FIC: Not Nearly (Batman/Red Hood)
FIC: Not Nearly
Author: eggblue
Rating: R
Date: May 4, 2005
Pairing: Batman/Red Hood
Summary: Batman and Red Hood finally unmasked. Takes place during the beginning fight scene of Batman 636 (which I quote from, which is a flash-forward) but written after reading Batman 639 before the ending is resolved. So, by definition, SPOILERS AHOY!!!!!!!! Yeah, I know. Maybe this will end up really embarrassing and nothing like canon. But even Judd “MTV” Winick isn’t going to write it this way and I can’t take the suspense all summer, so I slash.
Notes: Thanks to Mary who helped me believe this could work and for total love of the kid. Also posted to agoodsoldier and my livejournal (there are other fics about these guys there).
Disclaimer: DC still owns, so don’t sue me.
*
First, they are enemies.
On the rooftop in the rain. Batman and Red Hood.
They fight. The faster one slashing with the knife. His rage uncontrollable.
The stubborn one holding steady, throwing the other off the building into open air, nothingness.
“This is over,” he says, tired.
The blue mask old and tired and fierce. The red mask young and sharp and cruel.
The way it always was and sometimes seemed. The shock of it topping their dreams. The parts of themselves they’ve bled dry, cut out with knives. All they’ve had to kill to make it to this point.
“No. Not nearly.” And Red Hood pulls the cowl off. Then lets his helmet fall to the ground.
Then, they are together.
In the Alley in the rain. Bruce and Jason.
“Oh, God…”
And the alley is dark, but not enough for them. The shadows on their faces too sharp, too revealing. Jason can’t hide the rage the way they remember. Can’t pretend he would ever be prepared for this.
And Bruce just stares.
Stares as the rain falls down his face.
Stares as the world seems to rip open beneath them, a growing tear in the silence.
They think of the arguments they can make. The automatic excuses that cover up the truth. “No. You know I can’t do this.” Bruce almost pleads. “But I will.”
“I’m not threatened by bats without teeth. You think you know how to win. But you lose, Bruce.” And Jason shakes his head once. Hard. “No more victims. Not for you. Not for any of us.”
The endless argument. Justice versus the law. Truth versus the lies they tell themselves. Desire versus knowledge.
Bruce stares. He sees no scars, no white shock. Just the familiar part of his hair, a red domino mask that hides too little. Black pants so tight he might as well be bare. When Bruce first saw his legs on that rooftop, his moves, he knew. He didn’t tell Nightwing, but he knew. He didn’t want to know. They’d been avoiding it so long. For months upon months. For weeks. Then days. Hunting each other only as much as they could handle. The intensity of it still too much.
Now, they are forever separated. Alone.
They are the hunters. Stripped to the bone.
And he doesn’t want to ask, he doesn’t… “What happened to you?”
“I grew up,” Jason rasps.
He pounces and they run, fight their way back into the dark. Until Bruce is holding Jason’s back against the wall. Staring with wide eyes that only see outlines and shadows. Still too intense. Too much. So nothing can end it. No. Can’t do this again…
And Bruce knows (he invented) the solvent used to hold the red domino mask on and he pulls.
“No!” Jason fights. But his fight is weak.
As Bruce looks at the boy he buried. And their anger melts into despair. The way no one else will ever understand this moment. Because of the secrets they keep between them. Because of who they are. What they’ve been through. And Bruce curses everything, indulges in it for one second too many.
As if he still believed in fairness. As if he believed they didn’t deserve this. And Bruce holds Jason’s head under the jaw and around the neck, steady, to see the flash of his eyes, only a heartbeat in the lightning. Electric blue. Enraged. Endless.
Huge and heartbreaking. He sees the boy he found on the streets who ran from him. The secret places he hid away in. The light he watched die, the bleeding of him over years and years. The way they burned and faded together in the past.
He watches Jason see it too and hate the memory. He watches him clutch for his blade to cut it out, rip it up, but it’s too far to reach and it’s no protection for him now. He knows what Jason is seeing. No faces to keep as trophies, only the memories that burn him in his sleep, every time he closes his eyes. Same as him.
Bruce whispers it to the very tip of Jason’s face: “We were so incredibly stupid.”
“It seems some of us still are,” Jason counters with an inflection impossible to Bruce.
So their hands trace each other’s bodies, the favorite places they used to rest. Bruce trying to find what he knew and to make sense, ask questions, measure. Feels Jason claw at the Batsuit, at the symbol he always focuses on, the rock-hard statue of the body he remembers.
Bruce sees Jason fighting himself, really sees it. And he knows it well. Understands as Jason fights with his hands on Bruce’s arms, pulls. Uses his arms to hang on Bruce, to pull up his legs and kick. And Bruce falls to the concrete. Jason looms over him, a blank flashing shadow.
