Warning, long ass chapter, some angst ig
sorry for being so dead lol. I wrote this in one go so like it's unedited and fresh outta the pot <3
btw i will once again say: by the end of this, if you want to kill me, use a silver sword.
ty and good night (～￣▽￣)～
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FIX. HER.
That was the only two words that Tim Drake's mind revolved around.
Everything could be rebooted. Even life itself, as proven by Jason and Damian's wondrous little dips in a glowing green pool of undeath.
Maybe they could find a way to bring Dickie back. Toss his whole body in the Lazarus pit. Bring back his beloved older brother, the first Robin, the only one with relative emotional stability, the glue that held the family together, that held him together.
But Aria had clearly taken the head with her, quite aware of what they could do with it.
So now Tim had to find his presumed-dead sister now turned serial-killer, using the information that a butthurt friend-zoned person gave to Batman, convince her to give back the chopped-off head of their older brother, and then change her back into who she was before.
Because if this Kit Norami girl was able to win over Aria and not get killed, then it proved that Aria still had the capability to love.
Even after everything, even after Talia's retaking of her, her accident in the alleyway behind the theatre, her sanity being torn away from her, Aria kept a friend.
And that was more than enough for Tim to hope, to work on this sliver of hope, this sliver of silver lining that faintly glowed amongst the shitstorm clouds that raged on through his life.
Because it was proven that there was still a little bit of the old Aria left in her, the one that could love.
Tim stared at his computer screen, eyes sunken into shadows, lips chapped by the dozen cups of hot coffee, fingers aching from typing and clicking and trying to figure out a reboot.
Chemcorps had a way to destroy memories by destroying neurons in the brain. It was a solid idea, but they'd have to get Aria into the south Chemcorps labs, somehow manage to hook her up to the CT machine, and then the mindwipe headset, and then spend three days in the same room as her.
And if he knew Aria- the new Aria- then it was damn well obvious that being in the same room as a psychopathic serial killer that already killed his brother in cold blood, was not a valid plan.
There was a molecular-elimination method with a special high-tech laser, that seemed more in reach, even if extreme.
Then Tim checked the laser's side effects and realized that it could result in death, especially amongst people who suffered from depression. He had silently scrapped that plan as well. He knew that Aria was depressed when she was young. Plus, a laser being pointed into her brain didn't sound very safe either.
It was their fault either way, her being like this.
Next plan.
Another sip of coffee. Another hour bathed in the ghastly blue from his screen.
Tim scribbled down plans on sticky notes, ideas on paper, and scratched them out one by one as he found none worked.
Not a single one.
"Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit!"
He'd promised to protect her.
"Why is there fucking nothing?!"
A scream of frustration, a swipe of his left hand, knocking down his now empty coffee mug to the floor, shattering it.
Glass scattered around, as if it was animated and actively scurrying away from him, his rage, his frustration. Tim ignored the sting in his knuckles, stared back down at his computer, growling to himself.
Another hour.
The glass stayed on the floor, untouched.
Tim trying to find a way, angry at the world, angry at his brothers, his father, his sister, himself.
It was late into the morning the next day when Tim finally found something.
Altech's selective memory wipe formula.
The reboot. I found a reboot.
Before he could do anything about it, however, the boy felt the last energy in him ebb away, crumpling in on himself as sleep tore him away from reality.
*********************************************************************
Aria grinned as Talia stared out the window, her hands clasped behind her back.
"Ready, darling?" Talia mused to the shadows that loomed on behind her, the dark little demon queen that she'd brought into existence.
"Obviously, Mother."
Below their perch, oblivious Gothamite citizens scurried past like little ants in the grooves of cement, their bath in the sunrise's rouge aura a foreshadowing of what was to come.
"The dawn of a new era," The woman breathed, emerald eyes flicking over to her daughter. "My beloved little bloodbath." Talia reached over, fixing her tie, smiling as the girl pulled on a blazer that rested above her hips and flaunted her curves off to the world. Curves that she had sculpted.
