#They get reunited when Jason gets thrown into the Pits | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stxleslyds · 4 years

Text

MY REVIEW OF UNDER THE RED HOOD!

EDIT: This is Tati from the present, Hello! I am writing this little message right now to let you know that I am rebloging this post because I recently re-read it and I wanted to make it “better”, this was my second review that I had ever made and I am quite fond of it but it needed to be brushed up and made easier to read. Now, let me be honest, I am not an excellent writer so there are probably some mistakes here still but I like it even more now, so yeah, that’s all I had to say!

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

This review is here not only because I love that book but because Geoff Johns and Scott Lobdell’s characterization of Jason and Red Hood gives me nightmares and it’s just annoying.

First let me set the scene, here we go!

Jason’s death was confirmed in book three of four in the Death in the Family event back in December, 1988 (Batman #428). But he is officially brought back sixteen years and two months after his death in the iconic Batman: Under the (Red) Hood event (Batman #635-641, #645-650, Annual #25)

This particular event is just wonderful, I love this for many reasons some of which I will probably talk about in this post but it has impacted me so much that if anyone asks me what Batman story I would recommend it would be this one.

Now just a heads up, I always felt impartial to Batman as a hero but around three years ago I started borderline hating the guy and now I just can’t stand him half of the time, and I blame it on his overuse and the god complex that some writers can’t seem to write him without. So, I don’t really recommend UtRH in a good light when talking about the Bat himself. It’s all about my boy, Jason Todd.

UtRH is just amazing at showing these two character’s motivations and how they seem to think that their ways of handling crime are the best way. But it also shows us so many aspects of how Jason’s death impacted both Jason and Bruce.

Let’s start the review!

UtRH starts with a look into the future, a fight between Batman and a mysterious man in a red helmet that seems to not be an easy opponent for the Bat and it also looks like these two have been going at it for a while but just as we arrive we see that it may be over in the Bat’s favor but in that exact moment the red helmeted man unmasks Batman! Seemingly not shocked that Bruce Wayne is the Bat the mysterious man decides that he will show his face too...but all we get to see is Bruce’s face of shock and then.... we are thrown back at what we come to believe is the real beginning of the story.

Probably you can’t tell, but to me this is an amazing start to a story, you have the Bat who is sold as an excellent fighter struggling in a fight but when it seems that he is going to win something major happens... the mysterious man unmasks a legendary hero and doesn’t make a fuss about it and then he manages to shock the Bat by showing his face (which is not shown to the reader), I just think its genius, it sets up this new guy as an incredibly good and interesting character.

So now we find ourselves thrown back 5 weeks in the past and we come in contact with a meeting with some very shady people that don’t really know who put together the whole thing and while they try to rationalize it a round of shots hits the table they are sitting around.

Here is where we see this leather-jacket-wearing dude, holding an AK-47 while posing for the Google earth cameras, telling those people that he reunited them and that he is hot shit. He is there to make a deal; the dramatic queen wants to run the underworld of Gotham and not only is he offering protection against the Black Mask but against the Bat too.

Well, needless to say, those guys aren’t necessarily buying what he is selling so that my friends takes us to an iconic moment, this dude proceeds to throw a duffel bag with the heads of these people’s lieutenants and to finish it off he just shots another round to make the message clear...I mean talk about dramatic entrances!

Please don’t worry I didn’t forget about the most important part of this whole entrance...we were just introduced to this man who means business and wants to rule Gotham’s underworld and manage its drug trade and it’s all very swell but the truly important thing is what he says next:

“You stay away from kids and school yards. NO dealing to children, got it? If you do, you are DEAD.”

That’s a powerful message and this is just me speculating but if he has to make that specification clear...it leads me to think that kids are people that he wants to protect and no matter how much money they could bring to the business he wants them out of the equation, also the price for breaking that rule is death…. So yeah, is he truly a villain or...?

Now after all of this we jump to Black Mask receiving information of a new player in the game and he doesn’t seem like he cares, to him it’s just a newbie trying to mess around on a street level so he moves on with his business of recruiting Mr. Freeze for an undisclosed job. On the other hand, we are shown Batman crying over the fact that Oracle isn’t working with him anymore and then teaming up with Nightwing (that is wearing a knee brace and probably shouldn’t be out doing extreme parkour with his furry dad but hey, what do I know?)

