Burden of Engagement

"He's not a criminal! He's.. very troubled right now," Belinda said, gesturing with her hands before walking around Dick. He was still talking. She felt the child and he the parent. She sat at her vanity, her back to him, but watching him in the mirror. When he mentioned the Joker, she spun around to look at him. "How could I let him?! Dick, you think I didn't try to stop him?! I did everything I could.."

Those words tasted strange in her mouth. Coppery, metalic, like she was sucking on old coins. A lie.
 
Dick gripped his elbows and shifted his weight from one foot to the other while his gaze followed her to the vanity. Now looking down at her through the mirror, he chastised her.
"Everything in your power? Okay. Then how did it go down. How did Red Hood best the Lady Bat?"
 
"He had a gun," Belinda said, bitterly. "He had this planned out for years, since he came back. I'm not Flash, Dick, what would you have me do, beat him senseless and coddle the Joker? I was talking him off the damn ledge the entire time. He tried to blow himself up again."

She looked up at him, frowning.

" . . . What would you have me do, Dick?" She asked, reaching out to touch his forearm. "I buried him once, you would have be do it again?"
 
Once he saw how torn up she was about it, he silenced. At least momentarily. He wanted to believe her.. But he just didn't.
She could've done a thousand different things. Smack him, smack the gun, batarangs, mini explosives, she was cunning. There was no way Jason had Joker and just shot him without any warning. Even before his death, Jason was flashy. Just doing the deed to be done with it didn't seem like him.

"I want to see the tapes," he whispered, stepping back away from her.
Not because he distrusted her- he did.. and he didn't... He was torn...
But he just wanted to know how it went down. Jason was his brother, and it wasn't like Joker hadn't hurt Dick. He wanted to see Joker's last moments.
Surely she had recorded it? She recorded practically everything.

"Whenever you get time," he clarified, turning away and walking from her room and down the hall again. Alfred was still outside Jason's room.

"Did you know? That he was Jason? Why didn't you tell me when she figured it out?" Now he was more hurt than angry.
He just felt like...
... He didn't know what he felt like. Everything was so wrong, cobbled sideways.
Was that it?
Was it over?

It was wrong to kill, but if anyone were to be killed... Surely Joker was the right choice....?
 
"If they weren't damaged in the explosion," Bel muttered. He went to leave and she didn't get up to go after him. She just let him go, because her heart was too heavy. The recording wasn't that badly damaged. It would show him everything. And then what would he think..?

Down the hall, Alfred gave Dick an honest, sad look.

"Master Dick, the revelation that he was still with us, that he had returned to us was shocking to me. To Lady Belinda, perhaps more so. This affair has been traumatizing. In more ways than one. Knowing our lady, I assume she wanted to shield you from that. As for me? .. I have little excuse, Master Dick. Forgive me for that, much, sir. I'm only an old man, after all."
 
Dick sighed, trying to let the emotions go. He put his hand on the doorknob and let himself into Jason's room, ignoring Alfred's protests.

Inside, Jason laid on a stretcher, his hands cuffed to the sides of a hospital stretcher, IV nearby. A blanket covered his lower half, but Dick assumed the ankles were held as well. Jason's head and chest were wrapped, evidently some ribs had broken. Not surprising if he'd survived an explosion. His head was also wrapped a bit, probably a concussion.

Dick's heart sank and with a sigh, he pulled a chair from a desk at the end of the room and twirled it around at the foot of the bed, setting it up so he could sit and watch over his adopted younger brother.
But could he even call him that?
He wasn't sure anymore.

"What are we going to do with you?" he muttered, mostly to himself.

He sat down in the chair and kept watch over the unconscious form for a few hours before he drifted off to sleep- it already quite late.
 
Perhaps the only good thing about this whole fiasco, aside from having Jason back, of course, was that now, finally, and for the first time in over a week, she could sleep. Maybe not well, Belinda relented, but it would be sleep. It would be rest. Laying down, the lights dimming around her as she settled in -- that was an Alfred doing, and she blessed the dear old man for it -- she closed her eyes, tried to drift. After all, now she could sleep... Now she could sleep... Now she could sleep...

Her phone was ringing.

Belinda pulled a pillow over her dark haired head.

Now she could sleep.

Her phone was ringing.

Belinda lay with her eyes open.

No. Now she could slepe.

But her phone was ringing.

Swearing up a storm under her breath, Bel threw the covers off and stomped to her vanity and the secure line that sat there, disguised as an antique phone.

"Go away," she snarled.

"What in the name of heaven is happening in Gotham?!"

Oh, for fucks sake.. She sank into the cushioned bench of her vanity. She recognized that damn farmboy voice.

"Nothing I can't handle," she sighed, rubbing her temple.

"That's not what the news is saying," Clark snorted. "They're saying the Joker is dead? That some rogue crime lord has been running you ragged? What's going on?"

"I will explain when I know everything," she lied.

"You're lying."

"Good night, Clark."

"Belinda."

"Kiss my foot, Clark."

"Bel!"

"What?!" She snapped. "Yes, the evil son of a bitch is dead. No, I didn't do it. Yes, I have the situation handled. No, you can't know more. Now good night, Clark."

Belinda went to slam the phone, but stopped, hearing Clark say something more. Against her better judgement, she put the receiver back to her ear.

" . . . Would you like me to come over?"

Oh, for fucks sake, she thought, rolling her eyes. He was using his low voice.

"I'm covered in bruises and bactine, you ass, you tell me, if I would like you to come over, and behave as though you've never seen a pair of tits again, Clark," she said, exasperated. "Now, for the last time --- "

"Because I could come see you if you wanted me to. You sound like you need someone."