Oh, she was so stupid to think her useless. With a lot of work, her perfect weapon was finally unsheathed, strong and willing to spill crimson rivers throughout the city that would trickle downstream from their throne.
Aria let her mother fuss over a little bit longer before smoothly stepping away, her loose braid swaying with her motion.
"I am leaving, Aria. I expect to see Gotham under your control by the time I reach the League's Port Base."
Aria bit back a scoff, simply nodding in agreement and as a promise. She stepped past her mother, brushing against her slightly as she went to grab her black platform heels.
"I will not disappoint you, Mother."
"I'd hope not. Happy killing, my child."
With that, Talia melted into the shadows, her stilettos clicking against the marble tile as she left the hotel room.
Aria simply grinned to herself, finally alone, finally ready to overthrow the world.
The tangy, intoxicating smell of gasoline. Cheap, easy to come across, hard to track. The slick bubbling melody of it pouring over the costly drapery, over the gold-rimmed embellishments and silk sheets, until the whole room was drunk with the scent of a dangerous love.
Aria rolled her neck with an audible pop, tossing away the red canister as she inhaled the fumes deeply, a soft glow of green flickering over her blurred fingers. Her lightning scar burned against her clothes, and she stared out the very window that her mother used for her dramatics.
Dramatics. How fun they truly were.
She looked down on her phone, the flashing red dot on the map as her mother's position, and she let out a hysterical laugh as she put on her platform heels and yanked out her hair tie.
Aria smiled as the curtain of thick dark hair tumbled around her shoulders, closing her eyes as she let go of the raging storm in her frozen heart.
Green lightning webbed out in a flash from the middle of her back, outstretching like skeletons of the wings of a fallen angel. Twisted, mangled, maliciously glowing brighter than the sunrise, a lattice of death and haunting beauty, crowning the newest angel of destruction.
"All hail the demon queen," Aria whispered, the world growing silent as her glowing wings dropped to the pool of gasoline, a spark setting the whole room aflame around her.
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Dick Grayson stared at the strange woman that stood in front of him, wriggling against the painful manacles that weighed down his wrists.
"Huh, how strange. Babe said that she killed you."
"Who the hell are you?" Even Dick winced at the sound of his unused voice, scratchy and grating against the damp air. He felt warm blood coat the inside of his throat, and he coughed it out, trying not to think too deeply about what injuries he'd sustained.
Kit simply hummed, tracing a mocking finger along Dick's jawline, finally coming close enough for him to discern her features in the dark.
She was pretty. Very pretty. Soft round cheeks, full lips, curly hair and cocoa skin the color of sun-kissed earth. Her brown eyes seemed to hold a thousand secrets, flickering up to meet his blue ones in what little light that streamed through the skinny barred window high above. She kept inspecting him, like a specimen under the light, and Dick finally broke the awkward silence.
"I have a girlfriend, y'know." Dick grumbled in embarrassment.
"Same." Kit drawled, winking at him.
Dick forced his sluggish brain to work, ignoring the growling in his stomach from the lack of proper food, slowly connecting the dots.
"Is your 'Babe'... Aria?"
It made sense, right? Who else was actively trying to kill him? Who else did kill him and left his headless body to be found by his family?
Kit gave him a grin, spotting his decapitated head preserved in that damned airtight container.
"My my." Kit answered instead. "I think I know what my darling is up to."
"Am... am I dead?" Dick whispered, turning his head as he stared at the woman that walked around the cellar. He faintly noted that she was at least a few inches taller than Jason, which meant she was fucking huge.
Kit was toying with the head container, oblivious to his question when another voice answered for him.
"No you're not."
Dick's mouth went dry as Aria swept into the room, eyes dark, blood stained on her navy blue blazer. She smelled like smoke and thorny roses, sweat and blood, like the scream of a damned man on a judgement day that she herself would undertake.
She smelled like utter annihilation.
This... this was the first time since he woke up in the cellar that he saw her, the first time that she stood in front of him in all her splendor.
Dick couldn't help the tears that spilled from his eyes. No matter what Aria did, she would always, always, be his lost little sister.
