#Nightwing and Hood are fighting over some probably important files

[manesvoid]

wayne Family making me want to draw stupid things

[sassycassie-s-writing]

He’s Alive

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Jason Todd/Red Hood feat. Dick Grayson/Nightwing

Rating: PG-11/T- (minor violence)

Original Idea: Arkham Knight audio files

Notes: (Masterlist)(By Character)(About Me) I don’t really know or care about the correctness of the difference between referring to Batman as Batman or The Batman, but sometimes Star Beam is just annoying to be annoying. @welovegroot @batboys-and-other-messes

^^^^^

I woke up tied to a chair.

I wish I could say it was an uncommon experience.

Or even the first time that happened.

But I couldn’t.

Because it wasn’t.

I grunted in displeasure and vague boredom as my eyes adjusted to the light. And by light I mean the dim incandescent lightbulb hanging bare from a cord on the ceiling. I blinked a few times until my eyes no longer burned from the light.

“Good morning, Star Beam,” an eerie voice said from the shadows. “Do I call you Miss Beam? Miss Star? Do you have a preference?”

“Fight me,” I snarled, struggling against the chains holding me to the chair.

“Oh, you’ll find that’s quite impossible. Those chains are fitted with a dampener chip that suppresses your metahuman powers, Miss Beam,” the same eerie voice informed me condescendingly. The face that belonged to the voice loomed from the shadows.

Or rather, the mask.

Scarecrow.

Great. This guy again. I’d already wiped the floor with that ugly burlap mask used to scare people on three separate occasions in the last year alone and I was really getting tired of him.

He was like that one guy in the friendzone who kept trying to escape it but he wasn’t actually in the friendzone, he was just in the Oh my WORD, go away dude zone. Almost every girl knows a guy like that eventually. And probably some guys know too—but I don’t really know since I’ve never asked.

“What do you want, Crane?” I demanded. “What was so important that you decided to invest in expensive power-dampeners to get fifteen minutes with me?”

Scarecrow scoffed. “You think that’s how long this is going to last?”

“Yup,” I said, popping the p just to be annoying.

“Nope,” Scarecrow retorted, also popping the p. “Miss Beam, you’re going to be here for ages, until such a time as I deem it right to release you.”

Like that’s going to happen, I thought while rolling my eyes.

Scarecrow got really up-close-and-personal in my face. “Now, tell me, Miss Star Beam, who is the Batman?”

“Okay, I’m gonna correct you there. He is not the Batman. He’s just Batman, got it?” I snapped. “Honestly, it drives me crazy that everyone’s always like, ‘the Batman.’ It makes him sound like he’s half-bat half-human. Which is ridiculous and false.” I struggled against the chains again, trying to remember the escapology Bruce had showed me. I hadn’t paid very good attention back then because I’d thought I’d always have my powers so I could use them to pick locks and such.

I’d need to run a refresher course when I got back to the cave.

IF you get back to the cave, idiot, a snide voice of self-doubt hissed in the back of my mind.

Shut up, I retorted.

Well whose fault was it that you ended up captured in the first place?

Zip it.

“You didn’t answer my question, Star Beam. Who. Is. Batman?” Scarecrow pressed.

I arched my back and squirmed, trying to stretch out. I was stiff from being lashed to the chair. “Why do you assume I even know? You really think Batman would have a security risk like that running around?” I was rambling. Stalling for time. If I didn’t report back to Alfred every half-hour, he’d send Batman after the chip in my suit—which I was still wearing. Thank the heavens this wasn’t one of the times I woke up tied to a chair in my underwear and sports bra. “Like, seriously. One of the best detective minds in the world who’s just gonna be like, ‘Oh yeah, this little girl with weird powers can totally know who I am under this mask. I’m sure that won’t be a problem,’” I growled in my best Batman voice.

Okay, so my Batman impression wasn’t stellar, but it wasn’t terrible either.

Scarecrow stared at me. I wondered vaguely what his expression looked like underneath the mask. Was he irritated? Angry? I couldn’t tell.