We see Freeze trying on some new clothes and then we are back again with Black Mask, here, for the very first time we hear the new player’s name...Red Hood.

Following Batman and Nightwing we find them intercepting a shipment that appears to have a bunch of gadgets from several villains and among them there was a bomb, it explodes (detonated by the Red Hood) and from then on, the fun begins...the Bat and Nightwing go on pursuit and we get to see what the Bat thinks about Hood. He thinks that he is very well trained, agile and unpredictable, he also has an overall sense of familiarity coming from Hood but he ends up saying that it’s nothing they haven’t seen before, what he doesn’t expect is having been led to a trap which is, Amazo, yay! (Amazo was the cargo that Mask was waiting for).

Amazo is taken down with a little bit of struggle but he eventually is thrown to Gotham harbor and we are informed in another panel by Mask that Amazo wasn’t supposed to be activated so we can safely assume that it was Hood the one who did it. Mask is pissed that the Bat broke his toy and is going to be more pissed off when he answers a call from a certain red helmeted man...

Hood informs Mask that he took one of the crates from the shipment and that it might be one of the most valuable ones, our boy stole a crate with at least one hundred pounds of kryptonite...yeah no big deal.

Here I will make a stop to tell you that we know that this Red Hood is extremely tactical, he has a plan within a plan that takes down several players, he is confident in what he is doing and is certainly not afraid to get his hands dirty. He is a worthy opponent to Black Mask, Nightwing and Batman. We are just starting to know him but he is already great and it only gets better.

As we enter chapter three of the story we see Hood asking for 50 million dollars from Black Bask for the kryptonite that he stole from Black Mask (say that again), to everyone’s surprise Mask “agrees” to give him the money easily... well, not really, Mask is going to send Freeze to kill Hood and get that (quite honestly) unnecessary amount of kryptonite back.

Hood obviously knew that he wasn’t going to get whatever money he negotiated but he also wasn’t quite ready to take on Freeze but he did his best. When Freeze is the last one standing Batman shows up and a kinda lame fight ensues...Freeze leaves and Hood says that he really doesn’t care about the kryptonite, all he wants is the “lay of the land” and then leaves.

If you are wondering where Hood went, well…he went to an abandoned funhouse to terrorize the Joker! Yes people, it’s confirmed, Hood is a good boy! Go get him Hood I am rooting for you!

IT IS CROWBAR TIME! (And this time in reverse)

In the start of chapter four Hood is blowing up yet another truck full of weapons belonging to Mask.

Elsewhere Batman is bothering Zatanna about one of Ra’s Al Ghoul’s (sealed) Lazarus pits. Asking if the pit can raise the dead and being his natural rude self. Because he doesn’t get the information that he needs and goes to Jason Blood who tells him that if he wants to know about people who came back from the dead he might as well talk to Green Arrow but his chat with him doesn’t lead anywhere so that’s that.

Onyx is introduced to us as a vigilante accepted by the Bat (you know, because of that thing where other vigilantes can only do their thing in Gotham if the Bat lets them because he is the high king or something) and when she comes across some dealers she finds out they work for the Red Hood and given that he is an unknown player she relieves the information to B who acts like an ass because he thought she had seen Hood and that she compromised one of his informants…now here is the thing, why does B act like everyone has mind reading abilities? How on earth would she have known that he had an informant and that the Red Hood wasn’t news to him...I am sorry dude but you are a shitty person of the highest quality

Anyway, Onyx is actually doing her work watching shady men talk about if they will or not join the Red Hood, one of them says something like “I won’t join that psycho because he decapitated some of my men” (good men, he specified) but Onyx isn’t alone, Hood makes it known by telling her that those men were selling drugs to twelve-year-old’s (remember kids are protected by Hood, you absolutely do not involve them and if you do...well, congrats, you are dead)

At this point we are in chapter six of the story and another character trait is revealed to us from Red Hood, he is meticulous in the way he works. He knows almost everyone involved in the drug trade, what they did and are doing, the relationships they hold with Mask or whoever their boss is. The information he gathers lets him know if the people will stick to his rules and can also use the information he has against them. So, he is extremely dangerous, we have to imagine that if he is that thorough with street level baddies what kind of knowledge does he have on people like Batman...well, spoiler alert, he knows everything and he will use it and has been using it since he first saw him.

While Onyx and Hood are on their way to take down those men Batman is in Metropolis asking Superman about his death and how he managed to come back to life.