"A-Aria."
"D-D-Dick." She mocked him childishly, grabbing Kit by the collar and yanking the girl away from the container, her muscles flexing as she did so.
"Hey babe! Ooh, you look so damn hot in that suit. Mind if I take it off for ya?"
Dick's eyes flew open in surprise, and Aria rolled her own, growling in irritation.
A kick to the gut and Kit was silenced, Aria ignoring the wheeze of happy pain as she stepped forward, her hardened blue-green eyes locked with his.
He was half expecting to feel the white-hot pain of her jade-hilted knife against his throat again; the sunset and fairy lights, the gust of wind over the bay, the last breath in her arms not forgotten.
He squeezed his eyes shut as Aria reached out for his face, her leather gloves slick with crimson from her happy killing spree on her way to her cottage, expecting to feel them tear apart his skin.
Instead, they gently brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, a smear of blood in her motion's wake. Dick twitched, the smell of copper assaulting his lungs as she stepped closer.
Silence.
A long bout of silence.
Save for the giddy humming from their little spectator who currently sat on the floor cross legged, watching the scene, it was utterly quiet in the room.
"Did you miss me, Aria?" Dick broke the silence as he stared at her, bottle blue irises drowning in misery, in hope, in pain and utter suffering. "Because I missed you. Every day. I'd leave the lights on. Play your song in the lobby. String the garden with your favorite, fairy lights, so you could find your way home. Did you know that, Ari?"
"I did." Aria closed her own eyes, biting the inside of her cheek.
Dick's voice rose slowly, eyes filled with betrayal.
"Every time Jason would think of you, he'd go to your favorite ice-cream parlor. Order two sundaes even though he was alone. Rocky Road, oh, it was your favorite. And he'd always end up with one of those next to him, waiting for you to show up and eat the sundae with him. He almost went bankrupt, buying ice cream. Did... did you know?"
"I did."
Kit tensed up at the sight of how frigid Aria was, how she icily stared at Dick without any flinching in her emotion, a mask over her face.
Once again, Aria Al-Ghul had a damned mask over her face, one intangible to the world, one only visible to her lover.
Now Dick was shouting, albeit hoarsely, tears streaming down his face again.
"Alfred, hell, our Alfred cried himself to sleep every night after he would make your favorite dinners every single day. He was the one who dared go into your room, who kept everything spotless, who sang to your portrait when it was nighttime because you weren't there to beg him for bedtime lullabies. He was the one who would walk out of that damned place hiding his tears every single time. Did you know that too?"
"I did."
"Then why?! Why didn't you come home? Why didn't you come home? To Alfred? To Jason? To me? Why all this blood, when you clearly haven't lost all your sanity, when you can clearly still love?! Why didn't you kill me when you had the chance?!"
Dick screamed at her, sobs racking his chest.
Aria chuckled darkly.
"Your grieving of me while I was dead was more heartfelt than your loving of me when I was alive."
"No." Dick choked out, shaking his head. "It never could be."
Aria ignored his interjection, slipping her gloves off and dropping them to the floor.
"I didn't come home because I didn't want to, because home meant being treated the same. At least with murder and my girlfriend, I'm different."
She grabbed the container of his head, and stepped back in front of him.
"And I did kill you. At least, I beheaded your time remnant. The others have already given you a funeral and buried your copy's body."
Dick blinked, narrowing his eyes at her. "Why aren't you killing this me? "
Aria simply sighed, her hands going lax around the head container.
It fell to the ground, shattering upon impact, the bloody head rolling out with a foul stench.
Immediately Dick turned to the side and threw up, eyes watering from the sight. Kit winced, pinching her nose shut as well.
Aria, however, was unfazed, reaching down and picking it up, tucking it under her arm as if it were a basketball, and she, a simple child, when she was anything but.
"Because there's a score I'd like to settle, one that would be easier for me to do so if you were dead to the world." She grinned widely, patting the hair of the dead Dick Grayson.
The live one just glared at her, confused, angry. Kit made a gagging noise from her corner and waved frantically at Aria.
