Burden of Engagement

Lady Bat glared at him, and squared her shoulders.

"There is a lot of things that would have been different had I been a man, Red," she growled. "You want to be better than I am. You want to be a better Bat. You won't be. Not now. And not like this."

Her eyes ticked over, following his gaze to the tool bag, and back to him. All this time, she had treated Jason as someone she needed to save.. But that had been her misstep. That was where he took advantage of her, each time they fought.

"I don't want to have to do this, but if you leave me no choice, you become no better than the men we put away together.."
 
Jason rolled his eyes. "I don't need this Friendship is Magic crap."

He rolled his head on his shoulders, wincing at a pain that revealed itself before pulling a pistol from one of his thigh holsters. He aimed it toward Lady Bat.

"I already am better than you. We both know it. That's why you're standing there talking, looking like a Mom going through menopause. That's why crime in the city is lower than it ever has been. And that's why this city needs a Bat Man, not a Lady."

He looked back to the toolbag briefly, picturing the crowbar on the inside of it, his memory flicking back to minutes ago with the Joker, and years ago with the same situation in reversed roles. Then he remembered reading that newspaper forever ago.

He put both hands on the gun and glared back at his mentor. "The men I put away will stay away!!!" he yelled.
 
"You can scream and rial against me as long and as hard as you want, but unless you're actually going to become a monster, and pull that trigger, you're just screaming and railing against the darkness and the storm," she barked. "Crime hasn't been lower because you've been doing a good job, it's lower because they're frightened. For now. And then in a month, you'll have them bolder and bolder, until they are out of your control. You can't murder the populace into submission."

Lady Bat took a step towards him. The gun would put her down, stun her with the impact, but wouldn't pierce her armor.

She hoped.

Jason had a knife that could cut her lines, it stood to reason that he may have a bullet that could pierce her armor.

"Killing me won't make you feel better. Killing a thousand of me, a thousand criminals in Gotham, won't make you feel better. I can't make you feel better."

She opened her arms slightly, as if to shrug.

"I'm sorry. I let you die. You think I have lived these past years oblivious to that?"
 
Jason's eyes lowered slightly as she told him he wasn't doing anything, that he wasn't a monster yet. Somehow, a tiny part of him almost wished she had called him a monster. But that part disappated once she told him the criminals would get out of his control. "You can't murder the populace into submission."

Sure you can, he thought to himself with a grunt, reaffirming his firing stance when she took a step toward him. He knew he'd decided to kill her, but... He didn't want to fire prematurely. Her words just made him angrier, yet simultaneously empty.

Then she apologized for letting him die. God, she was so stupid.

"You think that's what this is about?!" he shouted, insulted.
"That you let me die?" He took a step back, keeping his gun trained on her, but moving it to just his right hand, his left hand falling to his side to form a fist.
"I don't know what clouds your judgement worse: your guilt or your ridiculous maternalism."

He lowered his chin, his green eyes peering through his brows toward Lady Bat. "Bel, I forgive you. For not saving me. But why?"
He took another step back, and threw open the hall closet door.

"Why the hell is HE still alive?!"

Inside the closet, the Joker, still tied to the chair, looked up through his matted, still damp locks of green hair. "Did you finally get to ten?"
His beady red eyes surveyed the scene, flicking from Jason to Lady Bat, and he began to chuckle, then laugh profusely.

Jason glared, only turning to the Joker briefly enough to yank the chair out of the closet and into Lady Bat's view. He twirled the chair so the psychopath faced the Bat, and then stood next to the bound man, gun still trained on his mentor.

"Oh, a family reunion! Let's get a picture! Who's got a camera? Get one of me and the kid first. Then you and me, then the three of us!" The Joker's voice was thrown as his head bobbed in the direction of whoever he was mentioning during his suggestions. "And then one with the crowbar!" He finished, growing even more excited. That was, of course, until Jason pistol whipped him.

"Shut up!"
Joker and his chair clattered to the floor with a yelp. Jason made sure the idiot was still bound, but otherwise stepped aside, out of the his reach, and retrained his gun and eye line to Lady Bat.

"Ignoring what he's done in the past, blindly, stupidly, disregarding the entire graveyards he's filled, the thousands who've suffered, the friends he's crippled--" He paused at that last line, a callback to Barbara. He thought Nightwing would've worked Lady Bat over for that one, but apparently paralyzing his girlfriend wasn't enough to turn the leaf that Jason had.
Dick was too good for killing, too.
Idiots.

