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wickedsmille · 7 months ago

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batman, robin, sentient super suits, oh my!

I got this idea stuck in my head and rather than committing it to the 15 page graveyard of other story ideas, I actually wrote it! (I'm so proud of me :'3) The aforementioned is. . . . The suits/costumes are sentient! With limited autonomy!! And their own personalities!!! So, yep. This one might actually make it onto AO3 when part two is done.

Probably rated T because Jason. Did not edit because nope. Sillies at the end because of Jason's Tim!feelings and stellar repression skills.

(Here's Part 2!)

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Imagine Jason’s surprise when Bruce leads him down to the Cave, the Batcave, and he spots the costumes of Batman and Robin innocuous in their cases. The bright lights above them shine down, illuminating the bright colors of Robin and glistening off the dark planes of armor of Batman. All four feet of Jason was vibrating with excitement. Patiently with a small, private smile, Bruce guided him towards the cases.

The closer he gets, Jason notices how they’re not on mannequins. A few more steps and he can’t spot any internal structures keeping them up or wires suspending them. Curiously enough, the costumes seem to be standing of their own accord. He didn’t question it as he came to stand right before the glass. His hand rose to press against the case, mouth open wide in awe and eyes about the size of dinner plates.

Now, just picture how a tiny, baby Jason reacted when the Robin suit recoiled. The fabric gathered together and plastered itself to the other side of the case away from Jason. The neck of the suit shifted back and forth like an invisible body was shaking its head. Pulling his hand away as if he’d been burned, Jason took a staggering step back and looked to Bruce for answers. The man stared at the case, eyes narrowed and mouth pinched into a thin line of disapproval.

It was then Bruce explained the nature of suits and the heroes they choose. Here Jason had thought Bruce created Batman and Robin, not the other way around.

Apparently one night, after getting the hair-brained idea to take to the night to fight crime with nothing but his wits and an arsenal of R&D weaponry, Batman came to him. The suit was in his study hanging off the clock. As he stepped inside the room, the suit slithered off the clock to stand before him. Tall, dark and imposing. Written in quickly disappearing fog on the glass of the clock was the name Batman.

Robin was all Dick until he decided to leave it behind. It came to Dick mid-swing from the chandelier. One second he’s flipping through the air to reach the banister, the next he’s flailing wildly after misjudging the distance. Robin caught him, the sleeve of the suit wrapped tightly around his wrist. Then the suit skittered down the stairs to the main foyer, wild and energetic as it seemed to do a round-off, onodi, bridge, illusion and finished with a needle. Again and again till Dick’s face lit up like the sun itself. Robin became a permanent fixture next to Batman from then on.

Robin was devastated after Dick left it but it still took months for Bruce to coax the suit into engaging with Jason. He did everything he could to help. Sitting and even sleeping in front of the case. Whispering his secrets and wants to the layers of kevlar and nomax. He told Robin things he could barely admit to himself let alone anyone else. It was after Jason confessed how much he loved his mom and dad in equal measure that Robin finally accepted him. That night, when Bruce opened the case and once more tried to take the suit out, it came easily where normally it was immovable.

The tight fabric slipped on like it had been made for Jason and Jason alone. Deep down, he knew it hadn’t been. The suit made his chest hum and his skin tingle but it was like wearing someone else’s skin. The discordant feeling didn’t stop Jason from fully losing himself to the magic of Robin. Even when Dick loudly protested Jason using the suit but what could he do? Robin chose Jason, eventually, even if Dick hadn’t.

Maybe that’s why Robin couldn’t as effectively protect him from the Joker as Batman did for Bruce night after insane night tangling with the rogues.

For a long time, Jason didn’t have a suit aside from the grave clothes he clawed his way back to the land of living in. Time gets fuzzy from there but he doesn’t remember another suit coming to him. Not then and not after Talia took him in, healing his body while his mind stayed locked up till she tosses him into the Pit against her father’s wishes. Jason suffered under the League and its training, shuffled off periodically to one master or expert or another to learn more about demolition and explosives, firearms and sharp shooting, spy craft and more.

