Is this your idea of a sick joke?” He growled down at the annoying fool.
To think, all that effort spent running around, looking for holes in his security! This man had him nearly in a panic thinking he was about to get Toyman or Riddler knocking down his door!
Dick Grayson in the Nightwing suit, blinked down at the tiny package then back up to Red Hood. “...I mean, throw in a bottle of wine and maybe it is?” He tried.
Red Hood leaned closer towards him, trying his best to intimidate his brother with the two inches he had on him. “Is that an admission?”
Nightwing raised an eye back. “That was an offer to eat them if you don’t.” He leaned down to scoop up the chocolates.
Jason immediately snatched them out of Dick’s hand and stormed off into the night, leaving absolutely no context behind.
“...Bye?” Dick offered to empty air.
♡ ˚₊‧꒰ა (Jason is hunting!) (≖_≖ ) ☆ ( °ヮ° ) ? (Dick is confused!) ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ♡
The timing of them proved random after a while. Mostly every 5 days, sometimes 3 or 6, and once even 8.
The most common connection was that the gifts always appeared in places Jason spent the most time so he was guaranteed to find them. Clearly this meant his activity was being observed.
Most of the gifts were linear at least, commonplace enough to be bought at your average supermarket or wholesaler store.
Chocolates, Bathbombs, small scented candles, fruits, jars of good sauces, honey, soaps, shampoos, conditioners, skin care products, and occasionally a cosmetic or two. The useless junk started to litter his apartments and safe houses. It was like he was being haunted by the ghost of retail holiday gift stands.
He collected every single one, no matter where or when they appeared. It made Jason feel like he was on the world’s worst easter hunt.
All of the items were examined with bat-precision, and the conclusion was always the same- nothing is wrong with them, but how the hell do they keep finding me??
Either way, Jason didn’t really care what the angle was anymore. He just wanted to know who the hell was doing it rather than why. He’d establish whatever weird fucked up motive was going on after he actually had a name and history.
Saturday found Jason staking out his own house, having gone through all the hoops he could have in order to make sure it seemed like he was on his normal patrol.
The gift-giver hadn’t struck in at least four days. The lights were out, locks were up, and Jason had been sat next to his own door for close to 2 hours now. By all accounts, the best time to strike was now.
He listened for movement, eyes firmly trained on the light coming in from the crack underneath the door. As soon as the shadow of movement fell from under the doorlight, he sprang into action.
-there!
Jason threw open the door with far more force than he meant to, almost hitting his perpetrator in the face.
Wirey hands flew back from the basket as Jason pointed a (non red-hood modified) gun at his trespasser. Finally he had this motherfucker right where he wanted-
Jason stopped, freezing and then mentally retracting his steps.
“Jim?”
A scraggly, gold toothed smile was what Jason was met with as Jim (shady neighbor, and part time drug dealer) promptly began sweating bullets. The thin, balding man still had his hands up defensively, braced for anything.
“He-Hey man” Jim's raspy voice said, trying to casually break the ice. “I was just gonna move it outta the way for ya.” As if there was anywhere else to move the basket than taking it into his own apartment for himself.
Jason scowled, both at Jim and the basket. They'd left another gift, soundlessly. An innocent looking pink and blue palette sporting sugar treats and bath salts greeted him alongside another card that would probably be blank.
No way it was his neighbor, Jim was too much of a scaredy cat to try leaving bath and bodywork peace offerings.
The basket had been sitting beside the doorway instead of directly in front, whoever left it knew he was there waiting for them.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” He said, holstering his gun and picking up the basket carefully with one hand. “I thought it was someone else.” Jason didn’t waste too much time trying to console the man- already examining the new basket for boobytraps.
Jim needed no extra words and hightailed it back into his apartment like a rabbit running for its den.
Jason got a nice long night of mentally swearing to high hell as he emptied more bath salts into a tray for analysis.
They came back clean. Again. For the fourteenth time.
He almost wanted them to be poisoned.