He sighed finally. “Shame. I was so hoping my preferred method wasn’t going to be necessary. That you’d give up the information willingly. Though, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. The Batman somehow manages to instill a strange sense of loyalty in his followers.”

“You say that like he’s an internet personality,” I remarked.

Scarecrow revealed one of the syringes on his hand—the kind that would inject me with a concentrated dose of his fear toxin that would probably nearly kill me. “Enough of your silly little games, Star Beam,” he snapped. “You’re going to tell me who Batman is, and you’re going to do it now.” He lifted the syringe and held it toward me.

The door was kicked open. “Get the H*&% away from her!” a voice ordered.

The newcomer was tall. Not quite as tall as Bruce, but only shorter by a couple inches. He was also absolutely ripped—to the point where I thought it looked uncomfortable.

But I couldn’t describe his face because I couldn’t see it. He wore a scarlet helmet over his entire head. Frustrating, not to know who was under there. I supposed that was how a lot of people felt about Batman. Hmm.

Scarecrow snickered and backed away. “As you wish, Red Hood.”

“Let me talk to her. Alone. See if I can get it out of her in a different way,” Red Hood said.

Scarecrow moved to leave. “Alright. But when she proves uncooperative, we’ll do this my way.” He slid out and slammed the metal door behind him.

Red Hood sat opposite me on another metal chair, lounging on it casually. He tsked. “Oh Star Beam. You’ve really gotten yourself in a pickle this time, haven’t you?”

I wriggled and leaned my head back away from him. “Uh… I guess?” I said.

He sighed and shook his head, looking down. “No, no. You’re doing it wrong. You’re supposed to keep me talking. Or talk yourself. That’s what Bruce taught you to do right? Bide your time till he shows up to get you.”

I blinked. “B-Bruce?” I stammered.

Red Hood snickered. “Yeah. Scarecrow doesn’t know that I know. Let’s just keep it our little secret, okay?” he asked.

I cleared my throat. “Who are you?” I asked.

I heard an exhale that could have counted as a snort of amusement. “You don’t even recognize my voice anymore. I suppose that’s okay. It’s been a long time since the last time you heard it. I was just a teenager back then.”

Red Hood pressed the side of his helmet. The mask at the front opened up.

I gasped and lurched backward, the legs of my chair screeching on the concrete floor. “J-Jason?”

A leather-gloved hand reached up and stroked my face, pausing with fingertips at the seam where my mask met skin. I really hoped he wasn’t going to remove it. That wouldn’t be good. “Hey Star Beam,” he greeted, voice soft and gentle but with an underlying hostility and aggression I didn’t trust at all.

“You’re… you’re supposed to be dead,” I breathed, unable to think of anything else to say.

Jason shrugged. “Didn’t take,” he said. “Listen, don’t count on Batman to come save you. I thought he’d save me too but that didn’t turn out so well. Figure out how to get out on your own.”

“I’m trying. There’s a power-dampener on the chains. I can’t pick the lock with my telekinesis.”

“Well try harder. I don’t want Scarecrow to have you in here.”

“Oh, so just because it’s me you want to help.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“For my survival, yes. But what if it was Dick? Or some random civilian? Would you be encouraging them to escape?”

“Unknown, Star Beam. Because they’re not here and you are.” He reached forward and pulled the bobby pin out of my hair and slid it down my arm and into my hand where it was tied behind my back. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I still love you.”

“Don’t want to hear that my boyfriend from when I was fifteen still loves me even though he’s allied himself with one of my enemies. Hmm,” I said.

“Pick the lock, escape the dampener, and then you high-tail it out of here, you hear? My alliance with Scarecrow is necessary. You don’t know what happened to me when I was brought back to life. I’d been hollowed out. Still am. The only thing that’s left of who I was is my love for you. Somehow that survived.” He kissed my forehead. “Now go.” He straightened up, shut his helmet, and left the room. “Give her a few minutes to stew over my threat in solitude, she’ll come around,” Jason said to Scarecrow. The metal door slammed with a heavy thunk!