When Red Hood comes to him, Jason is just coming back to his clay walled room with its moth bitten wool blanket and wood cot, blood on his knuckles and the beginnings of a nasty shiner. He’s who-the-hell-knows where. Talia never did see fit to keep him in the loop no matter how loudly or persistently he pestered her for details. She dolled out what she wanted when you wanted to achieve whatever twisted goal she’d cooked up in her head. Like siccing him on Bruce and the whole of Gotham like a living nightmare tailor made to make Bruce hurt.

Seeing a suit laid out across his cot has been the most significant deviation from his routine in a long time. Long enough the site of the black tactical gear and heavy armor visibly startles him. His hand tightens around the handle of his door as he stares unabashedly at the suit.

“What the fuck is that?” he asks, pointing to the red helmet facing the doorway at the head of the bed.

The sleeve of the leather jacket raises up a couple inches. The buckle around the wrist rises up straight and Jason doesn’t need to be a genius to know his suit just flipped him the bird. He returns the gesture and the lenses of the helmet flare a bright white before going out again.

“Well, aren’t you cheery.”

The entire upper part of the suit shudders in what he assumes is a shrug. Cheeky. He kind of hates it.

He’s trying very hard to not look a gift horse in the mouth despite his suit’s apparent attitude. It’s not as showy as Robin, thank god. There’s a cliff with his name on it, ripe for pitching himself off of, if he got a gimmicky costume. He’d take his chances rolling back into Gotham in a t-shirt and jeans then toss on another pair of undies and tights. The mercenary look is much preferred and appreciated.

Besides, despite the attitude, this suit is his. Not some hammy down Bruce needed to coax into accepting Jason.

“What am I supposed to call you?”

The lenses of the helmet light up again but this time they stay on. Cautiously, he takes a couple steps closer. The suit doesn’t move again, patiently waiting for him. Nothing happens so he closes the distance and gingerly picks up the helmet. The metal of it is warm beneath his fingers and a hum starts deep in his chest. The helmet slips on easily and fits like a glove. A wash of colors and symbols scroll across the HUD as it springs to life.

The screen blanks out entirely then a burst of red that settles into the words Red Hood. Then Lets fuckin do this bitch it reads.

“Huh,” Jason says. “Huh.”

Red Hood is an asshole apparently though he can’t deny the poetic justice of taking on the old name of his murderer. Terrorizing Bruce is going to be so fun.

Jason leaves for Gotham that night.

Within three months, he has his claws in Crime Alley and a burgeoning drug empire. It takes him six months to properly align the pieces around the board so he can set his plans for Batman into action. He’s a veritable force of nature when he’s wearing the Red Hood. Bullets glance off the armor, knives slip right past and the brass knuckles sewn into the gloves teach as effective a message when he needs to get up close and personal. It allows him the space and strength he needs to wrestle the city under his control so he can start making moves.

He becomes the Red Hood.

Things don’t go as planned though, per say.

He barely hobbles away from the confrontation with Batman and the Joker. At least this time, with the Red Hood, he does walk away.

The world is a whirlwind of sights and sounds, colors and impressions. He works himself down to the bone till the bitterness and anger dissipate enough for him to feel like a person again. Separating Jason Todd from the Red Hood, making the distinction rather than losing himself to the suit, is one of the most difficult things he’s ever done.

Red Hood isn’t happy about it and makes it known with the hard hits he takes. Not enough to threaten his life. Until Jason is facing down at least thirty heavily armed guys and the building is rigged to blow. The suits can do a lot of things like help Batman become one with the shadows and keep the laws of gravity from gripping too tightly to Robin. Red Hood is built for protection through thick armor for Jason and a nasty assortment of weaponry for those who hurt others.

But they do have their limits.

Jason just never thought he would reach it except he does and it leaves him bleeding out in some dingy back alley in Gotham. He presses hard against the wound on his side around the jagged piece of metal sticking out to stem the bleeding. His head is throbbing in time with the beating of his heart. The harder it pounds, the more it slows, the less Jason thinks he’ll make it out of this one. He’s fuckin’ clawed and crawled, sweat and bled and turned himself inside out again and again and this is how he goes? Bullshit. Straight up bullshit.

