4. 'Cause all these bodies are hoping to get addicted to sound
“Listen up ya little shit! If you really want to do this, fine! Do it! I won’t stop ya, but listen up, I usually don’t care what you bats do but I made you an exception, because I don’t want you having the same fate as me, maybe even worse! The only beef we have is you being my replacement, yeah? Hell, I don’t even care about that shit anymore because fuck B, anyway in our line of duty we can’t afford to get stoned on duty, hell I was sober yet I still managed to get killed, imagine what the hell would happen to you!?” Jason shouts, at this point he can feel his eyes getting teary from behind his mask.
“If you really have a death wish, just fucking tell me, I’ll make it quick, it’s better than torture, and I’m telling that to ya by personal experience.” He tries to use some sarcasm to mask his distraught state. He knows he's good at masking his emotions, being trained by the League of Shadows has its perks.
He's too busy pouring out 'some' of his 'emotions' that he almost doesn't catch one of the perps who Tim forgot to cuff, drugging Tim.
Key word; Almost.
“Fucking hell, ain’t this just great.” Jason snarls, as he shoots the guy on the legs, causing him to fall down.
He walks over to the guy, his gun in his shooting hand, the other hand was occupied trying to find some handcuffs from his belt. As much as he wants to kill the guy, this is Red Robin's raid, and he isn't going to kill this guy and make the SCPD think Red killed him.
The guy whimpers, trying to crawl back. "You do realize that ya have no chance right? But don't worry today's your lucky day, I ain't gonna kill ya." Jason says, before shooting the guy on the shoulder. The guy cries out in pain. Jason quickly cuffs him, before asking him. "So would you mind telling me what ya did to Red Robin?"
"I-I d-don't k-know." The guy whimpers.
"You don't know or you don't want to tell me? You better cooperate or I might change my mind 'bout keeping ya alive." He snarls, now pointing the gun on the guys temple.
"I-I d-don't know I swear! Boss said it was some kind of sedative, keeps you asleep for half a day, nothing harmful I swear!" The guy gives in.
"And who's your boss?" Jason asks, pressing the gun harder to the guys temple.
"I don't know, they pay us good money so we don't question it and do their work, I swear that's all I know!" He squirms.
"Interesting." Jason says, before hitting the guy with the handle of his gun to knock him out.
He puts his gun back, before getting up and walking over to Red Robin's dead looking body. Jason sighs, the kid is so damn stupid . Then again, he was being a drama queen, distracting Red in the first place. He kneels down besides Tim's body, taking off his gloves, before checking his pulse. Normal, thank God .
Not knowing what to do, Jason carefully removes Red Robin's comm without taking off his cowl. He quickly hacks the frequency, before putting it in his pants pocket. He switches on Tim's comm using his helmet.
"Red! You okay?! Can you hear me?!" A certain female voice asks, her voice being a mixture of anger and worry.
"Wrong Red miss." Jason says snorting.
"..J-Jas- Hood! What did you do with Red Robin!" She asks suddenly thinking that he had something to do with Tim's state. Well to be fair, he can't really blame her, he did try to kill the guy like 3 times. Sort of.
"Jeez Babs chill, yer bird got dosed with a sedative, he's fine though, I had nothing to do with it FYI." He retorts.
"And why the hell would I believe you?" She asks. Jason could feel her glaring at him through her voice. He could imagine her with her arms crossed, trying to hide her worry, but the stress lines on her forehead betraying her.
"You don't, which I really don't care 'bout, just get someone to get him." He says annoyed at the distrust Barbara presents.
"What are you doing there with him anyway?" She asks out of curiosity maybe.
Trustfully, he doesn't even know how to reply to that without giving away too much.
"I, uh, after something he, um, said, so I decided to keep tabs on him in case he did something stupid, because I know you guys would blame it on me, so to avoid you guys under my throat I kept tabs on him." Jason replies, guilt of lying washing over him. He wasn't exactly lying, he was just keeping the truth locked away, because no matter how dark and bad the secret, he respects Tim's privacy.