"Babe, do you really have to pick up the damn head with your bare hands?"
"Maybe I do." Aria snapped back at her, her mysterious aura disappearing, replaced with barely-concealed annoyance.
"Or maybe, baby, you just like the dramatics."
"Your name is on the very short list of people I desperately want to shoot. Watch yourself."
"How about you watch me instead?"
"Kit, I swear-"
Immediately a familiar face flashed through Dick's vision, one that he never thought he'd see while staring at Aria. Her eyebrows furrowed together, her blue-green eyes glaring back at her madwoman lover, creases at the side of her lip.
Dick blinked, staring at her, at the bit of Damian that shone through her.
Indeed, it was he that Aria resembled so deeply right now, the same barely-concealed expression of annoyance, the same glare in her eyes, the crinkle of the bridge of her nose identical to the way Damian would scrunch his whenever something annoyed him.
Damian was the last person he'd expect Aria to resemble, even though they were twins before Aria denounced their relation and cursed him to hell. But all of it, seeing his little brother shine through her, if only for a split second, made Dick even more resolved to bring Aria home.
Somehow. Anyhow.
But first, he had to bring himself home before he could move forward. And that wasn't gonna happen too easily, not with Aria manning the cottage.
Aria simply turned to him, as if she read his mind, and glared, a flash of psychosis behind her eyes for a split second.
"Don't worry Dickie. You won't be alone down here for long. I promise."
"...What the hell d-does that mean?"
Aria leaned in, brushing her empty fingers against his lip, a big grin on her face. "Shh."
Dick tensed up at her contact, bottle blue eyes locked with her blue green ones, which seemed to dive back into the sea of madness after coming up for a split second of air. All of a sudden, Dick could sense that he was no longer talking with Aria, but with Bloodbath, with the killer of cold blood, with the psychopathic teen that had her troops lay waste to their city as they spoke at that moment.
He could see the haze of nostalgia leave her irises, replaced by the explosive blooms of destruction, drenched in the ocean of chaos that she happily indulged herself in, if only to forget.
To forget everything, to forget the world, to forget every whisper and laugh and innocent smile she once was the beacon of.
To forget the fleeting worrying glances of her eldest brother, to forget the beautiful laughter of her twin that she only ever heard from afar, to forget the plush cushions and soft dark fur and the glittering crystalline life that she had before.
That crystalline past life of hers, solid and sparkling, crumbling away, and Dick watched as a faint shadow tried to collect all the little shimmering grains of imperfection that she once was the epitome of.
" Don't ruin my fun, Dickiebird. Hush now, and let your Ari take care of this."
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Red Hood didn't believe his eyes. In a panic, he raced up the stairwell of his apartment, gun clasped tightly in his hand, bursting out of the metal door that led to the grimy plane of the roof.
No, no, there was no way this was happening. It was all a dream.
He sprinted to the edge, leaning over the brick wall as his turquoise eyes drunk in the cityscape that was stained with hues of red and orange and flashing blue, the sky swallowed up by heavy plumes of grey and the screams of terror.
The city, the city was aflame. Everywhere he looked there was fire, every few minutes there was the crack of a gunshot echoing through the night, there was rivers of blood draining down the alleys and spreading into the streets like some sort of blackened virus.
Red Hood gulped, knuckles white as he gripped his gun even tighter.
He looked around, unsure of where to start, his phone ringing against his pocket.
It was Damian.
"Jason! Jason, are you out there right now?"
Jason? Damian never called him that.
Panic immediately set into Red Hood's bones as he immediately directed his attention to his youngest brother.
"Robin? Robin, what's wrong? What's going on, are you hurt?"
"No, I'm not, I'm fine, just a scratch."
"Oh hell no. Gimme your location right now."
"No! We found a way to save her, we found a way!"
Her. That could only mean...
Red Hood's mouth went dry, his throat burning up. "What?"
"Drake found it, he did, that Neanderthal. We can save Aria. Father has got the Titans out in the city right now, while Drake and I are retrieving the formula. Orphan, Spoiler, Oracle and Signal are on damage control and evacuation. Alfred' s on mission control back home. We need you to send out your Outlaws, and come with us!"