“Oh, God,” Bruce whispers.
His broad shoulders. Heavy black boots. Hulking figure.
Anger, he judges. Decapitations, he judges. Crime lord. Killer.
But also Robin. Jason. His Jason. The Bruce he was. And the Bat.
For a moment, together. One and all in the same.
They can see the shock in each other’s eyes. The way they can’t believe it in themselves. Why there is no end, no change, no victor. After all this time. And no, it’s not over. And that, somehow, is the worst of all.
Then forever apart.
He brings his fist down on Bruce’s face. Bounces his head off the pavement. Bruce who barely even flinches. And then doesn’t move at all. Out cold.
And Jason is on him. Frantically licking the fast-forming knot on his forehead. The red trickle under his nose. Grabbing at the suit with gloved hands. Dragging his lips over the open gash he tore on Bruce’s chest.
He stops. Recovers his knife and resheathes it. Then he begins to carry Bruce and walk. “Car,” he says. And yes, it still responds to his voice. It comes to him. His favorite. His old good luck charm. He remembers then… how they met. The day he made the Batman laugh in Crime Alley at noonday.
To an observer, he would sound like a madman laughing over an unconscious body. But he is just remembering a time when things really were that good. Impossible. Bright. The world their own private joke.
How hard they’ve become.
And Bruce is a heavy burden in his arms. He holds him so tight to his chest. He has to lean him against the car and hold him there with his body as he opens the door. Then he lowers them both down into the car, letting Bruce’s body fall and kneeling over him on the seat. He wants to close the door, wants no one and nothing to see. But he is vulnerable without the street. Alien.
And he doesn’t want to be. Jason knows he is fighting his equals out here. His neighbors on the streets. And he detests them. Bruce always was and is a snob. Above them all. Asking them to bow down by sheer force of his will. When he lives out on the mainline. When he has a stake in protecting Gotham’s property because Gotham is his property. Bruce is always the lord. Jason is the born slave. And he knows it.
So it’s difficult to feel this now. Wanting. Past, present, future.
Kissing in his memory, in the rain in Gotham again. Soft promises. Desperately chasing away the ghosts. His life in the hands of the only bastard that can stand him. Their lives a vow. Letting his body fall down, letting gravity pull him in. Closer. Grinding.
Moaning and messy and fierce. The world falling in on them. An insistent need to feel something, anything against the chaos. Pressure in his chest expanding, exploding.
Wanting a callused rock of a fist to break its way inside him, punch him full, punch knuckles deep enough to crack him open, to make him claw down a scarred naked back, to lie on his side like a baby, to let a hand explore like a surgeon and tear out the bad cancers and hold his guts in his fist and squeeze and pull and punch where his wounds are open where his body and soul meets and tear out of him… a cry. A fire. Like it was. Like it could still be. That clarity.
But who is this? Who is this Bruce?
He looks at the slicked-back hair and eyes that had seemed to freeze in blue in the dark. He looks at the scars. One for every day he’s been gone, it seems. So much damage. How hard they’ve become.
They were once best friends. They were once the closest they’d ever been to married.
But Jason remembers every dark dirty day of his past. He likes to keep his body clothed and hidden. Is afraid of breaking again. Hides memories of pain and dying. Has a hard time forgiving himself for that.
He moves in a deep, slow, rolling thrust against Bruce, breathing in the new way their bodies match. He wants very badly, he doesn’t like to admit this, to take this body back to his mousehole room. His little city lair. He wants to keep it there and nurse it back to health, and make sure it knows it, and then let it go. And hunt it down again when it needs him to. Helpless to it, the way it is helpless to him.
To save it from itself. To do what Robins do.
Because he knows he is the Robin that can do this for Bruce. The only one. And he swears it is only Bruce’s lack of faith in him that dooms them. That would be deadly rational in the light of day. And Jason cannot deserve that.
He wants Bruce to need him. He wants a night in Gotham to belong to the people who fight for it. He wants a night where the only people afraid, are afraid of him. And they deserve to be.
He wants all of it. And Bruce too. And what he’s lost.
But he knows better now. He’s no longer a child. No longer lost on the streets searching for his savior. He has to be his own savior now. No victim. And he has work to do.
Forever apart outside of their memories.
When Bruce wakes up from a dream to sunlight beams through boarded-up windows, his wounds are dressed, his cowl repaired. He looks over the empty room and across the worn mattress at his second Robin curled up at the edge. Jason’s face so clear and peaceful, expecting him with calm and sure anticipation even as he sleeps. This is what he wants. This is what was there all along. This is what he can have again…
When Bruce wakes up he is in the car and his head roars and he tastes blood and he is alone again.