I fiddled with the bobby pin, breaking it to use as a lock-pick. Lucky for me picking locks was about feeling and not seeing because I couldn’t see what I was doing. Just had to feel for the tumblers.

The locks released. I sighed in relief and quietly slid out of the chains, trying to make them clink as little as possible.

I rolled my wrists, stretching them out and calling on my powers. Silver-white light danced around my fingers. I grinned. “I’m back,” I whispered.

I stole over to the window. The bars were too narrow for me to slip through and the glass appeared to be ballistic glass—bulletproof.

I smirked. “Good thing my powers have nothing to do with bullets,” I mused.

I bent my knees and made a telekinetic shield in front of me.

With a single shove of my hands in which I touched nothing, I tore the bars and glass out of the window. There was a horrible wrenching and crashing noise as the bars and glass broke free. The rubble ricocheted off my shield.

The door burst open behind me. The shield swung around to protect my back. “Get her!” Scarecrow shouted. “This is why telekinetics are cheaters, Hood!”

I laughed and launched myself out the window. I didn’t even care where I was or how high up. I was getting out. “Woooooo-Hoooooo!” I called as I fell through the air. A cushion of silver-white telekinetic energy pillowed my landing, but I tuck-and-rolled anyway for the sake of my knees and the fact that I was really stiff from sitting in that chair for too long.

Bullets followed after me as I took cover with an, “Eeep!” and threw up another shield.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” I heard Jason shout. The bullets ceased. “Anyone hurts her and they’re gonna deal with me!”

I did a quick stretch and took off running. “GO AFTER HER!” Scarecrow shrieked.

“But don’t you dare shoot her!” Red Hood added.

I leapt over a busy street of cars with the help of my powers and kept running. I had to get out of the city. Into the woods… if I could make it up into the branches of the canopy they’d have a harder time tracking me… get back to the Batcave.

I careened around a corner—

Only to be grabbed, a hand wrapping around my mouth to muffle my shriek and throwing me against a wall.

A familiar figure towered over me, holding me still and keeping my mouth shut. There was a smile on his face and a blue domino mask over his eyes—which were blue underneath. His hair was black. He was about five-ten and slender—fluid lines and lean muscle. Not bulky and jacked like Jason.

I pushed his hand off my mouth. “Dick?!” I scream-whispered.

“Hey Star Beam. Who’re you running from?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you that scared since the first time you sparred with B on Beast Mode.”

I sucked in a deep breath, trying to stop panting. “I’m running… from… Jason,” I got out through my heavy breathing. “Because… y’know… no one bothered to tell me that he’s still alive.” Dick took a step back, letting me go completely.

“Well, technically, he’s not ‘still’ alive. He did actually die. But then he got brought back. Long story. Quick version: reality got a little altered which brought him back to life and then he took a dip in the Lazarus Pit to heal,” Dick explained. I blinked. This was a lot to process. I wasn’t feeling too hot anyway, but this was a lot. I leaned against the wall and put my hand on the bricks behind me, looking for solidarity.

I took another deep breath. “Okay…” I breathed. “And no one thought to tell me this… why?!” It took all my self-control not to lose my cool. Not to scream at him and shout. But we were still hiding from Scarecrow and Jason’s goons.

“I, uh, I’ll have to let B explain that one. C’mon. Let’s get out of here. You good to keep moving?”

“Yeah I’m good.”

“Okay great. Let’s move.”

I followed him up the fire escape of the building he’d pinned me to. We leapt over rooftops and across alleys with agility—and telekinesis in my case—before coming to a stop in Crime Alley. Below us, in an alley, was the Batmobile. Dick took the fire escape down. I just jumped and used my powers to cushion my fall.

“Now what?” I asked, upon finding the Batmobile was empty.

“We wait for approximately fifteen seconds,” Dick said.

One. Two. Three…

Jason was alive. What was I supposed to be thinking?

Four. Five. Six…

More than just alive—working with Scarecrow as the Red Hood.

Seven. Eight. Nine…

He’d had guns strapped to his thighs. Guns. Jason hadn’t been taught how to fight with guns. What was going on?