"What's going on in the city?"
"Look out the damn window, idiot. It's her endgame."
Those last two words struck a chord inside Red Hood, a sour taste in his mouth as he realized that the darkness that swallowed up around him, that the Pollock-esque scenery of destruction, was all some way to break apart the Robins so she could kill them off.
One by one.
"Damian, don't you dare leave Tim's side. Stick together. Call it in to Duke and the others, tell them to stay close to each other! It's a ploy, all of it!"
"Ploy? The hell do you mean?"
"She killed Dick, and she's gonna kill us too. One by one, picking us off the slate based on how little backup we have respectively." The words burned his tongue as he said them aloud to the empty sky, to his youngest brother, who he could feel tense up behind the screen. A ping was heard as Damian sent their coordinates to his (now) eldest brother, and Red Hood relaxed just a bit, some comfort in knowing where his brothers were.
Suddenly a crashing noise echoed through the speaker, and Red Hood jumped in surprise, searing panic lacing through his veins.
Screaming, shouting, a wailing alarm of a car, Jason shouting into the phone trying to make sense of what was happening on the other end.
"Robin! Fuck, Damian! Answer me!"
Through the sounds of chaos, finally, finally his voice rang through.
"Fuck! It's Red Robin, the car hit Red Robin! She's not here but I... I need you, brother! Goddammit, Tim, you idiot, stay awake! Stay-"
Abruptly, the phone cut off, leaving Red Hood with terror and fear brimming in his eyes as tears, and he growled, fury in his bones. He didn't notice the flash of green that zipped past on a nearby rooftop behind him. He couldn't bother to notice, and why would he?
Damian was hurt, Tim was hurt, he needed to get to them. He sent their location to Bruce, the first message to that rich fuck in a year, and in the group chat.
His fingers shook, but he holstered his gun and grabbed his motorcycle keys, turning to leave the roof.
He was met with the sight of a teddy bear. Resting alone on his roof, and Jason could've sworn it wasn't there before.
Instantly he yanked out his gun again, pointing it at the plush animal, glaring at it. It was so familiar, he thought to himself.
Suddenly, he flashed back, memories that haunted him jumping out of the shadows and swallowing him whole.
"Jayjay, I love it!"
Aria's sweet voice came echoing through, that innocent, joyous smile lighting up his heart. She squeezed the soft fuzzy bear, almost as pink as her rosy cheeks.
Jason had smiled, ruffling her hair as she grinned even wider. "I'm glad you do. Happy belated Birthday, Aria. I never forgot, okay?"
Aria sniffed and nodded, dropping the bear and latching onto Jason instead, burying her face into his chest with a warmth that nobody else could ever bring into his life.
"Alright, alright, 'nough with the sentiments. Let's go stuff our face with curly fries, yea?"
The gun shook as Red Hood blinked away the vision of her face, and he stepped back.
That was the present that he'd given Aria on that eleventh birthday, after he'd come home from his mission. The present she'd drag around everywhere, that she'd bring to school and the mall and on walks.
The rose teddy bear, soft fur curly and warm, a bright yellow polka dotted bow tie around its neck. It was last in Aria's room, to be forever untouched, a vessel of memories too bittersweet to be around.
It slowly dawned on him that nobody in the Manor would've dared touch one of Aria's old things, the emotions all locked away in her old bedroom with padlock and key.
That meant, that meant...
Someone was in the Manor.
Jason's mouth went dry as the gun dropped down just a bit, and he caught a glimpse of a rapidly blinking red light in the popped seam of the teddy bear.
The beeping came out of nowhere, rapid and unmistakable.
Jason Todd stared on at the teddy bear, unaware of the tears that had streaked down his face when he first saw the thing, frozen in his place. A wind, bringing the taste of smoke and blood, and a gunshot in the distance of the night.
This was not a dream.
This was a nightmare.
Before he knew it a bloom of fiery red and orange engulfed the rooftop, him along with it.