*shuffles into view while covered in plot bunnies, drops Part 5, and shuffles back out of view* also I have lost control of the characters so they’re just doing there own thing and I’m stuck here for the ride.
Danny has some trauma and decides to share it.
Jason finally figures out he’s not in a vivisection fic but he still has no idea what’s actually happening.
Thank you all for the comments and keyboard smashes btw, your joy brings me joy :D
Also if someone wants to tag others that’d be awesome cause my computer currently hates the ‘at’ button right now (again… I should maybe get a new computer soonish maybe)
Anyways…. Here ya go you funky internet people!
Jason needed this search to go faster.
6 days and they still haven’t found his soulmate.
6 days and all they’ve done is hit the major labs.
6 days and all they’ve fucking managed to do is change one government implemented act.
6 days and all Jason can do is wait and force himself to NOT shoot the various “scientists” simply because the government covered up UNETHICAL EXPERIMENTATION by leaving no record of their labs, making the scientists the only people who might actually KNOW where the other labs are.
The ONLY upside to this entire situation is the fact that there is apparently a group of KIDS who have been teaming up with the “Ecto-Entities” (Which Jason and pretty much EVERY OTHER hero/antihero who was present/listening to the conversation was pretty sure E.E. was just another way to say A META or Non Human. Safe to say it wasn’t just Jason who was holding back their urge to kill) who have been breaking INTO the labs to free the test subjects.
These kids seem to be stupidly competent too considering The Labs they’ve visited haven’t been able to keep a test subject long enough to preform “extensive research” like VIVISECTION and have only had enough time to do surface scans before they where “stolen” from them.
That and the fact that not even Oracle can find traces of this team up. Every single tech file and online trace has been wiped so clean it’s like they computerized bleach and flooded the system with it after every raid.
The GIW have had to start from scratch every single time because of that.
The government couldn’t even arrest the group either since all video evidence of the raid has ALSO been wiped from existence so other then some basic surface descriptions they had nothing to identify the group.
Jason has never seen Oracle be so impressed by another hacker.
The existence of this raiding team also brings up a very important fact, there is a large possibility they’ve already saved his soulmate.
He needs to find this team and give them a hug.
Still, the point remains that they still haven’t found anything about where his soulmate is, they don’t know where the raid team is from, and they still haven’t gotten the locations of the other labs.
Worse yet, Jason was called back to Gotham 2 days ago due to an Arkham breakout.
The Joker still hasn’t been found and the bats haven’t been able to track him which means Crime Alley needs Red Hood there for when shit hits the fan.
Jason once again considers just killing every Arkham rouge so he can get back to his search.
But he promised Babs and so he’s stuck.
Jason is stuck waiting and thinking about his other half.
They could be trapped in a GIW lab (though that has become less a worry. Seriously, even Barbra wants tips from that raid team).
Maybe his soulmate thinks Jason won’t like them if they’re not really human looking (or human at all) and isn’t trying to find him because of that. Jason hopes that that is not the case but maybe it is and that might mean that he’ll have to make his search public as Jason Todd.
Maybe his soulmate didn’t see his death.
Maybe they they only saw his death.
Maybe Jason is just spiralling into worse and worse trains of thought and maybe he should just stop but he CAN’T.
A ringing sound cuts off his panic before it can really start but it still takes him a moment to realize it’s Babs calling him and that he should probably step away from the edge of the roof he was on.
“Joker has been found.” Jason loved that about her, always straight to the point when she knew he was worried and couldn’t tolerate long meaningless interactions.
“In the medical ward at Gotham General. Apparently someone found him before us and they weren’t happy to see him.”
Jason drew a sharp breath. Barbra doesn’t sugar coat things unless it’s very bad and he knows what she sounds like when she tries to understate something. She sounds like him.
“How unhappy are we talking Babs? The standard Gothamite unhappy or our version of unhappy?” He could almost feel her lips flatten into a cold grimace as the conversation paused.
“Ours,” he pressed down on the sick satisfaction that boiled up from the emotionless tone of the original Batgirl’s voice as he imagined exactly what ‘Ours’ meant for the Joker. Jason didn’t need to imagine for long. “The Doctors said he’ll live and that he’s healing but right now they aren’t exactly sure of the true extent of his injuries because he’s currently in what looks like a self induced coma. They also said they’ll need to wait for the X-ray results and for him to wake up before they can confirm whether or not he’ll regain full use of his arms but even if he does he’ll most certainly have chronic pain in his hands for the rest of his life.”
