Work Text:
“Leave the heroics for us tonight, Neal, alright?”
Neal rolls his eyes. “Fine.”
“I’m serious,” Peter says. “I hope things won’t go haywire, but with this much counterfeited cash, there’s no knowing who’s going to be there.”
Neal gives him a thumbs up. “Keep an eye out for the green and stay out of the way. Got it.”
Peter sighs at Neal’s sarcasm. “Alright. Diana, you’ve got our six?”
“Copy that, boss,” Diana says.
“Let’s head in,” Peter says.
The abandoned warehouse is like most abandoned warehouses Neal has been in. Dull, dark, and inexplicably damp.
“Stick with us, Neal,” Peter says.
“Roger,” Neal says flatly.
They tiptoe through the warehouse, Neal feeling slightly bored from the glacial pace they’re taking.
Then find themself at a large door with three intricate locks.
“Neal?” Peter says.
“Already on it,” Neal says, taking out his tools.
It takes an embarrassing five minutes to get through them, but Peter still seems to be impressed.
“Careful,” Peter says. “We don’t know what could be behind these doors.”
With caution, he pushes the door with his gun at the ready.
What they find is not anything he could have imagined.
Red Hood stands in the center of the room with a woman tied to a chair. He has a gun pointed at her.
“FBI. Get on the ground!” Peter shouts.
He feels Neal slip away which just leaves Roy, who is watching helplessly as his husband freezes at the exclamation.
Roy waits as Jason puts his hands behind his head and slowly gets to his knees, looking for any hint of clues to what is actually going on here.
Diana is itching to go help the hostage, but Roy knows there’s something more sinister going on here.
Jason doesn’t just kidnap any person.
His eyes flicker to the hostage whose hand twitches to her pocket with a sickening giggle.
“Hood!” Roy shouts, holding out his hand.
Jason, getting the message loud and clear, tosses him his gun.
Roy swiftly catches it and without a moment of hesitation, shoots the woman in the forehead, stopping her from detonating the device.
“Neal!” Peter gasps.
Roy flips around and points the gun to Peter’s forehead. He holds his hand behind him and Jason hands him another gun. He points the other at Diana.
“Guns on the floor,” Roy says grimly. “You know the drill.”
“Neal,” Peter says, eyes wide. “What is this?”
“Guns. On the floor. Now,” Roy barks instead of a reply.
Peter and Diana slowly place their guns to the floor, their eyes never leaving Neal, betrayal evident in their expressions. They stand again, their hands held up in surrender.
“Hood,” Roy says, his grip on his guns not wavering, “take care of whatever the clown bastard has planned. I’ll clean up here.”
Jason hesitates slightly, as if to silently ask Roy if he’s really going to do this.
“Go,” Roy says harshly.
Roy should feel bad about snapping at him, but right now, all he can feel is the crushing weight of ruining the good thing he’s spent years building.
Jason gives him a two fingered salute and heads out.
“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Neal says, finally meeting Peter’s eyes again.
“What is this?” Peter asks, voice wavering at the words.
“I know how this looks,” Neal says instead of answering his question. “But I swear, there’s more going on than you know.”
“It looks like you’re working with an FBI Most Wanted murderer and holding two FBI agents at gunpoint,” Peter says slowly, clearly hurt.
“Peter,” Diana hisses. She narrows her eyes, as if to emphasize ‘holding two FBI agents at gunpoint.’
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Neal says.
“Then tell us,” Peter says, obviously lost and wanting any proof that Neal isn’t what he seems to be.
“She wasn’t a hostage,” Neal says slowly.
“Then what was she?” Peter asks.
“A plant,” Neal says. “One that was going to die anyway who was going to bring this whole place down.”
“How do you know that?” Peter asks.
“The device she dropped,” Neal says, tilting his head over at the box on the floor. “It’s a specific type of explosive that is unique to a Gotham rogue. A psychotic terrorist who shouldn’t be in New York.”
“The clown?”
“Exactly,” Neal says. “Believe me, it’s… this is bigger than counterfeited money and hostages. This is… there’s something else going on.”
“I want to believe you,” Peter says. “I really do.”
Neal sighs. “And I’m not really helping my case am I?” His grip tightens on the guns, though they falter from their targets slightly. “Peter,” Neal says. “You know me. You’ve known me for years. And you know that all of this is… it’s got a reason. Because I’ve always got a reason. And you don’t always understand that reason at first, and you think I’m doing something reckless or crazy or reckless and crazy and then it… it works out. It always works out. So just… that’s what this is. It’s all gonna work out.”
Jason bursts back into the room. “We’ve got company!”
Jason throws him a bow and quiver and Roy throws him his guns in return.
“Aw, baby. You carry this around just for me?” Roy says.
“Always thinking about you, doll,” Jason replies.
It’s then that an army of clowns come rushing in.
The clowns circle the two men as they ready their weapons, all of them waiting in anticipation for the first move.
And then it’s the blur of fighting.
Peter watches with horror and awe as Roy takes out the clowns with arrows to the brain and Jason takes them out with quick headshots, switching guns when they run out of bullets.
When Roy runs out of arrows, he takes his bow and collapses it down to a spear and starts taking them out by hand.
It takes a grueling fight, but finally all of the clowns are down.
Heart racing and heaving in breaths, Roy turns to Jason. “Did you get the Joker?”
“I didn’t let him get away,” Jason says simply.
Roy turns to Peter and Diana who stare at him with wide eyes.
“It’s been an honor getting to spend these last few years with you,” Roy — no, Neal — says. “You gave me a normal I never thought I could have again and I can’t thank you enough for that.”
“I’m never gonna see you again, will I?” Peter says.
Roy smiles sadly. “No. You won’t.” His smile turns into something bittersweet. “Goodbye.”
Roy leaves with Jason and, with the stolen normal of Neal gone, goes back to joining his husband in the life of a full-time vigilante he thought he had finally left.