Onyx soon understands what “taking down” truly means when it comes to Hood...they manage to get out of the warehouse just for him to grab a gun and shoot everyone on sight, which doesn’t sit well with Onyx so she tells him that, to which Hood has something to say just before he stabs her:

“Welcome to earth, baby! These dead sacks of meat on the floor made their living by beating, raping and devouring. Fear isn’t the answer.”

And I want to put as much importance into this as I did to the whole “keep kids away from this business” because it’s really important in what’s to come and the way Hood thinks is the better way to battle crime in Gotham.

That sentence alone tells us what kind of people Hood takes down, he plays judge, jury and executioner, he chooses who he kills and who is worth leaving alive if their crimes aren’t the ones that he decided must be paid with death. But it goes beyond that, he brings the fear factor… we know how batman works, he relies in criminals fearing him and the fact that they will be beaten and sent to jail or Arkham (if they are mad enough).

Here is what I believe is the fundamental difference between the fear factor used by those two, on the Bat’s side, the fear is left in the people he attacks but in Hood’s side, the fear is left in those who find the bodies.

After Hood stabs Onyx he decides to stay and chat, he tells her that he stabbed her in the shoulder because he knows it hurts and because (look at this smartass) he saw that she was “favoring one side” so he deduced that she had had an injury and teases her about maybe coming back to crime fighting a bit early...if you don’t think that’s cocky enough he then makes a comment about how the angle of the knife will make it harder for her to pull it out so, there you go, the man is well trained and knows what he is doing.

After that we get another piece of information about Hood and it’s actually given to us and Onyx by Hood himself, he says “I am no one’s son”.

Hood also shows us another character trait of his...he is a little shit. And very good at it. After he stabs Onyx “choice time” comes, basically he gives her two (three) options either he takes out the blade and she runs or he pulls the blade down from her shoulder to her hip and she bleeds out. He also says that she could maybe join him, which is revealed quite quickly to be a joke and then proceeds to take the blade out and covering the wound with a “high-end field dressing for the modern soldier. It adheres as well as closes the wound with an antibacterial adhesive agent...stops the bleeding cold”.

I wrote the whole thing word for word because I think it’s important for us to see that he saved her life, and he also didn’t let her choose he just did it, let’s think about this, Hood shows up to that meeting not expecting to see Onyx there and instead of losing his cool he just talks to her about the men, invites her to fight (his way but she didn’t know that) they make their escape and after the men are all killed by Hood she is furious so he, rather violently, completely immobilizes her so he can tell her what’s on his mind and then he gives her choices but here is what I really think...she never had choices because she is not his target, she doesn’t fit among the people that he thinks must be put down, so stabbing her came hand in hand with saving her.

Saving her just to ask her if she will “get up, fight and stop him” because he is still a cocky bastard...but surprise! Batman showed up to the party!

Hood isn’t too shaken up, in fact he uses the opportunity to make a show of his knowledge of the Bat’s thinking and his gadgets...he flatters the fact that he didn’t even hear him land and starts explaining to Onyx how the plane works, it can be stealthy or it can destroy your eardrums, then the chase ensues, B actually makes Hood fall at some point but it really doesn’t bother him, he continues to “flatter” the Bat’s technique, training and gadgets (all to fight the “malignant scum that ravage this city” Hood says) but ultimately tells him that he also has toys (that apparently he intercepted from Kord industries).

The chase turns into a fight in a rooftop, and yes my friends, this is the fight from the beginning of the story, the “you show me your face and I show you mine” fight.

Hood wants Batman to ask himself what has he done, and this I suppose is in reference to what he has done to deserve Hood coming after him. To which the Bat offers nothing but accuses Hood of being a murderer to which he answers with “No. I’ve killed, not murdered”

That confuses me, so first I will tell you what I found about the difference between killing and murdering somebody. A human kills another when it’s without intent or an accident, on the other hand when a human murders another it’s done with intent. About intent I found the following: “A person intends a consequence when they 1) foresee that it will happen if their given series of acts or omissions continue, and 2) desire it to happen.”

I don’t really know if Winick or the editors mixed the concepts of the two or if there is more to it. I honestly cannot wrap my head around it. It really doesn’t fit with what he has been saying, like the no dealing drugs to kids because if they do they will pay with their lives.

