four | memory (it's a cruel memory to look back on who we were)

[bamboozlement]

You race to the top of the building, break through the door to the roof, sprint to the ledge. You think the cloaked ship is within jumping distance, and as you push off from the stone gargoyle and leap from the ledge in a graceful swan dive, you whisper under your breath: please be there please be there please be there.

You don’t find out whether your gamble was correct. Something tightens around your ankle - a cable, a move you know all too well - and yanks you back onto the roof where you crash, face first. Good thing you wear that helmet, right? Protection for your head, but it obscures your expressions, so you’re only able to convey your annoyance with this setback through the tone of your voice and your choice of words. You look up at the dark figure in front of you, a mountain of a man dressed in cape and cowl and a bat emblem across his chest, black where the same symbol bannered across your own chest is red. Even all these years later, the sight pulls a tremble of fear through your insides, but it doesn’t stop you.

“We gonna do this again, old man?” you spit, defiant, and he answers you with a kick to your face so hard it shatters the front of your helmet. He picks you up by your collar, and you don’t fight back, limp as a rag doll in his grasp.

“I was a fool for ever believing in you,” he growls, and it hurts, of course it does, more than the blows he’s already thrown at you, but it’s a relief, too, to have what you always knew in your heart to be true given form with words, undeniable, finally. You force a small, bitter laugh out of your throat and twist your mouth into a smirk as you stare up at him.

“You are a character,” you say. “I’ve never seen you hit Joker that hard. And you hate him.”

“Shut up!” he yells, and punches you in the face again, sending you sprawling onto the rooftop. “We had a deal,” he continues. “You could operate in Gotham City - you could stay free - if you didn’t kill anyone. You shot the Penguin. Point blank. Unlike Batwoman - you did it as the world watched it happen.”

You don’t deny it - that’s exactly what you did, and you have zero regrets.

“So what?” you retort, even though his hand rests around your throat. “You know all the crap he’s pulled over the years, the people he’s hurt or killed. Or are you just sad about losing a play date?”

He answers you with a headbutt, and it sends you flying backwards. He’s quick to pick you up by the throat again, fist drawn back, prepared to strike. “No more jokes, Jason. No more excuses. No more Red Hood!”

Before he has a chance to pummel you again, another voice appears from above: “No more talking. Batman make Bizarro’s head hurt.”

You gasp and look up at the voice you know so well, hovering over you. “B?! Wait, how - ?”

Bizarro scoops you up in his arms, like you’re a small child, and takes flight. “Red Her said to find you. She said am important. Am you okay, Red Him?”

This is one of the worst beatings you’ve endured in a long time, but reunited with your friend and teammate, none of the bruises and blood matter anymore. “Yeah, buddy. I’m good.”

Bizarro flies you to the cloaked ship, your base of operations, keeping one arm around your shoulders to support you on your weakened feet once he sets you down. A tall, redheaded woman, the third member of your trio of Outlaws, stands in front of a hovering display screen, and she wonders aloud, distressed: “By the Goddess. What have we done?”

“Not what we need to be asking ourselves, Red,” you answer, announcing your arrival. “We need to figure out how to stop this.” She races forward and wraps her arms around you, just as Bizarro does with both of you. Your team, your friends, your chosen family, together again.

As much as you wish otherwise, you can’t stay like this forever. There’s a disaster to prevent, lives to save. “We need to find some kind of steering mechanism for this place. Maybe crash it in the bay before it crushes anyone.”

“Seriously,” she counters, “you don’t think I thought of that already?”

“I’m not saying you didn’t. Just, you know, it isn’t like you have a lot of cars in Amazonia.”

“You think I don’t know how to drive?”

“You were all too eager to take the Quantum Doorway during our date, Artemis.”

A loud noise interrupts your bickering, and you both turn to see Bizarro tearing up the floor, pulling up a giant bundle of the ship’s wiring.

“We were actually thinking less damage than more damage, big guy.”

“What are you doing, Bizarro?”

He holds up his free hand and offers a brief explanation: “Me told you - me would go anywhere, anytime.” With the wiring in hand, he turns and flies through the Quantum Doorway. A small explosion follows, and it knocks you and Artemis to the floor. Panicked, you quickly pull yourself to your feet. Artemis steps between you and the door.

“We have to go after him!”

“No,” she says, curling her fingers into the collar of your jacket. “We don’t.”

“What are you saying?!”

“Not ‘we.’ I’ll go.” The wave of panic spidering across your chest intensifies as you grasp the reality of what she’s saying. She pulls you in close. “Someday … someday you’ll understand how much I owe you. The mistakes I made. How much you suffered because of me.”

You know where this is heading, and you plead with her: “Artemis - don’t do this. It doesn’t matter what you think you did, we can - ”

She silences you with a kiss, a warm and gentle press of her mouth against yours, a conclusion to the dance you’ve both been performing for months. It’s perfect, even if it’s entirely too brief.

