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Arabella | Red Hood and Batgirl | Zero Year Flashback

divine-my-own-future:

With pursed lips and a scrunched up nose, she looked at him with feigned disgust. “Should we add littering to your no doubt long list of criminal acts?” Bending down, Barbara picked up the spent cigarette and strolled over to the helmeted man. Yanking out his hand, she placed the the trash in his palm. “You should be more careful next time, Darth. Wouldn’t want your DNA getting into the wrong hands.”

A scoff escaped her lips, eyebrows drawn and arched in disbelief. “The great and powerful Red Hood needs my help? Are you concussed? You don’t seem like the type to ask for assistance, let alone from an ally of the bat.”

He raised his hands up and she sensed he was being sincere. Which was an incredibly odd feeling and one she was certain she couldn’t one hundred percent trust. Barbara dropped the sarcastic tone, switching to something a bit more serious. Leaning against one of the railings, she looked over the skyline, taking a moment to consider his request, still stunned he was asking for aid. “How do I know you are being honest? How do I know you aren’t lying to me?”

Barbara didn’t trust him farther than she could throw him – which considering his height and bulk was probably not far at all. But she probably owed him a favor, he had sort of gotten her out of a jam. A really stupid jam, but a jam none the less. She could at least humor his request.  

He couldn’t help himself. He smiled when he saw her pick up his scattered bad habit, a genuine smile too. Good thing she’d never know. He accepted the handful of butts, crushing them in his fist before depositing them into a jacket pocket. “Nice to see you again, Padme. Good to see you’re still trying to earn that anti-littering merit badge.” She scoffed. 

Despite her accusations of nefarious deeds, crimes, and various other skullduggery, he actually needed her help. Wanted it, too. So he endured her cautious looks, the dripping sarcasm in her voice. Finally, when she finished talking, he spoke.

“You don’t know I’m not lying to you. That’s where trust comes in, Batsie. Just hear me out, okay?” He put his hands in front of him, signalling for her to just let him explain. 

“A contact of mine, Boris Ilyinykh, called me this morning. His daughter, Ylena, has been missing since yesterday afternoon. Shit out of luck normally, but Boris tells me she’d been seeing one of the Dimitrov leader’s kid. Some asshole named Anatoly. They’re sex traffickers, primarily.” He stopped, sighing. “I need reliable help, here. Someone I can trust to not storm in there and tip the Russians off. That’s why I’m not using the others here. Too volatile. The Dimitrovs have a warehouse in Randall, and that’s where I want to start.”

He knew she couldn’t see his eyes, but he still bored his into hers. “I need someone here, Batsie. Plus, I’ll owe you one.”

Behind the Screens || Tim & Jason

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A self important little girl.

Tim would have rolled his eyes at the sarcasm if not for the fact that he was busy trying not to choke, glad that his back was currently toward the man. That explained a lot. The teen could only imagine the look on Cass’ face right now, her muffled snickering, and it caused his cheeks to flush. Still, that had been the point, hadn’t it? To hide his identity as best as possible? And he had picked a more feminine tone, so really, this is what he wanted. Besides, if Hood thought he was a girl, it was just another wall protecting his identity, and he supposed that was worth the misconception.

Apprentice? Tim didn’t know Hood had an apprentice… Was he making up for the split of the Outlaws? Trying to expand his shrunken family? The man didn’t seem the type, but he had been wrong before. As the large man spoke, Tim began to type, pulling up any surveillance and marks he had in the area of the Narrows. It was a strange occurrence, having someone like the Red Hood ask him for a favor, but he didn’t have much time to appreciate the feeling, his fingers stopping suddenly as he spun around in his seat to face the Hood once again. If Tim’s face wasn’t hidden, he would have worn a look of concern and incredulity.

“Dick? Dick is your—” He cut himself off, realizing that wasn’t the most important thing to know right now. Swiveling back around, Tim continued to hone his search. “Did he have his phone on him? If so I can access the gps in it. Otherwise it might take slightly longer.”

The girl didn’t even let him finish his sentence before spinning around in the massive chair, fingers furiously clacking on the computer that Jason himself had bled on once before. Figures, maps, charts, and timelines erupted onscreen, and quickly became indecipherable. 

Jason, while proficient enough with tech and computers, had never taken to it like this girl obviously had. Lines of code filled an entire computer screen, with several others looking as if they were running some sort of facial recognition software. Not for the first time, he was glad he had chosen a full face mask all those years ago. 

He let the sentence about Dick go, noticing just how the girl reacted. She froze, fingers hovering shakily above the keys. Spinning back around, she asked a question that meant she obviously knew the young assassin, then decided to go elsewhere. 