Anyway, my confusion is not what matters here, what matters is that we have arrived to the moment in which Red Hood will reveal to Batman his identity yay!

It’s Jason! Jason Todd is back from the grave!

It takes a bit of time for Bruce to come to terms with the reality of things but Jason assures him that he is who he says he is, he even suggests that Bruce has known his identity for a while and that it has been brewing in his head since Clayface.

I know, there are some things that need to be cleared up, the UtRH story is set in issues #635 (February, 2005) to #650 (April, 2006) but in a previous story (Batman: Hush) that ran from issues #608 to #619 “Jason” or better said Clayface disguised as an adult version of Jason had a fight with Batman where some old wounds were opened, this happened in issue #618 (October, 2003).

As far as we know that Jason wasn’t real and that was that, in fact we didn’t get the real events up until Red Hood: The Lost Days, a miniseries that came out in 2010, in the last issue it’s explained to us that by the time of Batman: Hush’s events Jason was already in Gotham and he was giving Hush information to mess with the Bat, and that’s all the information I have right there.

Back again to the story, Batman wants to know how Jason came back to life and he responds that he doesn’t know and doesn’t care, but he does give blood, tissue and fingerprints to Bruce so he can do some tests in the cave to prove that it’s really him, Bruce is once again being difficult saying that it still won’t make him believe but Jason knows better and tells him so.

He also says that it doesn’t matter what he is now, what matters is what Bruce is and what Jason will become. And Jason will become the kind of man Bruce would have been had he killed the Joker.

This whole conversation is very informative; Jason tells Bruce that he knows how to help Gotham because he understands the city more than Bruce. And in order to do that he will kill the Joker and those who deserve to die. This obviously doesn’t sit well with Bruce but Jason doesn’t really care what he thinks so he creates a distraction so he can leave B alone to marinate his thoughts.

It’s here at the end of chapter seven that I am going to cut the first part of the review before too long becomes way too long, so, see you in the second part!

The second part is linked here!

#red hood #jason todd #batman #under the red hood #utrh #comics #comic review #nightwing #dick grayson #gotham

30 notes · View notes

empathy-lynx · 4 years

Text

The Mark of Athena Timeline (SPOILERS) -Made by Yours Truly-

2010 (Year 5 in Riordanverse)

June [MOA BEGINS]

• 25th (right after the ending of SON) - the Argo II arrives; Annabeth gets reunited with Percy; they have a welcome feast in New Rome and the Prophecy of Seven is briefly discussed; Leo takes Octavian aboard the Argo II; Reyna talks alone with Annabeth; possessed Leo attacks New Rome and the Argo II and its 8 man crew (Coach Hedge included) escapes somewhat safely, with Hazel on Arion on the ground; evening = after Leo does a damage report, they land in Salt Lake City to make a pit stop (as well as pick up Hazel) to get the supplies they need; Annabeth, Percy, and Frank leave to get tar, while Leo and Hazel leave to find Celestial Bronze, and Piper stays on board with Coach Hedge and an unconscious Jason; Hazel and Leo encounter Nemesis, who gives Leo a fortune cookie, telling him to open it when he really needs her help but says that it will have a high price; then they come across Echo who is trying to save Narcissus; Leo distracts Narcissus and the Nymphs with the help of Echo, while Hazel retrieves the Celestial Bronze; Leo and Hazel run back towards the Argo II to escape; when Jason wakes up and the groups return, they have dinner and discuss what to do and where to go next

• 26th - they land in Topeka for final repairs; Percy rides Blackjack and Jason and Piper ride Tempest to the Topeka 32 mile marker and talk to Bacchus; he tells them to find and talk to Phorcys about info on Gaea, then leaves; two eidolons possess Percy and Jason fight, possessed Percy knocks possessed Jason out, then Piper distracts possessed Percy long enough for Blackjack to knock him out; Blackjack then takes the three of them back to the ship; evening = the crew discusses events that happened, then Piper uses her charm speak to make the eidolons swear on the River Styx to leave and never come back; middle of the night = Percy has a dream of the muskeg incident, increasing his fear of drowning/suffocating, then the dream changes to the twin giants Ephialtes and Otis saying they’re gonna attack Rome on July 1st, then he sees a jar which is holding Nico captive; Annabeth wakes him up and takes him to the stables, they talk briefly about the past and their godly parents, then they fall asleep