“Finally,” you breathe out when the kiss ends. “So … what did you think, princess?” She smiles sadly at you, tears gathered in her eyes, fingertips soft against the battered curve of your jawline.

“It was okay - for a boy.”

You don’t have time to respond - Artemis picks you up and hurls you through the hole in the wall of the ship, calling after you: “And don’t ever call me princess.” You barely have time to yell a No! of protest before you land on the rooftop and scramble to your feet, calling after her:

"ARTEMIS!"

She doesn’t answer. The only reply is the explosion of the ship in the sky before it collapses in on itself and disappears. You drop your head into your gloved hand in despair - you’ve lost everything now - but you don’t have time to grieve. You sense something, and stand up.

“You’re standing right behind me, aren’t you?” You don’t even really need to ask - you know Batman is there, and you jump, spinning backwards with a kick that he easily blocks and then turns your momentum against you to toss you across the rooftop. You barely notice the crack of the bones in your right arm fracturing as you land flat on your back, dizzy and struggling to catch your breath. You fight to remain conscious as he approaches, rips the bat emblem off your uniform, and drags you across the roof by the edge of your shattered helmet.

“I once told you,” he intones, sternly, “if you ever left, it would be your choice - not mine.” You remember that conversation, years ago, when you still wore Robin’s colors, when you still believed that you and Batman could work together as partners toward a common goal.

You don’t see what happens next, but you hear the whoosh of an arrow soaring through the air, the crackle of electricity, the thud of Batman hitting the ground. A strong arm wraps around your shoulders as you’re helped to your feet, and a voice fills your ears that you instantly recognize, even if it has been months and months since you last heard it.

It’s Roy’s voice.

“I got you, buddy.”

[ooc note: it's totally ok to fourth wall and recognize batman, the joker, etc.!]

Comments

UN: Speed

[doubled_speed]

Geez, he’s a fucking asshole isn’t he? Always told Billy that a punk in all that black who clearly regularly cripples people isn’t a fucking hero.

Sorry to see that he’s even real.

[bamboozlement]

[jason’s voice is flat and dull. he is just so tired.]

You don’t even know what you’re talking about, kid.

[doubled_speed]

Batman. He’s a prick. My brother reads his comics. Like, who dresses up like a bat to be scary? Geez. 

[bamboozlement]

[breezing right past that comics thing, yup. and it's not like tommy's wrong - dear ol' bats is kind of a prick. there's just much more to the story.]

You might be surprised at how well it works in Gotham. But there's actually a lot you don't know - none of this is anywhere even close to as simple as you apparently think it is.

[doubled_speed]

No man, it isn't simple. It's fucking complex. DC Comics always seemed to be. But what I'm saying is that he seems like a dick and sometimes you've got to do what you can about bad people. I mean, I might not have shot the person you did, but I don't even know what your world really is like. Just how they write it.

audio: marshes

[gristle]

Wait. That was really Batman before? And you're really a Robin?!

There's more than one Robin?

[bamboozlement]

[jason sighs, somewhere between annoyed and very, very tired.]

Yeah ... that was really Batman. There’ve been four of us who’ve been Robin - I was the second. Probably the worst one, too.

[gristle]

Cause you disagreed with him and how things should work?

[She remembers that from before.]

[bamboozlement]

Yeah ... and I couldn't really ever live up the standards of the Golden Boy Wonder before me. Oh, I also got myself killed. That probably had something to do with it, too.

[gristle]

There was a Robin before ya? Like Dick Grayson's real?

[She knows Jason's died before, she'd seen him talk about it.]

Wow, Bruce Wayne is an asshole, huh?

[11calls]

[Alex is going to ignore the whole Batman/Joker thing and focus on stuff that is more important.]

Are those the friends you were telling me about, Jason? They seem pretty great.

[bamboozlement]

No ... well, kinda. That was Kori and Roy I mentioned before. Kori went back to Tamaran a while ago, had some family and political stuff to sort out. Roy’s the one who showed up at the end there, pulled me outta the fire. [he hmms quietly.] I thought I imagined that. Had a pretty bad concussion, blacked out, and woke up here. All healed up, and no sign of Roy.

[he could try to leave the explanation there and hope alex doesn’t prod him any further, but how likely is that? probably not very. so even though it hurts to remember what happened, jason continues explaining his second team of friends who became his family.]

This was Artemis and Bizarro. She’s an Amazon - literally, not just the way people call tall women who know how to fight Amazons. She’s ... well, you saw her. She’s gorgeous and she kicked my ass the first time we met.

[and they went on a semi-date once, and she kissed him once, just before vanishing through the quantum doorway with the rest of the ship. jason’s been working so hard to keep his mind empty of this memory, and now that he’s forced to confront it in stereo, his heart feels shattered all over again.]

Bizarro’s a clone. We have this real squeaky clean do-gooder alien back home who goes by Superman. His arch-nemesis fiddled around with DNA to make his own personal Superman, but most of those experiments failed. B was the only one left, and he ... he was my best friend.