His phone. 

Without seeming to move a muscle, Jason shut the vents on his mask, muting the speakers as well. Remind me to thank Henri and Ilya for cyberkinetic controls. Jesus, that’s useful. They’d mentioned enough about it for Jason to know how to work it, but that was it. Something about iris tracking and facial expression recognition. Regardless, it was damn useful. 

“Call Grayson.” It was barely whispered, but the onboard mic picked it up just fine, and was dialing less than half a second later. Still dead. With a flick of his eyes and a twitch of his eyebrows, the hood vented again, allowing Jason to speak.

“Still dead. Not sure if it’s destroyed or otherwise useless; it could be just out of juice. The kid’s bad at keeping it charged.” Secondhand embarrassment. Still an odd feeling, empathy for the kid. So much had changed since Roy died, and one of the most important changes was in the dynamics of the Red Hood and his apprentice. Before, they had been stiff, strictly for training. After, well…They’d almost become friends. The kid had some serious potential, and it was hard to dislike him.

As the girl turned back to the screen, Jason spoke to her back. “How do you know him? Kid’s got a network to rival mine, it seems.”

Day for the Dead (to Dance among the Living) | Jason and Roy

repeatrenegade:

Well. That could have gone worse.

He could have been shot.

Roy suspected that in the time it took Jason to turn around and recognize him, he was already taking stock of the different ways to attack, to defend himself, all the while wondering what this untold threat could be. It was so completely Jason, that the red head couldn’t imagine those brief seconds in the older man’s mind going any other way. Roy was a little surprised at the fact that a gun hadn’t been pulled, Jason didn’t so much have his hands on one when he turned around. So he was getting better at controlling his impulses? Or did this showcase some of that ‘change in character’ he had been wondering about?

Still, in the brief moment it took Jason to stride across the room, the ex-SEAL wondered if maybe the gunslinger was going for a more personal touch. A punch across the jaw wouldn’t exactly be welcome, but he figured he deserved it. Yet, ah, Jason was walking straight past him, a hard ‘No.’ as his response. So he didn’t want to deal with this, wanted to push his feelings and turmoil aside? It was such a Jason response, one he knew so well, that Roy couldn’t help but grin. Turning on his heel, following, he watched the lift carry Jason up and up, before heading to the stairs himself. He didn’t have the will nor the patience right now, to wait for it to come back down for him.

Maybe this had been the right thing to do. Maybe they could work it out. The red head wasn’t so disillusioned to think that he could fix this, that he could just show up and everything would be okay. This was going to be hard, and it was going to be painful, but Roy’d like to think it was worth it. So he’d fake nonchalance, because in a situation like this, nothing would make Jason angrier, and the sooner Jason got angry, the sooner they could move past it. Jason was Roy’s best friend, and if the militant needed to take a beating before he could be anything close to accepted back into his best friend’s life, he was willing to do it.

Barely breathing hard, Roy stepped out onto the open roof. He could see Jason’s posture change, see him tense ever so slightly, shoulder’s stiff, though they didn’t look to be. This was his friend, his brother, a person who, sometimes, the red head thought he knew better than he knew himself, and he wondered if that assumption would still hold true.

“Hey, man. I… Look, I know this has gotta’ be the total last thing you wanna talk about. But, it’s sorta… Well, y’know— gotta be talked about.” So he wasn’t a modern day Shakespeare, cut him some slack. The ex- SEAL had a lot more pressing matters in his time alive than learning how to turn everything he said into poetry. The few moments he could string a few verses together— well those times were reserved for those Roy hoped to better get to know. If you caught his meaning.

Still, this required at least some thought on his part, especially if he planned to figure out the best way to navigate such a minefield. Where did he start? What did he say? ‘Surprise, Jaybird. I’m actually not dead. I never was dead. But I couldn’t tell you. Mostly because I relapsed and had no idea where I was half the time. Yeah, and you know that woman, Amanda Waller? The one who almost got me killed in Africa? Well, I started working for her again until I realized I didn’t owe her anymore and I wanted to come home. So can I come home?’  Yeah. Cause that wasn’t an explanation that would blow up in his face. Unfortunately for him, however, it was the truth. It was just a matter of explaining with a bit more… tact.