He blinks the sweat out of his eyes and forces himself to focus as the HUD flickers on and off. The light of it is faint as the air filtration system hums loudly. A tiny icon pops up in the corner that hadn’t been there before. Some simple silhouette of a person’s bust. It clicks open without his say so and the screen darkens before it springs back, determined and stubborn.

Pictures and words flash across the display, too quick for him to properly make any of it out since his brain is as good as scrambled eggs at the moment. It centers on a cartoon version of Batman’s face, complete with comically severe scowl. Jason frowns and shifts, wincing at the white hot flare of pain shooting up his side. And his arm. Shit, guess he’s not just dealing with the shrapnel in his side.

“Don’t you dare,” Jason rasps in warning.

In answer, his suit selects the icon and, to his immense surprise, it immediately connects to the comm network the Bats use. You know, the heavily encrypted one only the masters of top tier hackers have ever been able to get into. The one he isn’t supposed to have access to. At least, he didn’t think so. Things haven’t been bad with Batman and his clown car of other bats and birds. They haven’t been good either.

“Hood,” Batman acknowledges with a hint of confusion and trepidation. Jason groans but it tapers off in a pained grunt as he shifts and the metal lodged in side moves with him. “Hood, report,” Batman demands, confusion abandoned for concern.

It’s touching in that I-wish-this-weren’t-happening-but-since-we’re-here kind of way.

He doesn’t say anything so his voice modulator whirs loudly in protest of his silence. Fucking suit. Civilians truly don’t know how lucky they are to not be dogged and bullied by sentient costumes and, wow, when he thinks about it that way it is incredibly weird. He may not be thinking clearly either since he’s pondering the very existence of the hero communities suits rather than answering. Concussion, maybe? Probably, he decides as a wave of nausea rises up.

Swallowing past the bile, Jason projects as much chipper nonchalance as he can when he replies, “Not much going on here. Might’ve gotten blown up. A little. Tis but a flesh wound.”

“Location,” Batman growls.

“The intersection of Nun-ya-business and Fuck-off,” Jason says because he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t take every chance to be a shit to Bruce. Although, now may not be the time for it since black spots are dancing across his vision and he feels the bad kind of numbness sneak in.

Jason’s locator flips on and a message goes direct to Bruce with his coordinates. Red Hood is a traitor. He’d rage at his suit for being so presumptuous and taking liberties. Most suits back down on playing such an active role after they choose their wearer. Maybe an automatic switch in imaging or restocked first aid supplies in a pocket. Never this. His suit is a busy body. To think, the fearsome Red Hood with all its holsters and extra layers of armoring and plating, a mother hen.

Not the worst thing, he guesses, as he loses consciousness.

Coming out of a three day sedation to the bright overhead lights of the medical bay in the Cave with Batman looming over him, fully suited up and staring, a traumatic enough experience Jason readily steals his alternate-universe’s Red Robin suit. Unlike his own universe, this one doesn’t have to deal with fabric capable of higher thinking. The Red Robin suit is just that. A suit and nothing more, nothing less. It’s simple and perfect when he’s still angry at the Red Hood suit.

Running a few patrols back in his Gotham proves him wrong. Very, very wrong.

He forgets to restock his belt and his hand meets an empty pocket on the belt where there should be smoke pellets. Except he used them the night before when breaking up a gang initiation. The armor plating doesn’t shift the quarter an inch Jason needs to avoid getting nicked with a knife. Plus switching between lenses in the mask manually is annoying. And needing his hand to work the comms? Horrible.

Playing as Red Robin, the incredibly unexceptional and totally normal super-suit, shows him how spoiled he was with the Red Hood.

Thoroughly frustrated, Jason tears into his safe house and tears out of the suit. He kicks it off into the corner then kicks it again because fuck this. He’s over it. So over it. Hopefully Red Hood isn’t salty about being benched and relegated to the cache he has hidden in the ceiling.