"-- You know, I thought..." Jason lowered his voice, his eyes wavering for a moment before he went to stare at Lady Bat again. "... I thought I'd be the last person you'd ever let him hurt." Frowning, his gun wavered, his body loosening up in disbelief that he was even still standing here. That this situation was even necessary.

"If it had been you..." he regained his posture. "If it had been you that he beat into a bloody pulp, if it'd been you he eradicated... I would have done nothing but search the planet--" he continued on, his voice rising again as the rage again flowed through him.

"-- for this pathetic pile of evil, death-worshipping garbage and sent him off to Hell!"
 
"You don't understand," Lady Bat said, feeling a sadness wrap around that cold chord of fury that had kept her going so far. Distantly, she heard the click of her own heels on the cobble path leading from Wayne Manor to the cemetery on grounds. On one side of her, Dick had an arm linked in hers. On her other, Alfred held an umbrella to keep the soft fall of rain from her head.

Joker was cackling something at her feet. She desperately wanted to drive a heeled boot into his mouth, but it seemed too little, too late.

"I don't think you've ever understood," she said, still seeing the image of the casket, deep in the grave, and knowing, knowing that Jason was within it.

And Jason, or the man who wore Jason's face, stood before her now.
 
"What?" Jason questioned. "Your moral code won't stand for that?"
He took a step forward. "It's too hard to cross that line?" he mocked.
 
"No!" She yelled. Shaking her head, she kept her shoulders up. "God almighty.. No." She sighed, and met eyes with him again, a hard, opaque stare. "It would be too damned easy. All I've ever wanted to do was kill him. A day doesn't go by where I don't think about subjecting him to every horrendous torture he's every dealt out to others. And you. And me." She looked at the foul creature at her feet, looking up at her with those lecherous yellow eyes.. "And then.. end him."

"N'aw, so you do think about me!" The Joker drawled, but Lady Bat ignored him, looked back up at Jason.

"But then I think... If I allow myself to go down, into that place.." she stepped over the Joker, nearer to Jason, almost face to face. "I'd never come back."

She whispered the last part, hoping against hope to reach out to the boy inside the man.
 
Jason's eyes narrowed, unsatisfied with Lady Bat's response. He pushed the gun into her chestplate and pushed her back. "A hug isn't going to fix this," he muttered, shoving her back behind the Joker's fallen chair.

Once she was away from them both, he reached down and righted the chair, sitting the Joker up so he could rightfully see the action again. He cackled lightly, but Jason continued to ignore him, using him as more of a visual prop than anything. Switching his pistol to his left hand, he leaned his right on the back of Joker's chair, looking at the side of the madman's head before turning his attention back to Lady Bat.

"I'm not talking about the other ones, not Penguin, or Two Face. Maybe they can be rehabilitated. I don't know," he admitted his doubt, but lowering his vision, he pointed the gun to the Joker's head, about a foot between the muzzle and the madman's temple. "But he can't. Never will be. I'm talking about killing just him. And doing it because..." his voice faltered. "Because he took me away from you."

Not that he really cared, anymore.

"Chin up, Kid," Joker interjected. "Uncle J's always here for ya!"

Jason grunted and brought his right fist down on the top of Joker's head, momentarily shutting up the bastard.
 
Lady Bat allowed herself to be pushed back, the muzzle of the gun pressed against her breast. Jason was spiraling. Gesturing. He had spent God knew how long chasing this car and now that he had his teeth around the fender, he didn't know what to do with it.

"He took you away from me," she agreed, nodding. "And I buried you. After breaking every bone in his body. And he never once told me why. And if I killed him, the why went with him." Lady Bat's eyes narrowed. "Tell me this: if you kill him, what comes next? Hm? You kill me too, probably, but then what? You go after Nightwing? After that old man who helped to bury you, too? You just go on, killing and killing and killing, until all your problems are solved? Until all your wrongs are made right? Where does it end?"
 
"He never told you why? And he never will. He's a psychopath. There isn't a why."

Jason shoved his muzzle into Joker's temple, pushing his limp head up. For now, the man was unconscious. But he doubted that would last long.