• 27th - morning = Frank finds them in the stables, saying everyone was worried; they discuss Percy’s dream of the twin giants and Nico, then land in Atlanta; Percy, Frank, and Hedge find Phorcys at the Atlanta Aquarium, as well as Keto who takes Hedge on a different “tour”, and Phorcys reveals that there is a map in Charleston to the Athena Parthenos; he then leads Percy and Frank into a trap, which they shortly escape from when Hedge returns, and they all return to the ship, setting course for Charleston; on the way, they discuss where the map might be held, and Jason suggests Fort Sumter; evening = Annabeth has flashback of her last conversation//argument with her mother, then helps Frank out of some chinese handcuffs

• 28th - once they dock in a harbor in Charleston, Annabeth, Piper, and Hazel go search for the Ghost of the Battery, while Jason, Frank, and Leo go to search the museum for any sign of the map to the Athena Parthenos, and Percy goes into the harbor to see if there’s something to be done about the sea creatures in Atlanta; the girls find out the “Ghost” is actually Aphrodite, and they talk with her, confirming that the map they seek is in Fort Sumter right before they see Roman eagles closing in on them; as they race back to the ship, Octavian and some other guards block their path, Annabeth throws her dagger in the water, and Percy comes to the rescue; Annabeth quickly goes into Fort Sumter and finds the map that will lead them to the Athena Parthenos; they escape from the Romans and begin their journey across the Atlantic; evening = Leo and Hazel share a flashback, discovering her first love Sammy is Leo’s bisabuelo (great-grandfather); night = when they come out of the flashback, the ship is getting attacked by a sea monster; Leo, Hazel, and Frank get thrown overboard

• 29th = the three of them wake up in the ichthyocentaurs’ (fish-centaurs) realm, talk with them, then return to the ship; the crew discusses what happened, as well as the Mark of Athena quest Annabeth has to do alone; Piper and Jason clean up & fix the lower deck and talk until dinner

• 30th - morning = the crew wakes up to a cruise ship passing by and realize they are nearing the entrance to the Mediterranian Sea; Piper and Jason talk with Hercules and he sends them on a “quest” to go get Achelous’ other horn in order for their ship to pass through; they end up getting it, and going back to Hercules; evening = Hercules asks for the horn, but Piper refuses him, then buries him under a mountain of food; her and Jason fly back to the ship and the crew flies through the clouds into the Mare Nostrum; night = Percy sleeps while Jason takes first watch while they’re in the air; Percy has a dream of the twin giants talking to a figure, saying the crew will reach Rome by the next day if they get past the “golden boy”