Moving aside the ceiling tile and sneezing from the dust and what he hopes isn’t asbestos, Jason grabs the lock box. He pulls it close then lets it drop unceremoniously onto the floor. Sue him, the thing is heavy. A ball of writhing unease makes a home in Jason’s gut as he kneels next to the box and starts methodically disarming the security on. His hands hesitate opening the lid.

What if the Red Hood decided to fuck off to parts unknown wherever these things go when they get retired?

Then he realizes how stupid it is to be mostly naked aside from his undershirt and shorts, scared to face the consequences of his own actions. He built the mythos of the Red Hood on forcing the human shaped garbage of Gotham to pay up on their moral debts. Being brash, antagonistic, caustic and aggressive he’ll own up to but Jason has always prided himself on shying away from hypocrisy. So he holds his breath and flips open the lid -

To the suit, crammed in the small metal box, lifting the sleeve of the leather jacket on top and flipping him off with the wrist buckle. Again.

“You son of a bitch,” Jason laughs, back handing the buckle. Looking over his shoulder at the disarray of the Red Robin suit, he adds, “Look, it’s not me. It’s you.”

The next night, when he gets suited up and pulls the iconic red helmet of the Red Hood on, Jason stands over Gotham and feels whole. Jason and the Red Hood and Jason-as-Red-Hood, co-existing peacefully within and around one another. The pieces click together, making him feel lighter than he has in years. He thinks this must be how Bruce feels when he’s Batman or Dick when he’s Nightwing. When you know who you are. Robin was an ideal he clung to desperately even if it never quite fit right and Red Robin was a bad idea he needed to understand the nature of suits.

They weren’t his, not like the Red Hood is because it’s an autonomous extension of himself.

Because he’s not completely heartless even if the Red Robin suit lacks any sort of intelligence, Jason takes pity and dumps it in the Cave. Let Bruce or Lucius dissect the thing so they can unlock the secrets of suits. Or use it to mop the floors. Whatever, he doesn’t really care. At least it’s not his problem anymore.

Then Tim steals the suit. It’s a theme with Tim, apparently. Jason would take it as a goad and beat his ass if Tim didn’t leave and come back different. As is, when he first sees Tim looking pale and world weary in the Cave with an equally exhausted looking but alive Bruce next to him, Jason is feeling too many things too quickly to focus on Tim’s sticky fingers. In no way does looking like warmed over shit excuse Tim for constantly taking his stuff but he can delay payback. There’s feelings he needs to repress at seeing Bruce whole and right there.

Tim doesn’t abandon Red Robin like Jason did. No, he keeps it. Why, Jason has no clue. It’s punishment enough to wear a plain Jane suit like Red Robin so Jason elects not to confront him. If Tim wants to punish himself, it saves Jason the time he would take to do it. As time goes on, they start to get along so why shake it up for something stupid like the Red Robin suit, he thinks.

Landing softly on the roof Tim’s crouched on, Jason’s heavy boots barely make a whisper of noise as he creeps up on Red Robin. He’s bent over with his arms extended so he can scare the shit out of him.

Jason doesn’t get the chance to. About five feet away, back still turned to Jason, Tim asks him dryly, “Can I help you?”

With a sniff, Jason straightens up. “Yeah, by not being such a fun sucker.”

“Oh, so sorry,” Tim says while not sounding at all sorry, “next time I’ll let you jump scare me so I totally blow my stake out.”

“Thank you,” Jason replies.

He can feel Tim’s eye roll even if he can’t see him. “Did you come here because you’re bored or do you need something?” Tim asks.

With a shrug Tim can’t see, Jason answers, “A little of column A, a little of column B.”

“As you can see, I’m indisposed at the moment either way.”

“Alls I see is you sitting on your ass.”

“Exactly, now shoo.”

“I will not be shoo’ed,” Jason says as he comes around and sits down next to Tim. “I am un-shoo-able.”

To prove his point, Tim twists so he’s facing Jason and makes the actual shoo’ing motion with his hands. It says a lot that Tim will give him a hard time considering their past. Never once has he shied away from Jason since he and the others got chummy again. If it were him, Jason would incessantly badger and pester and be a complete dick. But Tim has never been like that, even when he should. Like he should with Jason.