Ten. Eleven. Twelve…

I was too overwhelmed for any of this. I needed to go home and get some sleep.

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen…

“Okay. It’s been fifteen seconds and he’s still not here,” I said to Dick. “Now what?”

Sixteen. Seventeen. Eight—

“Nightwing. Star Beam. What are you doing here?” a deep voice said. I whirled around to see Batman looming in the darkness of the alley.

Dick leaned against the Batmobile, spinning one eskrima stick around his hand casually. “Hey B. Guess who just found out your son is alive?”

Batman looked at me. “Are you going to lash out or are you going to let me explain?” he asked.

“Both?” I suggested.

“Alright. Let’s get somewhere safe first. Pile in, you two.”

[zombiesbecrazy]

Regular People

Summary: All sorts of people can enjoy a good sunrise over the city after a long night. Why should heroes of Gotham be any different? (Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon).  

ao3

Robert Lee looked up and smiled.

It was just before five in the morning and he was walking to work, just as he did every day.  Even though he lived quite a way out of the downtown core he knew that it had been a rough night in the city.  He had seen some highlights on the TV while he drank his coffee, and even now he could still hear the sirens in the distance. There had been a big throw down on the East Side last night. Riddler or Joker or some other psycho did something that hurt a lot of people.  Or was going to hurt a lot of people.  Or something.

Sometimes when you live in Gotham you can lose track of which villain is doing what and why. You just always have to assume that there is something going on and to be prepared.

Robert kept a gas mask in his bag, just in case.

Seeing a few heroes together was pretty commonplace and over the years he had witnessed all sorts of team ups. The regular Batman and Robin. The shorter Batman and Robin. Nightwing and Red Robin. Batgirl and Black Canary. Red Hood and Catwoman, though even Robert thought that one was a little weird. However, everyone in Gotham knew that if you saw more than five vigilantes together that things were probably bad.  Very bad.  But they also knew that those caped crazies were going to do everything they could to keep them safe.

That morning he had seen from the TV that it was one of those battles, when all the masks showed up to work together. All of the Bats and Birds as local television stations liked to call them.  He wondered what the group called themselves privately, like the Church of the Sacred Bat or something equally weird.

On early mornings after such an event like that it wasn’t uncommon for him to see outlines of two familiar figures sitting on top of Brown Bridge, watching the sun come up together. It was this that made him smile because he knew that it meant the city had to be safe, at least for now.

Nightwing and Batgirl only went up there after a battle was done and Gotham was safe again.

The location made sense in Robert’s mind. Nightwing now worked out of Bludhaven to the south and Batgirl seemed to be stationed in Burnside or Sommerset from what he could tell from the internet sightings.  While definitely closer to Burnside, the bridge was sort of half way between the two.

Though the more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had been seeing them on the bridge far longer than that.

Early on, when he first started the morning crew shift, he use to see Batgirl up there with Robin after a long night, her red hair and his yellow cape flying around in the wind. Robin gave way to Nightwing over time, and now Robert could no longer count how many times he had seen them up there, having a moment of calm after what was probably a long night.  He had seen them sit close together. Far apart. Having what looked like heated arguments, chatting amicably or sitting in content silence. There had been a few years where he had seen Nightwing there by himself and it made Robert sad to see him sitting there solo, until one day Batgirl was back with him.  Robert had felt like he was able to release a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding. They were sitting closer than ever that day and it looked like Nightwing had his arms wrapped tight around her.

Once he thought he saw them kiss and part of him wanted to applaud but stopped himself before he spoiled the moment. It was a very private moment he was trespassing on, after all.

As he approached the foot of the bridge, he gazed up and saw them watching him, as they sometimes did.  So he waved.

They waved back, as usual. They were sitting very close today. He hoped that they were happy. They looked it right now.

He had never mentioned these sightings to anyone, not even his wife.   It felt like something secret and personal and not really anyone else’s business. What those heroes did in their downtime was their own prerogative and they deserved a bit of peace after a long night. He could give them that after all they did for him and the rest of the city.