July

• 1st (Jason turns 16) - 4 a.m. = Jason wakes Percy up to say it’s his turn, as they’re now in the water; Percy wakes Annabeth up and tells her about his dream; he then makes the ship stop, feeling something is wrong, then another ship comes out of the fog and rams into the Argo II; they’re attacked by Chrysaor, a.k.a. The ”golden boy”, and his crew of half-dolphin pirates; cue Percy saying their captain is Dionysus, Piper and Hazel “turning mad” by him, and Frank turning into a dolphin; the crew flees, and Percy fills the pirates’ ship with Diet Coke, offering it to Dionysus as tribute; midmorning = the crew arrives in Rome; Percy walks with Annabeth toward the beginning of her quest, Frank, Hazel and Leo go to see if they can find Nico with Hazle’s senses, and Piper and Jason stay with the ship; Annabeth’s POV = noonish = Percy and Annabeth have lunch and meet Tiberinus and his wife Rhea Silvia (mother of Romulus and Remus); they give Annabeth a ride to the beginning of her quest; she starts her quest, entering beneath the city and going deeper underground; she enters a shrine to the god Mithras, and is confronted by ghosts of his followers, and fools them into thinking she knows all; she collapses the room and escapes, but falls down a small pit, breaking her ankle in the process; after making a make-shift cast, she continues; she comes into a room filled with webs, and realize there are millions of tiny spiders following her; she runs as quick as she can, coming to the edges of a chasm, and weaves a bridge of sorts across, then burns it, the spiders no longer following her; she comes into a large room, seeing several beautiful tapestries as well as the Athena Parthenos, then meets Arachne, “the weaver”; Leo’s POV = Leo, Frank, and Hazel make it to the Pantheon, finding a secret passage; they realize there are eidolons following them, and quickly escape into the passage; they enter a room with multiple duplicates of Archimedes' inventions, including some automatons; while exploring, the eidolons possess some automatons and quickly knock out Frank and Hazel, while Leo escapes into a control room; he finds a master control panel, but doesn’t know the combination, and uses Nemesis’ fortune cookie to get the password; he ends up being able to trap the eidolons inside the machines permanently; when Frank and Hazel come to, they find Nico’s sword and figure out it was a trap leading them down there; Piper’s POV = back at the ship, Piper and Jason are having a picnic and Piper finds out it’s Jason’s birthday; Percy returns shortly after, and tells them what happened with Annabeth; then Piper looks into her dagger to find a way to the giants, then sees the vision of the three of them going down a spiral staircase; they go and find it, Percy going down by himself first, coming back up saying he found something weird; ;they all go down and they find out it’s a nymphaeum; cue the three of them almost drowning before using the cornucopia to replace the “evil” water with fresh water, afterwards the nymphs telling them the location of the twin giants; the three of them find the hideout, Percy distracts the giants while Nico escapes; while fighting, the giants say Gaea will rise in a month; Jason fights Otis, Percy fights Ephialtes, and Piper defends Nico from the released animals and monsters; the giants get defeated, but reform immediately (has to be killed by god and hero together); then Bacchus shows up, but refuses to help until Percy and Jason “entertain” him; they fight in the Colosseum, the boys nearly defeating the giants again, with Bacchus finishing them off; Bacchus then gives the location to rescue Annabeth and the crew heads towards her, on the way Nico telling them the locations of the Doors of Death: Greece, and Tartarus; Annabeth’s POV = Annabeth tricks Arachne into making her own trap (giant chinese handcuffs), with her thrashing around, beginning to collapse the floor beneath them; the Argo II breaks through the ceiling and makes quick work of getting the Athena Parthenos loaded up; Arachne falls into the pit, and Annabeth heads towards the ladder, but gets pulled towards the edge y a strand of web attached to her foot; Percy grabs her hand and he’s holding them by his fingers on a ledge; he then tells Nico to lead the crew to the Doors of Death in Greece and that him and Annabeth will meet them on the other side; Percy then lets go, him and Annabeth falling into Tartarus; Leo’s POV = back on the ship, all the crew feel like they could have done something to save the two, but Nico tells them even if Jason or Frank could fly to them, they were too far down and they would’ve been sucked in too; Nico also says Percy is the most powerful demigod he knows, and that he’ll keep himself and Annabeth safe; they then discuss their course of action and fly off towards Greece

[MOA ENDS]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MOA Prophecy

Wisdom's daughter walks alone,

The Mark of Athena burns through Rome.

Twins snuff out the angel's breath,

Who holds the key to endless death.

Giants bane stands gold and pale,

Won through pain from a woven jail.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PJO Timelines (links to TLT Timeline)

The Lost Hero Timeline

Son of Neptune Timeline

House of Hades Timeline (not yet linked)

Blood of Olympus Timeline (not yet linked)

11 notes · View notes

gothamcitylazarus · 7 years

Text

lights out —

tame your demons—

before you become one.

[ from here ]

Jason had been debriefed on what he was supposed to do over and over again. Some warlord in North Africa had been using magic and they figured that it would be better to kill the magic user than anything else—and with Jason’s specific tools, the All-Blades that worked on magic, he was the perfect candidate for the mission.

However, this warlord had the League on his side, it seemed, and Jason knew that trying to fight his way through a throng of League assassins wasn’t going to go well for him. Hell, he knew that more likely than not, he’d be dead by morning. Usually, Jason was terrified of death. This time, he wasn’t.

Maybe it was because he had just been reliving his own death for who knew how long, but here, on this jet, he figured that there wasn’t anything that could be worse than that. He could deal with whatever was coming next, and if he died trying to deal with it, that was just it. He shouldn’t have even been alive, anyway. It didn’t matter.

Sitting on the plane, he was pulling on his gloves and strapping them tightly to his wrists, a parachute now around his shoulders and his helmet on his head. He was getting into the zone, into that place between who he was now and the person he had been years ago, drawing on the anger that had fueled him when he was 18 and the experience he’d gained since then.

Someone stood in front of him and said something else, but he didn’t listen. His mind was elsewhere. Jason just nodded when the other man did, knowing the briefs on this job backwards and forwards by now. As the back of the plane opened up, wind rushing into the small cabin, he grinned behind his mask. This was always his favorite part.