“So he won’t be hurting people for a while huh?”
“No Hood, I don’t think he will be doing much of anything for a while.”
Maybe Jason should have said something more and maybe Barbra should have been helping Bruce track down the person who did that to the Joker but maybe they both needed a moment to feel satisfied.
Maybe they both needed this moment to just feel some small bit of relief.
*3 day before the Joker was found*
Danny wasn’t quite sure what to do for Jason.
He sat down in the air as he stared at Arkham Asylum.
He came to Gotham almost immediately after he was filled in on what Jason had been doing for him and Danny knew he had to do something about the Joker because that’s the only real enemy he knows Jason has.
He obviously can’t kill Joker even if it’d be so stupidly easy to do.
Maybe even because it’d be stupidly easy to do.
Red Hood, and therefore Jason, never killed The Joker when he had the opportunity too. Time and time again Jason has had opportunities, Danny remembers seeing and hearing the news talk about The Red Hood bringing The Joker in which means it’s an active choice.
Honestly, from what Danny has seen, Jason has been actively avoiding killing people for roughly a year now.
Further proof of this is that Jason didn’t kill a single GIW agent either and honestly that should have been even harder then killing them. They have a stupid tendency to use untested weapons that backfire on them 90% of the time which means they end up needing to be saved most of the time from themselves.
If Wes is to be believed (which again, he usually is) then Jason might not have been right in the mind when he was having his kill streak anyways.
Maybe he was mind controlled and/or manipulated.
Danny knows what that can be like.
He knows what it’s like to blame yourself for things other people and circumstance made you do.
Take Freakshow and Dani for example.
The image of someone making Jason do something that might haunt him for the rest of his life makes Danny want to rip the imagined person to shreds with his claws. It makes him want to find them and put them through a real horror movie scene as he hunts them from empty corners until they’re screaming at their own shadows and then drag them into the deepest part of the Infinite Realm.
He wants to weep and curl up on himself as the image of Jason being hurt that way makes his core cry out in pain.
Danny wants to rap Jason in a hug and tell him that he had already proved how strong he is by how far he’s come.
So Danny can’t kill The Joker because if he does then he is undermining whatever Jason is trying to achieve by letting him live.
But Danny can make him hurt.
He needs to display that he’s physically capable of protecting Jason so a few broken bones from the Joker should work but it doesn’t feel like enough.
He knows that he won’t for Jason’s sake and because it’d place him one step closer to becoming Dan.
Dan’s timeline still gives him nightmares.
Regardless of whether he’s reformed or not.
“Now that’s a thought,” Danny whispers to the air as it whisks his voice away.
He looks back down at the asylum, his eyes shadowed as he lets himself think.
Danny’s worst enemy and biggest monster has always been himself. It is what keeps him in check and it is what keeps him in control of his abilities.
The Joker keeps killing and killing and hurting and hurting with no remorse. He will keep doing so because he knows he’ll get away with it.
The Joker acts as if he’s playing a game.
He acts like he’s obsessed.
The Joker acts like some members of Danny’s rouge gallery. The ones who have forgotten what it means to hurt and to die.
But Danny’s rouges usually only need to have it pointed out to them that they are causing pain, that they may have almost caused someone to DIE before they immediately stop.
Ghosts might forget what it was like to be mortal in death but they also remember what it was like to die.
Ghosts rarely (if ever) want to kill.
But The Joker doesn’t act like a ghost.
A being who doesn’t know what it’s like to feel fear or pain.
A being who hasn’t learned to be afraid of itself.
Danny should teach him to be afraid of himself.
He even has beings who will help him. Who are required to aid him because he is their Crowned Prince.
He is sure Nocturn would love to work with Fright Knight in creating a very terrifying and long lasting nightmare. It’d be fulfilling their obsessions and Danny is quite sure he can convince Ghost Writer to write the nightmare’s script.
Who knows, the nightmare might just make The Joker relive his every kill from his victims’ point of view. It might make him experience EVERY SINGLE BIT OF PAIN AND FEAR they felt before they died by his hand and word.
It’s not like The Joker needs to wake up until he’s terrified of himself.
It’s not like he needs to only relive their deaths once either.
First things first, Danny needs to shatter every bone in those awful hands that touched HIS SOULMATE.
Maybe he’ll take a small souvenir to turn into a gift too.
Yeah, a small souvenir for his soulmate.