Quiet reigns over them. Tim goes back to surveying the building across the street and Jason absently watches too for lack of anything better to do. Truly, he was bored. Patrolling Crime Alley was slow, for once. Who would’ve thought? Tim happened to be the first person he came across as he was traipsing the city just because he could. Lucky him.

“How’s the suit treating you?” Jason asks casually, honestly curious. Tim has been wearing it for months now.

A subtle tension stiffens the set of Tim’s shoulders. “Fine,” Tim says cautiously.

“Why even keep it on? I tried since it’s all, ya know, not a semi-conscious being literally handling my tits and bits for hours a night. Didn’t work out so well for me, obviously.”

Tim chews on the inside of his cheek while his hands tighten around the binoculars pressed to mask. It’s a testament to Jason’s growth that he lets Tim think through his answer without disrupting him with a heckle or five. Plus he’s invested. He really wants to know why the hell Tim is keeping Red Robin when the alternate-dimension suit is so sub-par compared to the costumes they have.

“I don’t have any others,” Tim finally replies, voice quiet and tight.

Oh, oops. Looks like he stepped on a landmine without meaning to. The thought that a suit wouldn’t immediately choose analytical, ambitious and surprisingly badass Tim Drake hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“I get that,” Jason says. “Can’t tell you how many times I’d turn a corner when I was with the League and hope there’d be a suit. Some signal like, yeah, you’re ready to leave these shitheads behind.”

Man, he did not mean to share some deep-down, touchy-feely bullshit. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Waiting for the Red Hood was agonizing. Empty days spent learning how to snap a person’s neck and the most painful bones to break, how to engineer car bombs, what kind of scope it takes to blow someone’s brains out from five hundred yards. Never feeling ready because he didn’t have anything but his ratty jeans and tee and standard issue League garb. Wishing he’d be released from the never-ending violence that is the League because nobody else seemed keen on letting him go easy. At least with the Red Hood, he was able to convince Talia it was a sign from a higher power on how truly ready he was to ditch them and enact her not-at-all-subtle machinations.

The silence makes Jason feel awkward and uncomfortable but Tim is thoughtful when he responds, “I’ve never been chosen by a suit before.”

“Really?” Jason can’t help but ask.

He thought Robin would’ve been scrambling to claim Tim. Robin did give Tim pants, after all. He’s always wondered if Robin kept the scaly panties just to troll Jason since it wasn’t happy with his wearing it.

Tim nods. “I, well, Dick and Bruce were in trouble and I was there but Robin didn’t. It didn’t want anything to do with me. Alfred tried getting it to see some sense but I eventually had to wrestle it on. Robin wasn’t happy with me.”

“Huh,” Jason says because he doesn’t actually know what to say but leaving Tim hanging feels like a crime in and of itself.

Like the psycho he is, Tim laughs. “Yeah, pretty much. Robin fought me my whole tenure but I like to think I did alright. Besides, I don’t think Robin is very happy with Damian either after he forced it on. You should hear the arguments he gets in with the suit.” A vicious little smirk curls up the edge of Tim’s mouth. It’s a ruthless thing Jason likes the look of.

Now Jason really can’t cash in Tim’s debt to him for taking yet another suit from him. Tim repurposed what was essentially his garbage because he had nothing better to use. Kind of sad, now that he thinks about it. And Tim fucked off to parts unknown with a regular ass suit to do the impossible. Actually did the impossible. Tim really is the best of them, in Jason’s humble and will-never-be-voiced opinion.

“I can imagine. You got some video footage of one?” Jason questions, steering the conversation back to safer waters.

“No, I would never keep something like. Come on, I’m a good guy,” Tim says sarcastically.

“The only thing good about you is that mouth.”

Even though he’s the one that said it, Jason’s brain overloads and crashes all in the span of a nano second. That was definitely flirty. In no possible universe, dimension or other-world would that line not be considered flirty. He didn’t mean to do it. Right? Right, because flirting with Tim would be weird enough Jason would need to submit himself to a litany of invasive tests just to figure out what in the hell is wrong with him. Slips of the tongue do happen-

Bad analogy to use now that he’s thinking about Tim’s mouth.