Taking a deep breath, he changed gears, swiftly aiming the gun back at Lady Bat again. "But you know what does have a 'why'?"
He glowered at her. "You. You know who does have reason?
You.
And you know when it ends." He stated, flatly.

He stepped back, giving himself some more personal space, taking his free hand from the chair. "It ends when I say it does."

His hand flicked off the safety and he turned the gun back to the Joker, squeezing the trigger.
 
. . . There was a lot more blood than she had last remembered. She had seen the bullet rip a hole in her father's chest, and poor Mother Martha, through her neck. As an eight year old child, she knew what true death looked like. Watching horror movies as a teenager perturbed her, because while they very often got it wrong, when a film maker actually did get it right, it was shocking to see, shocking to know, the truest color of human blood.

Brain matter was a different story, and skull fragments more strange still.

The gun shot rang in her ears, and she surprised herself with how little she moved. Her lips parted slightly, as if shocked, but they closed just as quickly, setting her jaw in a hard line. The stink of gunpowder filled the room, but other than that, silence reigned, and hung, heavy and pregnant with unsaid words between the two of them.

" . . . There, then, Jason," she said, surprised by her own voice and its tone. "Was it worth it?"
 
The shot rang loud in the room, muffling his hearing for a few seconds. The Joker was dead.
The Joker was dead.
He'd finally done it.
It was done.

Was it worth it?

It took some time for the haze in his brain and ears to clear, but he lowered his arm, clicking the safety back on with a practiced precision as he took in the sight of the now gored Joker still sitting in the chair. He'd thought the chair would blow over, but alas, that was the force of movies.
He just... sat there.
Hole in his head, limp.
It was too easy.

"No." he admitted quietly, the rage from within him rushing away to leave an empty void in his chest as he sighed. "I wanted it to be you."

He exhaled slowly through his nose, hanging his shoulders. Dropping the pistol, he kicked it to the other side of the room before reaching into his jacket and pulling out another remote trigger.

"But we're not going to have to live with that," he stated, moving his gaze to Lady Bat, his green eyes piercing through her cowl as his thumb depressed the button.

Behind his mentor, in the fireplace, the bombs he'd placed before lit up with life. The countdown? A short five seconds.
No backing down, now, he thought to himself.

He was going to go out the same way he had the first time.

Funny, he thought, How history repeats itself.
 
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"Wanted it to be the one who killed him, or to be the one killed?" She asked, softly, moving to check the Joker. She didn't touch him. There would be no surviving that.. She paused and looked at Jason, eyes wider.

We're not going to have to live with that.

"Jason?" She said, hearing the beep of the bomb. It had to be a bomb. Gritting her teeth, she lurched forward, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. "To hell we are," she grunted, trying to haul him to his feet, to haul him out of there, to make right the wrong she made in Saravejo..

She found herself trying to throw him bodily out the door of the kitchen, far away from the beep of the bomb. She wasn't for a moment sure how long they had, how long he had set it, why he had set it.

"MOVE!" She bellowed.
 
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Jason's body relaxed. He was still standing, but he was ready to go. This was it.
It wasn't his ideal ending. But it was one of the possibilities. That was fine with him.
His mind cleared and he watched the countdown of the bombs in the fireplace, the voice of Belinda wafting off into the distance as if she wasn't even there.

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But he was grabbed by her and unceremoniously thrown into the hallway of the building, outside the apartment. His mind empty, he heard the shouted command of MOVE and just did it.
Was it his body's self-defense mechanism? Or was it just years of training to trust when somebody screams move?

Regardless, he just ran. He wasn't sure what he was running from anymore- truth be told he was a little confused then, as his instincts took over - but he ran down the hallway toward the fire escape. Of course, it wasn't in time. There was no real saving himself in a meager five seconds.

The apartment blew, erasing the room from the tower's existence, the force of the explosion pushing the air out and stressing all the walls near. Jason had run far enough away to not die instantly, but not so far as to not get caught in wave of destruction.
He was pushed out with the walls, losing consciousness on his way down to the ground, where a sizeable amount of debris collected and turned to rubble.

The building wasn't totally gone, but perhaps only three quarters of the decrepit structure remained. A giant plume of black smoke rose from where the apartment has once been.
 