"Ooh, did Lane teach you to talk to ladies like that," she cooed, meanly.

"You're impossible."

"Good night."

The phone jingled, she had slammed it so hard.

. . . Well, hell. Now how was she supposed to sleep?
 
Jason's hands sprung up from the ground at his grave. His fingers gripped the wet dirt, sliding amongst the mud and unable to get a good hold as he tried to bring his body to the surface.
It was dark.
But rain dripped down on the hands that slipped precariously over the surface, each finger digging their own tiny grave as with each motion the 19 year old grew more panicked.

The newspaper was dropped in front of him on a table. The headline gripped him and filled his vision.
Lady Bat Returns Joker To Police Custody

England.
"This is becoming quite the habit of yours," Talia mocked, a finger rimming the glass of her wine.
Bosnia.
The Joker came down to Robin's face, sticking his tongue out as he made raspberry sounds to imitate the tattered teen below him. "A little louder, lamb chop!" he loudly whispered, grabbing Robin's jet black hair and pushing his head down onto the tiles. "I think you may have a collapsed lung."
Gotham.
"Perhaps he's primping," Alfred suggested. "As I recall, Master Richard spent nearly half an hour admiring his own reflection the first time he donned his cape."
Bosnia.
"Forehand?" the abuser hit Robin yet again from over his right shoulder, "Or Backhand?" and again the ugly schlup of Robin's insides being pounded was heard.
Gotham.
An eight year old Jason took his mother's hand in his and blinked, watching her eyes roll up into her head.
"Mom, can we go out and get ice cream?"
A twelve year old Robin jumped atop the Batmobile.
"This is the best night of my life!"
That same Robin held his dead mother's hand: "When is dad coming back?"
Lady Bat Returns Joker To Police Custody
His 19 year old face finally breached the surface of his grave. He tried to suck in his first breath in years, but he got a mouthful of dirt and rain instead.

The Joker pushed his face against Robin's mud-soaked one. "That always impedes the oratory."

A 19 year old Robin picked up the crowbar and smacked the Joker's face with it. "Tell me: How does that feel?"
A 25 year old Jason threw Lady Bat's own tracer back up at her heel. She never noticed.
A newly-turned 26 Jason set his Red Hood helmet on the workbench, rolling back in his squeaky office chair and admiring the myriad of paper notes and schematics he'd written for himself on the corkboard of his own cave underneath the GPD Headquarters.

The slippery, pale skin of his atrophied arms clung desperately to the weakening ground of his grave as a 19 year old Robin tried to pull his upper body through the hole.

26 year old Jason turned his gun from the Joker to Lady Bat: "Him or me, you decide!"
The mud in his throat felt like concrete mix. He was at his grave and he was dying again.
"You'll have to speak up," the Joker laughed. "I think you may have a collapsed lung."
"You're becoming a crime lord," Lady Bat said.
"That always impedes the oratory," Joker threw his head back and laughed while Jason choked on his own burial grounds.

A bloodied 26 year old Jason armed the bombs in the apartment. Lady Bat ran to disarm them, but a freed Joker pounced on her. "No, don't spoil it! This is better!"
Lightning struck the 19 year old Robin's tombstone. He coughed up the muck in his throat and finally managed to get his chest through the hole just as the mud was beginning to collapse back into it.
He wanted to live. Determination to make that happen flowed withim him, giving him a supernatural strength and sense of purpose.

Joker grabbed Lady Bat by the throat, sitting on top of her as the bombs in the apartment continued to count down. "I'm the only one who gets what he wants tonight!"

"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," Lady Bat stood firm.

"Yes! Bing bang boom, we all go out together!" The Joker continued, Lady Bat fruitlessly struggling against his grip. "Don't you just love a happy ending?!"
His maniacal laughter filled Jason's ears as he watched the bomb tick down.
He was 19 again. Alone in the warehouse.
Green eyes lowered; his postured wilted.
He thought... He thought he'd think something. But now, he thought nothing.
His mind... Surprisingly blank.
He was just...
Sad.

He let out a forlorn breath.
This was it.
This was. . .

⁰⁰⠘⁰³
⁰⁰⠘⁰²
⁰⁰⠘⁰¹

"MOVE!!" Lady Bat bellowed, the echo of her voice resonating in his ears, waking him from the nightmare.

26 year old Jason bolted his green eyes open at the voice and moved to immediately shield his face, gasping. But his arms wouldn't move to their desired position.
His heart pumped as the building exploded. As his waist finally made it out of the grave. As he finally shot Joker.
But none of those things were true. He wasn't standing up. He wasn't even sitting up. His hands wouldn't go to his face. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. He was dizzy, and he was confused.

Dick awoke with a start, standing up from his chair once Jason came to. But as Dick was regaining his own wherewithal from grogginess, it was becoming clearer that Jason had yet to return to reality.

"Jason!" he whispered loudly, walking toward the bed, unsure if he should put his hands on the struggling patient. "Jason, calm down!"

The second Robin growled, yanking his arms in a futile attempt to break the restraints.

Lady Bat Returns Joker To Police Custody

" . . . There, then, Jason," Lady Bat said. "Was it worth it?"

The cot began to shake as Jason's attempt to free himself became more laborious.

"Jason! It's Dick! You're safe! Chill!" He wasn't really sure what to say, and eventually, against his better judgement really, bent over and put his hands on his younger sibling, trying to hold the other's hands down so as to not allow him to break the restraints, which seemed to be weakening.
"You're at the manor! Whatever you're seeing isn't real! You're safe!"
 
Last edited:
(( Much apologies for the long absence.. Life had an unfortunate downturn but things are looking up.. Expect more in the coming days... This post will be edited in the future as a proper post ))