Taking a few steps forward, he took a deep breath, spreading his arms before he jumped out. Careening downwards, it only took him a few seconds before he opened his parachute—black, meant for stealth, though Jason figured that if these people really from the League, they would spot him anyway before he hit the ground.

As he was falling the last hundred feet towards the ground, he took his guns out of their holsters, clicking off the safeties on both before he unstrapped the parachute from his shoulders, allowing himself to fall the last ten or so feet to the ground without the cumbersome parachute weighing him down, rolling as he hit the ground.

Just as he suspected, they knew he was coming before he hit the ground, and he immediately started shooting. He didn’t shoot to kill—Jason didn’t actually kill people without knowing they deserved it—but he shot to incapacitate them, wanting to make sure that none of them would be rearing their ugly heads later when he finally did what he was here to do.

However, as he got into the fight more, he realized that there were a lot more of them than he had been told—and he was grossly underprepared. It was only a matter of time until they overpowered him, leaving his limp body bruised black and blue on the ground until they finished discussing whatever it was they were talking about (Jason was too unfocused to understand).

Then, two of them dragged Jason up by his arms, half carrying, half dragging him towards a jeep where he was unceremoniously thrown in the back. A group of maybe 10 of them—Jason was seeing double, honestly—got in with him, one of them binding his wrists and his ankles together. Jason didn’t see the point. He wasn’t moving on his own for a while.

Besides, even when he did start moving on his own, he’d be too slow to catch up to any of them. He wouldn’t be able to fight his way out of here, so he’d have to think his way out. They stripped him of the numerous weapons he was carrying, which got rid of Jason’s first escape plan, but that didn’t matter. He’d think of something else. He had to.

Jason didn’t know how long they drove. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. He slipped in and out of consciousness the entire time, slipping into dreams where he was in bed with Roy’s arms around him in the early morning, dreams so viivd he was convinced they were real until he woke up, and even a little bit after that.

When they finally got where they were going, Jason was dragged out again, his helmet pulled from his features. Well, there goes my cover—not that he had one, anyway. If this was really the League, which, by their fighting, he suspected it was, then they already knew way too much about him. There was no point in trying to hide.

He was dragged from the night outside into some cave, somewhere darker, somewhere his unfocused vision had no chance to interpreting for him. When he was thrown to the ground, his face hit solid rock, and he groaned as he felt the impact shake his brain. His jaw clenched against the pain and he tried to focus on what they were saying when he heard her voice.

Talia al Ghul. It was a voice that was unmistakeable, a voice that had haunted him for years, a voice that he had been hoping, more than anything, that he would never, ever hear again. He forced himself onto his back so he could see what was happening, but they rolled him back over, shoving his body towards the edge of this rock face.

Just before they pushed him over, he caught a glimpse of the pool a few feet below, impossibly clear but still glowing with a slight green color. He had just enough to realize that they had taken him to a Lazarus Pit before he was shoved in. And all his thoughts stopped.

Are you sure it worked?

Maybe it didn’t.

Maybe we should try again.

He heard their voices, speaking in Dari, before he saw anything. He blinked a few times, under the water. His lungs started screaming for air, so before he could examine himself for damage, he forced himself to the surface, gasping for breath. The people at the edge of the pool waited for him to say something, to do something—as they should.

He looked down at his hands, turning them over. They were a young man’s hands. Strong. He had seen them hold others gently, he had seen them take lives, and he had seen everything in between—he had been waiting for so long in the child’s mind, and now, he was reunited with the rest of him. The child did not stand a chance.

He could hear the sound of him screaming from somewhere far away, the sound of nails scratching against the walls of a prison from which he couldn’t escape, He had no worries about that. He had been in that cage before. Escape was impossible. The child had no chance against the iron walls that now encased him.

Standing from the water, he exuded power. Confidence. The small crowd that had gathered was silent, one of them stepping forward to hand him some clothes. Slipping them over the strange frame he now inhabited, he kept flexing his muscles, as if he was trying everything out to make sure that it worked.

Talia stepped forward. He reached out and touched her face.

Dear daughter.

Father.

Somewhere in the distance, Ra’s heard the sound of Jason screaming. He paid it no mind.

#death tw #injury tw #[ lights out ]#[ p: self ]#[ THIS. IS. IMPORTANT. thanks ]

1 note · View note