For a moment, her world was a sharp, ringing bell. She felt blind, as all she seen was a bright white light. It was an unearthly experience but not one she was totally unfamiliar with. Lady Bat knew that the apartment had blown. She remembered, as her senses came back to her, the explosion and trying, somewhat desperately, to grab Jason's body and shield it.

She failed. They fell, together, and landed, together.

Coals around her, as her vision shifted back into focus. There were sirens in the distance. The dull roar of a fire, a burning building.

Hissing through her teeth as she went to her hands and knees. Her ribs on her left side were broken. That she knew. Her head was throbbing, but there was no indication she was badly wounded aside from the rib situation.

She scanned the rubble, looking for Jason. She found him, crumpled, and she felt a panic in her gut. She had seen him like that before. Scrambling, Lady Bat ran to his side, turned him over.

Burnt. Bruised. Bleeding.

But alive.

Thumbing the side of her cowl, trying to force her commlink to work. The buzz of static met her ear. Gradually, finally, Alfred's voice cut through the white noise.

"Ma'am?!"

"Use remote start, bring the Batwing around," she said, hearing the sirens come closer. "Now."

"Do you have him?"

"No time, bring the Wing around!" She barked, before reaching down, grabbing Jason's arm and hoisting him up. He was heavy. Dead weight. "Stay with me. I've got you. Stay with me...!"

. . . .

"Has he regained consciousness?" Belinda asked, voice soft. Alfred was shutting the bedroom door behind him. He gave her a mild reproachful look.

"You should be resting, ma'am," he said, not answering her question.

"Dick hasn't stopped screaming at me over voicemail," she admitted. "He'll be here soon, I'm sure. I don't want him to be caught unawares."

"Dick or Jason?" Alfred asked, putting his white gloved hand on the small of her back, as if to lead her away.

"Alfred," she said, not budging.

Alfred sighed and leveled silvery-blue eyes on Belinda's icy blue.

"He is resting. He has a concussion, a few broken bones in his ribs. Perhaps torn ligaments in his arms. But no.. He has not woken up."

"But he's restrained."

"For his own comfort and safety," Alfred assured her, though, she had to admit, with a level of distaste. "Now, please, ma'am, your own health is not we--"

The unmistakable sound of the front door blasting open, banging off the wall with the force of it, echoed through the manor. Not the sound of a Rogue, no, but perhaps a little more frightening for Bel, now.

One of her boys..
 
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Outfitted in sneakers, blue jeans, and a blue hoodie over a white t-shirt, Richard Grayson slammed open the door to the manor, marching through the study, the halls, then jogging up the steps to finally find the woman he was after.

"I saw the news!" He shouted. Of course, she'd already called him previously and told him everything. But he hadn't wanted to believe her.
There was a TV on the train when he came over from Bludhaven though, and the report made it seem like Red Hood and the Joker were killed in an explosion in an apartment in Crime Alley.
So not only was Bel's story likely true, but she also just let the news cover up the real story.

"How could you let this happen?! You could've called me! I could've helped!"
 
"Richard," Belinda said, scolding. She tried to gesture for him to keep his voice down, but there was no calming Dick after he got wound for sound. He'd just keep going and going. "Let's go to my room, let's talk about this.. I wasn't about to put you in danger, too, not after I learned what I learned. Listen to reason, dear, come talk to me.."
 
Dick narrowed his blue eyes for only a moment before lowering his voice and walking with Bel to her room. But he wasn't going to just give up so easily.
"Don't 'dear' me, not about this. I should've been there. What were you thinking?"
 
Belinda shut the door behind her, and hissed back over her shoulder at him, keeping her voice down.

"I wasn't going to risk getting you hurt or killed," she said, turning to face him. "Not when I was dealing with the Joker, not when I had Jason out for blood. This was something I had to do alone."

Bel crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing a long, shapeless black night-gown. Her pale arms were bruised, some cuts here or there throbbing and red, slick with bactine to prevent infection.

"You wouldn't have wanted to be there anyway.."
 
He crossed his arms over his chest. "You're kidding me, right? That's our job. We deal with criminals. We put ourselves in danger all the time."
Leaning back, Dick inhaled sharply. "And how do you know if I wanted to be there or not? Maybe I did. He's my responsibility too. You didn't even let me know Red Hood was Jason before you went after him!
And then you just let him kill the Joker? HOW?"
 
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