Robert smiled and continued on his way to work.  It was a good morning.

***

Dick and Barbara sat with their coffees on the beam over Brown Bridge, legs dangling beneath them. It was something of a tradition that they had been doing since they were kids after a long battle. As a young Batgirl and Robin this point was the farthest they were allowed to go from the cave while still being ‘in bounds’ according to Batman’s rules. It was far enough away that they felt independent but close enough that if something were to happen, they could make it to the closest safehouse. Now, it was pretty much halfway between their homes and it gave them the perfect place to catch up before calling it a night.

“I’m going to need some ice later,” groaned Barbara. She kept flexing and extending her left knee gingerly.  She had tweaked it when she kicked one of the Talons during the fight; she hadn’t noticed then but it was protesting a lot now. “I really hate The Court of Owls.”

Dick gave a little smirk, “I’m starting to get the impression that they don’t like us too much either.”

“I think they might like you a little too much.” Barbara eyed Dick carefully but he pretended to ignore her comment. She knew he didn’t like talking about his connection to the Court and thankfully she pivoted the conversation. “That’s going to leave a mark.” She pointed to Dick’s jaw and he moved it slowly and grimacing at the large crack the joint made.

He raised his hand and touched it, wincing slightly. “It’s a good thing that a girl I once knew taught me how to use concealer so that I can stay pretty even after getting my ass handed to me.”

“We both know that Bruce is better at makeup than me and he taught you the secret art of contouring way before it became cool.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes and watched the city start to come alive as the sun began to light up the sky.  It was one of Dick’s favourite things to do; watch the sunrise from up high and just bask in the simple sense of calm post fight with Barbara at his side.

Seeing a familiar sight below, Dick set his coffee down beside him. “Hey, Babs. Look.”

“Is it Robert?  I haven’t seen him in ages.” Barbara turned her head to the direction that she knew he would be coming from and a smile broke out over her face when she spotted him on the dark sidewalk below.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve been here on a weekday.” Robert was a morning person, with an unusual spring in his step for a time of day that most people were still asleep. There was a little more grey in his hair than last time Dick had seen him, but he looked fit and happy. “He looks good. I hope he’s doing alright. His wife wasn’t doing well last time I checked.”

Barbara nodded, “I checked her hospital files. She’s in remission. All signs are good.”

“That’s great news.” Dick poked Barbara in the side, “Stop hacking hospitals, Oracle.” But he was glad that she had. It was probably strange that they knew so much about a man they had never met and didn’t have any ties to Gotham baddies. In all ways, he was just a regular man. But he was their regular man and they had to make sure he was alright.

The regular people were the whole point of their irregular night jobs.

“It was important,” she said unapologetically and then took a long sip of her coffee, “He’s our friend.”

“A friend that we’ve never spoken to. Or seen at street level.”

“He’s a friend that keeps our secret spot a secret. Has for years. As far as I can tell, he’s never said a word to anyone.” Barbara nudged his leg a bit with her own and he smiled back. “He’s watched us grow up, Boy Wonder.”

Dick eyes grew large at the thought of what that must have looked like from Robert’s point of view, the things he could have seen between them. “Do you think he knows that Robin grew up to be Nightwing?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Barbara reached over and messed up Dick’s hair, “Everybody knows that. Worst kept secret in Gotham.”

Dick wondered what other secrets the man knows about them from just a few glances over the years, besides codenames and hair colour. Not real identities, obviously, but does he know how much they mean to each other? How much it hurt when Barbara couldn’t join him up here? How he’s glad that she’s back in the field but terrified that something will happen to her again? How he’s head over heels in love with her but they could never get the timing right?

He sighed to himself. That’s probably the second worst kept secret in Gotham.

Dick leaned over a little so that his shoulder touched Barbara’s, placed his hand on hers and smiled as she squeezed back.  He could see the small grin on her face as well.

Robert looked up as he crossed underneath and waved in greeting.

They waved back, smiling, still holding hands.

This was a good morning.