The End
eggblue @ hotmail . com
Author: eggblue
Rating: R
Date: May 4, 2005
Pairing: Batman/Red Hood
Summary: Batman and Red Hood finally unmasked. Takes place during the beginning fight scene of Batman 636 (which I quote from, which is a flash-forward) but written after reading Batman 639 before the ending is resolved. So, by definition, SPOILERS AHOY!!!!!!!! Yeah, I know. Maybe this will end up really embarrassing and nothing like canon. But even Judd “MTV” Winick isn’t going to write it this way and I can’t take the suspense all summer, so I slash.
Notes: Thanks to Mary who helped me believe this could work and for total love of the kid. Also posted to agoodsoldier and my livejournal (there are other fics about these guys there).
Disclaimer: DC still owns, so don’t sue me.
*
First, they are enemies.
On the rooftop in the rain. Batman and Red Hood.
They fight. The faster one slashing with the knife. His rage uncontrollable.
The stubborn one holding steady, throwing the other off the building into open air, nothingness.
“This is over,” he says, tired.
The blue mask old and tired and fierce. The red mask young and sharp and cruel.
The way it always was and sometimes seemed. The shock of it topping their dreams. The parts of themselves they’ve bled dry, cut out with knives. All they’ve had to kill to make it to this point.
“No. Not nearly.” And Red Hood pulls the cowl off. Then lets his helmet fall to the ground.
Then, they are together.
In the Alley in the rain. Bruce and Jason.
“Oh, God…”
And the alley is dark, but not enough for them. The shadows on their faces too sharp, too revealing. Jason can’t hide the rage the way they remember. Can’t pretend he would ever be prepared for this.
And Bruce just stares.
Stares as the rain falls down his face.
Stares as the world seems to rip open beneath them, a growing tear in the silence.
They think of the arguments they can make. The automatic excuses that cover up the truth. “No. You know I can’t do this.” Bruce almost pleads. “But I will.”
“I’m not threatened by bats without teeth. You think you know how to win. But you lose, Bruce.” And Jason shakes his head once. Hard. “No more victims. Not for you. Not for any of us.”
The endless argument. Justice versus the law. Truth versus the lies they tell themselves. Desire versus knowledge.
Bruce stares. He sees no scars, no white shock. Just the familiar part of his hair, a red domino mask that hides too little. Black pants so tight he might as well be bare. When Bruce first saw his legs on that rooftop, his moves, he knew. He didn’t tell Nightwing, but he knew. He didn’t want to know. They’d been avoiding it so long. For months upon months. For weeks. Then days. Hunting each other only as much as they could handle. The intensity of it still too much.
Now, they are forever separated. Alone.
They are the hunters. Stripped to the bone.
And he doesn’t want to ask, he doesn’t… “What happened to you?”
“I grew up,” Jason rasps.
He pounces and they run, fight their way back into the dark. Until Bruce is holding Jason’s back against the wall. Staring with wide eyes that only see outlines and shadows. Still too intense. Too much. So nothing can end it. No. Can’t do this again…
And Bruce knows (he invented) the solvent used to hold the red domino mask on and he pulls.
“No!” Jason fights. But his fight is weak.
As Bruce looks at the boy he buried. And their anger melts into despair. The way no one else will ever understand this moment. Because of the secrets they keep between them. Because of who they are. What they’ve been through. And Bruce curses everything, indulges in it for one second too many.
As if he still believed in fairness. As if he believed they didn’t deserve this. And Bruce holds Jason’s head under the jaw and around the neck, steady, to see the flash of his eyes, only a heartbeat in the lightning. Electric blue. Enraged. Endless.
Huge and heartbreaking. He sees the boy he found on the streets who ran from him. The secret places he hid away in. The light he watched die, the bleeding of him over years and years. The way they burned and faded together in the past.
He watches Jason see it too and hate the memory. He watches him clutch for his blade to cut it out, rip it up, but it’s too far to reach and it’s no protection for him now. He knows what Jason is seeing. No faces to keep as trophies, only the memories that burn him in his sleep, every time he closes his eyes. Same as him.
Bruce whispers it to the very tip of Jason’s face: “We were so incredibly stupid.”
“It seems some of us still are,” Jason counters with an inflection impossible to Bruce.
So their hands trace each other’s bodies, the favorite places they used to rest. Bruce trying to find what he knew and to make sense, ask questions, measure. Feels Jason claw at the Batsuit, at the symbol he always focuses on, the rock-hard statue of the body he remembers.
Bruce sees Jason fighting himself, really sees it. And he knows it well. Understands as Jason fights with his hands on Bruce’s arms, pulls. Uses his arms to hang on Bruce, to pull up his legs and kick. And Bruce falls to the concrete. Jason looms over him, a blank flashing shadow.