♡ ˚₊‧꒰ა (Jason is agitated!) <(ꐦㅍ _ㅍ)> ☆ Σ \(”˚☐˚)/ (Run, Jim, Run!) ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ♡
He set up a security camera.
It was a bad idea, any easy to reach security cameras got destroyed within days of existing in crime alley. Even the harder ones would inevitably have rocks thrown till they shattered.
But Jason was strategic about it, he waited until it had been 3 days after the last gift. It only took about 12 hours of footage before the camera caught exactly what he wanted.
…which didn’t end up helping in the slightest.
Rolling over the footage revealed that the gift was not placed down, delivered, or even transported.
Instead, Jason rubbed his eyes and tried his best to blink away sleep spots as he watched the basket literally pop into existence.
He rewound it, played it back. Played it back four more times in slow motion. Looking for weird sparkles, strange warping, even something that would indicate the footage got hacked and spliced somehow. He’d take literally anything at this point.
Going back over the footage frame by painstaking frame didn’t reveal anything helpful in the slightest. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was sitting on the ground. A container of perfectly chilled strawberries, three large bread rolls, and a jar full of honey standing there like they’d come straight off of a gift-basket store shelf.
The footage turned a slight bit fuzzy for two frames before and after the gift giving. Aside from that he had absolutely nothing.
Jason leaned back in his chair and thought hard. The evidence was little, but it might just be enough to finally work with. At least he could finally rule out most of the rogue gallery.
Someone who could potentially disappear and reappear without leaving any trace. He could think of a few people who could pull off such feats, but most of them were either very rare circumstances or aliens. Either way, he highly doubted he already knew them.
Them being in crime alley and trying to stay on Red Hood’s good side was all the evidence he really had so far. As well as referring to Jason as a “Neighbor” meant that they were most likely hiding from the Bat.
Looking at the situation from that angle, some things started to make more sense. Especially the anonymity. If they didn’t want even Red Hood knowing who they were until they were in a hot spot, then it was a good move. Unfortunately he also had proof of powers being involved.
It all added up to one thing: Jason was dealing with a Meta.
♡ ˚₊‧꒰ა (Danny is friendly!) ( ╹ -╹)? ☆ (๑﹏๑//) ( Jason is losing his mind!) ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ♡
He got so desperate that eventually he resorted to leaving one of the empty gift baskets out with a note that said “who are you?” Because even if this was some sort of attempt at placating, not knowing who it was from was getting him too worked up.
Jason was starting to eye every groveling thug who tried too hard to get on Red Hood’s good side with alarming amounts of suspicion. It was putting all of his guys on edge.
Especially when he tried asking some of them if they’d left “gifts” for him. A few tried claiming they had, until further interrogating revealed that 1. The gifts weren’t the baskets he was looking for. And 2. That he was not happy about them.
All it was doing was doubling the amount of groveling he was dealing with on a daily basis.
The note he got back with a small “Your new neighbor” written down on the inside of a Halloween card was a lot more terrifying than it should’ve been. Somehow, the tin of cinnamon cookies he got with it made things all the more unnerving.
Inside the card was a cartoon drawing of a little sheet ghost hovering above a grave with a speech bubble that said “I’m back to party!”
Jason felt like his heart could’ve stopped beating. It was mid-april.
It might have been nothing, but it still made Jason’s blood run cold for just a second. A nice and vivid reminder that he had absolutely nothing on this person. Meanwhile they’d figured out every single safehouse he had, even the new one that he started building after the visits got consistent.
Even as Jason slaved over the tiny bits of evidence he’d gotten, trying to find a link between everything- it would all be for naught.
You see, little did Jason know that soon his mysterious basket-leaver would catch up to him when he least expected it.
For now, Jason would toil and dread over the gifts but ultimately accept his fate of being kept in the dark. Completely unaware that somewhere out in the night there was an extremely tired ghost king who had been instructing small ghosts to go and leave these gifts for him while he caught up on a lot of the paperwork his predecessor neglected.
But Jason wouldn’t find that out for another five days. Not until the night the urgent need struck. Not until the bewitched hour at which zombies roamed fluorescent isles.
Not until he went to the store.