“I get that a lot,” Tim says, brushing off Jason’s folly easily.

“Get some,” Jason encourages lamely.

In another feat of extraordinary social ineptitude, Jason reaches up and ruffles Tim’s hair but he does it too hard. It ends up being some weird combination of a noogie and hair pet. He stops that right away and instead uses Tim’s head to lever himself up. Obviously he’s not going to recover from this interaction. Several fatal blows have been dealt. The only sensible thing to do is escape as quickly as he can and go scream out the embarrassment into the void.

Tim squawks in protest and bats away Jason’s hand. His brows are furrowed and sporting a deep set scowl as he no doubt glares at Jason for using him as a hand hold. Whatever, all the better if Tim is pissy. It means he hasn’t noticed Jason being a complete and total moron. Or picked up on the way the shivering, shimmying pool of warmth building in Jason’s belly is making him grimace and sweat.

Hands up in a gesture of surrender, Jason backs away. Satisfied, Tim goes back to watching his building. Jason backs up another step when, weirdly enough, Tim’s cape moves. Like a full on flap to the side. It opens up a brief glimpse to Tim’s backside, boots and belt and skin tight leggings, before the heavy material settles again. There’s no breeze tonight though Tim might have been fiddling with it or something.

Jason can’t be sure. Doesn’t really care. He has a hasty retreat to get to.

He means to retreat but Red Hood, the motherfucking, traitorous dickbag the suit is, must take some measure of joy in Jason looking like an idiot because Jason trips on the laces of his boot on his next step. Now, he’s sure he tied them. Double, triple, quadruple knotted with a complicated pattern Bruce taught them all so this exact thing wouldn’t happen. Yet, flailing and just barely saving himself from belly flopping onto the roof, when Jason looks back his laces are definitely undone and the culprit of his current predicament.

The one in which Tim turns oh so slowly with an eyebrow so high it disappears into his hairline. Judgement is pouring off Tim in palpable waves. He meets Tim’s gaze and wants to melt through the roof.

“That wasn’t me,” he instantly denies.

“Uh huh,” Tim says dubiously which makes Jason glower. “Thanks for reminding me why I like having a regular suit.”

“You sure you don’t want to take Red Hood for a ride?”

Jason decides he’s going to stop talking for the rest of ever. He had wanted to annoy Tim for lack of anything better to do. Not test the limits of how much mortification a person can feel before their will to live force quits. Things have gone so, so wrong.

Tim wrinkles his nose at Jason’s offer. “No thanks,” he says simply.

Nothing in his tone gives him away so Jason isn’t even sure if Tim picked up on the accidental and subtle as a sledgehammer come ons. He’s not about to point them out so he rolls over, ties his goddamn shoes and gets up. Carefully. In case his suit decides to do something else unforgivable. Thankfully, he doesn’t have any issues getting to the edge of the roof or setting himself up to grapple off.

“We can play How Much Gasoline Until the Nomax Melts if you want,” Jason threatens his suit, voice barely above a whisper. Then, louder, to Tim Jason says, “Okay then, see ya, Red.”

While Jason has been preoccupied with the simple task of traversing the roof, Tim has already gone back to his task. Binoculars up, body pitched forward as he intently watches something, he waves lazily over his shoulder. No indication is made that Tim needs him to stay and act as back up. Must be a survey and report only kind of night. All the better because Jason would rather eat concrete and sleep on glass than stay with Tim for a few hours.

He has some more emotional repression to get to in the form of whatever he’s feeling about Tim. Very important stuff.

Stay tuned for a part two! (For real this time.)

#tim drake #jason todd #dc comics #jaytim #dc #timjay #now maybe this idea will stop HAUNTING ME #I don't need any others calling to me in the night #15 PAGES OF IDEAS AND OUTLINES HELP #but I likes this one the mostestest #red hood #red robin #robin #ugh ok bye I'm gonna go hide in embarrassment and idk why #wicked writes

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