Roy didn’t like to be full of himself, well, okay, he did, it was in his nature, but he was also self aware enough to know what he meant people. The red head knew what he meant to his dad, to the reservation and to Dinah. He knew what he was to Ollie, to Amanda and the rest of the SEAL team. Roy knew what he was to Kory, and he knew who he was through Jason’s eyes; so he understood what it must of felt like, to find out he was dead. Or so he thought. Still, he also knew the types of lives lead by Outlaws, and it must have been seven types of hell around and following his death. Jason wasn’t just going to be upset that he never came forward with the truth, Jason was going to blame him for all the issues Roy had abandoned him to deal with alone.

“You can’t deny the situation forever, Jaybird. I’m standing right here. And I’m gonna stay here ‘til you say something. And ‘no’ isn’t a sufficient something.”

There was a tightness in his chest, a pressure that constricted his thoughts and sent adrenaline surging through his body. The all too familiar panic attacks he used to get in the years following his death had started with this sensation, and it was only a decade and a half of experience that allowed Jason to harness the event, rather than let it control him. 

The shakes were easy. Breathe, in and out. In, out. The muscles would loosen up sooner or later. The racing pulse would follow. It was the flashbacks that were the worst. The crowbar lifting up against a florescent light, drops of blood and brain matter fanning away from it in a cinnamon spray. The horrible, horrible laughter.

An involuntary shudder ripped through Jason, and he let it run its course. For years, he had tried to suppress the episodes, eventually learning that the best method of treatment was to accept them. Still, he hadn’t had one since…Well, since the night after Bane was killed. After he’d accepted that his teammate, his First Mate, his best friend, was dead.

Godammit, Harper. God fucking dammit. We buried you. We moved on. We tried to forget. We dealt with your loss. And now, to find out you’ve been alive? That you put us all through this for nothing? That’s not something brothers do. Kori won’t ever be the same. Dick, sure. Chalk that up as the silver lining. But to toss away the two life debts you claimed you owed me for this? Never again.

Roy was rambling, stumbling from word to word like he was afraid Jason would kill him at the first silence. To be fair, Roy wasn’t far wrong; however, Jason would at least wait to hear the story before deciding to kill Roy. Jason wasn’t in a hurry anymore. 

Still looking out over the Gotham skyline, Jason pulled out a pack of cloves, putting the first one in between his lips. Turning slightly to look behind him, he spoke around the cigarette. “You have until this pack is empty to convince me not to kill you where you stand.” The Zippo clicked, and flame erupted around the tip of the black cigarette. “There are four after this. Go.”

Behind the Screens || Tim & Jason

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Tim wanted to roll his eyes. Were they really going to play this game? The teen respected the Outlaws, just as much as he did Bruce, sure. They had saved him and his dad, and, in their own right, they used to fight for the good of Gotham. But, when it came down to it, Cass had brought the Outlaws here because they obviously needed something they could only get from the Bats. So, perhaps he was just unsure why they would waste time with things like pride and insulting people that weren’t even present in the current moment. Especially when, to Hood’s knowledge, the person he needed help from, was aligned with said people.

There were a lot of ways Tim wanted to respond. To begin with, he wasn’t that young. The boy had always been defensive of his age, tired of people constantly underestimating him because of the fact. Still, the teen knew the less personal information he revealed the better and kept it to himself. Second, it wasn’t that Bruce had so much chose him, as he had forced himself into the man’s life, a blaring alarm bell that couldn’t be ignored. It was something he prided himself on, but like his previous thought reminded him, this was not a place for pride.

There was a shift in Red Hood’s posture as he observed Tim in the chair. The man had a change in thought, a realization, something that allowed a… slightly more relaxed change in posture. Relaxed was a loose term for anything a vigilante could be of course, but the young hacker made a note to figure out what might have caused that. Perhaps he had been caught off guard by Tim’s appearance..

With a quick glance toward Cass at Hood’s use of her civilian name, the teen spun his chair again, fingers gliding over the key board as he brought the monitors back to life. He could ask her later.

“Data network is a loose term.” He began without spite, pausing a moment as he got used to the sound of his newly enhanced voice, still strange to his own ears. Tim used the moment to bring up a map of Gotham on the main screen, various symbols and blips scattered throughout. On the bracketing monitors were police reports, detailed views of each comm’s owner he was currently connected to, and various other stats. “It’s less tracking and more of a modified conglomeration of news feeds that’s allowing me to pinpoint areas of interest. That mixed with the homing beacons in each communicator, I’m able to see who is closest to what. But I suppose, when it comes down to it, it is true.”

There would be plenty of time to assess this change of events with the anxious, obsessive mind of Tim Drake later. He’d probably freak out, fumble over his words as he tried to make the sense of things. Red Hood and the Outlaws??? Right now, however, he had to be more than that. For Batman, for Cass, Hood, and for himself. Now wasn’t the time to be Tim. It was the time to be more than that, and he knew he could do it.