[he misses all of his friends terribly.]

[11calls]

We have Superman in my world too. And Wonder Woman, if Amazons are true, I guess. But they're comics and movies and things rather than people. But I'm starting to think that all of us here might be stories in someone else's universes. People come to places like here and meet the bunch of us and then take what they hear back home and tell those stories.

[Because she doesn't want to give Jason an 'I'm fictional' complex on top of everything else.]

Do you want to come over for coffee? You can tell me about them, if you want.

[And she can hug him--Alex thinks he needs a hug.]

[bamboozlement]

[jason laughs bitterly. even though it’s weird, he can’t pretend to be surprised.]

If someone’s writing my life as a story, they are in dire need of a sit-down with an editor.

[alex is correct - jason needs a hug. many hugs, in fact. years and years of back pay in hugs, because he’s never had enough affectionate physical contact. he hesitates on her invitation, because his instinct when wounded is always to withdraw, retreat, rebuild the walls around his heart to be taller and stronger than before. but after the sharp, painful reminder of who and what he’s lost, he doesn’t want to be alone.

besides, she probably won’t take no for an answer.]

Yeah ... I guess I could use a coffee.

[11calls]

[Alex knows that he's coming over for more than just coffee, and she's happy to give it to him. He needs it, and he needs a friend and Alex has already volunteered for it more than once.]

We're in dome 301. I'll put the kettle on for the french press. Do you want anything else to go with it?

un; witch

[minus1twin]

[Her brows furrow as she watches the memory. It makes no sense. She doesn't know Jason well but this man in black doesn't sound like a hero. He isn't anything like Steve Rodger's, a true hero. He's a coward, a man hiding behind a mask.]

It's good that your friend saved you. I'm sorry about the others... I've lost many teammates. It never gets easier.

[Even the people she had disliked, she missed them.]

[bamboozlement]

[if steve rogers ever came face to face with batman, he’d likely punch him right into the bay, and jason would be the first to applaud him for it. someone should take the bat down a peg or two.

jason doesn’t recognize wanda’s voice - they haven’t spoken before - but he does recognize she’s only trying to be kind to him, and he bites down on the impulse to snap at her. he doesn’t want kindness, because he doesn’t believe he deserves it.]

Y’know ... [he pauses to exhale a dry, bitter facsimile of a laugh.] Last time this happened, a lot of people came outta the woodwork to tell me how great it was to have friends. Wonder when they’re gonna start lining up to tell me how great it is to lose them, too.

[that’s always what happens, to anyone jason cares about - he loses them, to death, to bigger priorities, to his own enforced space.]

Y’think any of them know what that part’s like?

[minus1twin]

A lot of people don't.

[Her voice is softer as if remembering both new and old pains.] I don't think they realize that it doesn't get easier either. Time might distance the loss but it never goes away.

The people we love take a part of us with them. [Wanda has to stop for a moment and clear her voice. Her first reaction is always to feel anger after the loss of a loved one. She wants to make the people who stole them away suffer but after all that's done with, there is only sadness and loss.]

Sorry. [She tries to steady her voice.] It's hard for me to talk about too. We don't have too. If you don't want too.

[bamboozlement]

It's a wonder there's anything left of me.

[she definitely knows the sort of thing jason's talking about, that much is clear, and it softens the hard edges jason's thrown up since discovering his memory's been broadcast.]

It's OK ... cat's pretty much already out of the bag for me, I think. But you don't have to talk about it if it's too much for you.

[if she wants to, though ... jason's basically always down to commiserate.]

[minus1twin]

There is. [Her voice is soft and hopeful.] I have to believe that there is always something left or I'd lose hope in myself too.

[She's lost family both family and friends over the years. Too many people to count. And some had been her fault. It's a guilt that Wanda has never been able to truly escape from.]

I don't mind talking about it. In a way, it keeps them alive. Even if it's only in memory.

[People are only truly dead when their forgotten.]

audio | un: whiteroad

[whiteroadrunning]

[There's silence for a beat; Alec's trying to process this, but he's stuck on--]

The man with the bat on his chest; he was angry with you for shooting someone?

[bamboozlement]

[welcome to jason's life! so many things make no sense.]

Yup. Less an actual person, more a walking piece of trash that should've been taken out years ago. But the big guy's got rules, and I decided I was done following 'em. He tends to get a little cranky over that kinda thing.

[whiteroadrunning]

Odd rules by my figuring, but as you will.

[Making Bad Things Dead is kind of standard operating procedure for Alec, so...]

Some are beyond help. Everyone is worth a second chance, but at some point, it just becomes foolishness.

[bamboozlement]

They’re stupid as hell rules.

[jason laughs the driest, most bitter sound.]

Tell you what - if we ever get out of here, you should come back to Gotham with me, see if you can slap some sense into the big guy.

[whiteroadrunning]

I take it the slapping wouldn't be metaphorical? No chance of diplomatic philosophical discussions?