“Oh, God,” Bruce whispers.
His broad shoulders. Heavy black boots. Hulking figure.
Anger, he judges. Decapitations, he judges. Crime lord. Killer.
But also Robin. Jason. His Jason. The Bruce he was. And the Bat.
For a moment, together. One and all in the same.
They can see the shock in each other’s eyes. The way they can’t believe it in themselves. Why there is no end, no change, no victor. After all this time. And no, it’s not over. And that, somehow, is the worst of all.
Then forever apart.
He brings his fist down on Bruce’s face. Bounces his head off the pavement. Bruce who barely even flinches. And then doesn’t move at all. Out cold.
And Jason is on him. Frantically licking the fast-forming knot on his forehead. The red trickle under his nose. Grabbing at the suit with gloved hands. Dragging his lips over the open gash he tore on Bruce’s chest.
He stops. Recovers his knife and resheathes it. Then he begins to carry Bruce and walk. “Car,” he says. And yes, it still responds to his voice. It comes to him. His favorite. His old good luck charm. He remembers then… how they met. The day he made the Batman laugh in Crime Alley at noonday.
To an observer, he would sound like a madman laughing over an unconscious body. But he is just remembering a time when things really were that good. Impossible. Bright. The world their own private joke.
How hard they’ve become.
And Bruce is a heavy burden in his arms. He holds him so tight to his chest. He has to lean him against the car and hold him there with his body as he opens the door. Then he lowers them both down into the car, letting Bruce’s body fall and kneeling over him on the seat. He wants to close the door, wants no one and nothing to see. But he is vulnerable without the street. Alien.
And he doesn’t want to be. Jason knows he is fighting his equals out here. His neighbors on the streets. And he detests them. Bruce always was and is a snob. Above them all. Asking them to bow down by sheer force of his will. When he lives out on the mainline. When he has a stake in protecting Gotham’s property because Gotham is his property. Bruce is always the lord. Jason is the born slave. And he knows it.
So it’s difficult to feel this now. Wanting. Past, present, future.
Kissing in his memory, in the rain in Gotham again. Soft promises. Desperately chasing away the ghosts. His life in the hands of the only bastard that can stand him. Their lives a vow. Letting his body fall down, letting gravity pull him in. Closer. Grinding.
Moaning and messy and fierce. The world falling in on them. An insistent need to feel something, anything against the chaos. Pressure in his chest expanding, exploding.
Wanting a callused rock of a fist to break its way inside him, punch him full, punch knuckles deep enough to crack him open, to make him claw down a scarred naked back, to lie on his side like a baby, to let a hand explore like a surgeon and tear out the bad cancers and hold his guts in his fist and squeeze and pull and punch where his wounds are open where his body and soul meets and tear out of him… a cry. A fire. Like it was. Like it could still be. That clarity.
But who is this? Who is this Bruce?
He looks at the slicked-back hair and eyes that had seemed to freeze in blue in the dark. He looks at the scars. One for every day he’s been gone, it seems. So much damage. How hard they’ve become.
They were once best friends. They were once the closest they’d ever been to married.
But Jason remembers every dark dirty day of his past. He likes to keep his body clothed and hidden. Is afraid of breaking again. Hides memories of pain and dying. Has a hard time forgiving himself for that.
He moves in a deep, slow, rolling thrust against Bruce, breathing in the new way their bodies match. He wants very badly, he doesn’t like to admit this, to take this body back to his mousehole room. His little city lair. He wants to keep it there and nurse it back to health, and make sure it knows it, and then let it go. And hunt it down again when it needs him to. Helpless to it, the way it is helpless to him.
To save it from itself. To do what Robins do.
Because he knows he is the Robin that can do this for Bruce. The only one. And he swears it is only Bruce’s lack of faith in him that dooms them. That would be deadly rational in the light of day. And Jason cannot deserve that.
He wants Bruce to need him. He wants a night in Gotham to belong to the people who fight for it. He wants a night where the only people afraid, are afraid of him. And they deserve to be.
He wants all of it. And Bruce too. And what he’s lost.
But he knows better now. He’s no longer a child. No longer lost on the streets searching for his savior. He has to be his own savior now. No victim. And he has work to do.
Forever apart outside of their memories.
When Bruce wakes up from a dream to sunlight beams through boarded-up windows, his wounds are dressed, his cowl repaired. He looks over the empty room and across the worn mattress at his second Robin curled up at the edge. Jason’s face so clear and peaceful, expecting him with calm and sure anticipation even as he sleeps. This is what he wants. This is what was there all along. This is what he can have again…
When Bruce wakes up he is in the car and his head roars and he tastes blood and he is alone again.
The End
eggblue @ hotmail . com