“You didn’t answer my question, though. Did you need something?”

The girl rattled off something that Jason was sure was meant to impress him, to prove how smart she was. And, granted, anyone that Bruce trusted to run his computers had to be genius level. Well, unless you counted the other Bat. That guy was an idiot.

"No, I came here for the sole purpose of interacting with a self important little girl. Just so happened that that child knows a way to help me save someone dear to me.” Come on, Todd. Don’t be mean. She’s just intimidated, so she’s putting up false bravado. You used to do the same thing with Tiger and the other older League members. Jason sighed. “Yeah, Kid. I need something. My apprentice is missing, and his tracker went dark a few hours ago in the Narrows. I haven’t been able to locate him on the ground, and neither has my associates working this from the logistical side.” All truths, and nothing that was overly informative. He sucked in his breath, biting his lip as he processed what he was about to say.

“Give me anything you can find on one Richard Grayson.”

Arabella | Red Hood and Batgirl | Zero Year Flashback

divine-my-own-future:

It was like a scene from a noir film: streaky clouds and smog surrounding dark structures rising up into the night. The new temples of man – high-rise buildings and billboards – stretching so far it looked like they would impale the stars in the sky.  Batgirl stood sentry on the roof of one such building, observing the city as it citizens drifted towards slumber.

Barbara was exhausted. She had been working the ‘sex bugs’ case, as Dinah had so eloquently dubbed it, for the last two weeks. Every spare moment that she wasn’t on patrol or at work she was researching; sifting and gathering intel in attempt to piece everything together. Somehow she had even managed to fit in an undercover mission to the thinly veiled ball over the weekend to get additional information. Her feet were still aching from the five-inch heels Dinah had forced her to wear.

Eyes darted back and forth over the Gotham horizon, legs dangling over the side of the superstructure. The comm lines were quiet tonight and Barbara was thankful for the reprieve, no matter how temporary or slight. Out of the corner of tired, emerald eyes she spotted the light – an entirely new signal gracing the Gotham skies. Lips pressed together into a tight smirk, she pushed herself up with the aide of the safety railing and took a running leap off the building.

Within ten minutes, Batgirl was standing near the source of her amusement and she couldn’t hide the smile on her face. “You know,” Barbara declared into the shadows. “I would say that it’s a crime to deface police property.” Hands went to rest on her hips. “I would say that, if it weren’t so funny.” 

“There may be angry Bats and police commissioners arriving soon.  Might want to douse the light. Unless your intention was to bring more attention to yourself, then by all means, keep it on.” Crossing her arms over her chest, hip jutting to one side, Barbara stood with cheeky demeanor. 

His helmet was in his hand, and a cigarette was dangling from his lips as he scanned the skyline. The signal was blazing in the air, a brilliant amethyst bat in the heavens. The weather wasn’t cold enough to seep through his armor, but the wind was brisk, biting at his face. It had been a good thirty minutes since the light went up. A small pile of black butts littered the ground at his feet, a sign of his impatience. 

A light sound of footsteps on the far side of the light caught his attention, and he tugged the helmet over his head as he stepped around the buzzing spotlight. He blinked twice as the HUD powered up, changing his visual field from the naked skyline of Gotham to a pulsing stream of information. Batgirl was standing across the roof, looking annoyed. Good. He flicked the butt of his cigarette at her, watching as the coal spun crazily in the night wind. It landed without striking her, rolling into the toe of her left boot.

She spoke. 

With a deft hand, he pulled the handle of the light downward, cutting the power off. The buzzing stopped, and the MCU rooftop plunged into what seemed to be pitch darkness, without the brilliant symbol illuminating their surroundings. He allowed a few seconds for her vision to adjust, then spoke.

"No one is even going to notice, Batsie. There’s a multiple alarm fire on Sandy Hook, plus a hostage situation the new Bat is dealing with up on South Channel Island. No one’s here; certainly no one who’s going to meddle in our affairs.” She looked good. Tired, maybe, but good. Vibrant red hair, sharp eyes. Legs that, had Jason allowed himself to dwell on, would have thrown his concentration fully. He closed his eyes for a brief second, then, in a softer voice, spoke again.

“I need your help, Batsie. I’ve got a kidnapping case I’m working on, and I need someone softer to back me up. Domestic cases aren’t my forte, but this is a favor for a friend. I need someone victims will trust, someone they’ll talk to.” He raised his hands in mock surrender, his tone taking on a sarcastic tone. “No tricks, no trap. This is the Big Bad Wolf asking Little Red for help.”