"Good to see you care for him." She says, her tone changing, not stern, serious and demanding anymore. Almost like teasing. Then suddenly her tone changes again, as she sighs deeply. "Look Jason… I know we've had our ups and downs, but I appreciate you keeping an eye on Tim after all having a drug problem isn't a small thing! Especially for a vigilante! Tim's just… going through a rough time, I'm sure it's just a phase, though I asked him to stop doing drugs, and I know Tim's rational so I trust him to do that." Jason's face turns from confused, to shock to worry to guilt.
Jason tries to speak, but his throat goes dry. Hell it's not even because Barbara knows. It's because the amount of trust a 17 year old kid has been given. How does she expect him to stop his addiction in like a day or two? Is she really just so blind and stupid? He's not an alien or meta or something, under that cowl is a fucking teenager. No matter how smart the kid is, once you go down a wrong path, it's not not easy to come back.
"I… I'm going to drop him off at his apartment. He's just under a sedative, his condition looks normal. Send me the coordinates to his apartment, would ya?" He asks, finally his voice returning from the depths of guilt for not telling her but he just can't. This is proof he can't leave the kid alone with the bats. They really are like bats. Blind.
"Um okay, thank you Jay." Maybe around 5 years ago if she had called him Jay his heart would flutter and butterflies would explode in his stomach, but all his attraction towards her died the day he was murdered.
He shuts off his line with Oracle, as she sends the coordinates to Red Robin's apartment. He picks up the small yet muscular body of Tim Drake. He puts him over his shoulder before heading out towards Red's bike.
He ensures that Tim's body is safely placed on the bike, before hopping on too. He enters the coordinates from his helmet to the bike, before speeding off to Tim's apartment.
---
Jason enters the apartment with ease, through the open bedroom window.
As he enters the room, he closes the window, before gently putting Tim's body on his large king sized bed. He takes off his helmet and puts it on Tim's nightstand, before shaking his head pretty violently, to get rid of some of the sweat from his hair. Now he's left in his domino mask.
He then finally takes a look at Red Robin's state. As much as he wants to leave, he knows that he shouldn't. Not yet anyway.
So he sighs. He takes off the pitch black cowl of Tim's. Slowly taking off all the suit, leaving the smaller guy in nothing but his boxers. Usually in this situation the other guy would be a blushing mess, but Jason is too busy staring at the scars on Tim's body. Well more specifically the scars HE gave Tim. Suddenly guilt washes over for like what, the 5th time?
He traces over the scars with his gloved finger, a slight pain burning in his chest.
He wants to tell Tim how sorry he is and how he never meant to hurt him, but he knows it's already too late. The Lazarus pit's effects had worn off ages ago, it's just that Jason just never had the courage to make up for his actions and ask for forgiveness. He didn't grow up in a society where you would be forgiving.
He snatches his finger away, thinking off how utterly pathetic and creepy he looks. Instead he covers Tim's fragile body with some covers and pushes away the hair coming on Red's face.
He smiles looking at how peaceful he looks sleeping. When was the last time Jason slept so peacefully? Well the night he found out his real mom was alive.
Jason has nightmares about being tortured by the clown prince of crime. It always ends with 0:01 left on the timer on the bomb and he always wakes up screaming, tears running down his eyes. Most people would call it 'unmanly' but ya better be beaten to death by a clown and then tell him if it's manly or not.
He sighs, breaking out of his thoughts, as he exits Tim's bedroom with his helmet.
After much trouble, he finds the kitchen, and decides it'll be best if he leaves him a note even though they aren't even on the friendly level yet. But, the kid deserves to know who saved his ass and left him home.
10 minutes later, Jason finds a piece of paper and a pen in one of the kitchen drawers, and writes a 'cute' little 'friendly' message, before sticking it on his fridge with a fridge magnet.
He decides to give Tim one last visit before leaving, so he opens the door to his bedroom and looks at the fragile figure sleeping peacefully in the middle of the bed, with one of his arms on his head. Jason's heart flutters at the kids cuteness and cracks a small smile. "Goodnight Red." He whispers, before closing the door.
~-=====-~
someone protect these boys or istg-
Anyhow, I found this chapter really interesting to write. There's a lot of stuff here that can be missed easily and shrugged off but in reality a lot of this stuff affects the future.
Next time:
- Jason is a dork
- Tim is an idiot