He knows that he's not the hero. Knows that his hands are stained and scarred with red. He knew that going in, long before Batman took a kid off the street and tried to clean him up, make him better. Turn him into a hero, like that guy whose place he could never fill. Compared to Batman, compared to Nightwing, the Red Hood is only a fallen shadow.

But he's always been a shadow. Does his best work in the dark. He learned that a long time before he tried to steal the wheels off the Batmobile. And it was nice, being a ward of Bruce Wayne. He almost felt safe for awhile.

But Bruce... Jason was broken a long time ago. Before Bruce, before the Joker, he was just a boy in pieces and no one can put him back together. Nobody.

And he's not rabid, no matter what Bruce and Alfred and even Dick think. He's not a monster, getting off on violence and blood.

He should be. By all rights, he goddamned should be. Not just anyone can get killed by the Joker and come out the other end just fine.

A crowbar and an explosion. And then the Batman's own teacher, trying to make amends and just fucking everything up even worse.

Jason knows what he is. And he knows what he's not.

Batman is the hero. Red Hood is just a bastard doing his best to clean up the streets, even though his hands are stained and scarred with blood.

(It's so much easier to kill than not.)

This story ended up being just a little too long, so I've posted the first bit here. The rest can be found in my journal, here.



“You ready, Maxie?”

She glances over at Alec, sees the tension in his jaw and knows that he doesn't like this anymore than she does, never mind the fact that it'd been his idea in the first place. It's an act that they put on, their own little farce – Alec plays the bad guy, cajoles and entices, tries to talk her in to something that he doesn't actually want to do, while she storms and rages and hides behind her borrowed morality before giving in to what they both know is inevitable.

“Just try to keep up,” she responds, and is happy with how her voice comes out, like she's in control. The fence around the warehouse is at least ten feet and topped with barbed wire, like that's gonna stop them – she takes it in one smooth leap, sees Alec landing lightly out of the corner of her eye, his body turned to cover her back as she starts to run.