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Jason thought he would feel better.
He breathed harshly in through his nose and exhaled equally hard through his mouth. Sweat permeated through every pore on his body, drenching him in discomfort. His hands were wet with something else entirely.
Jason should have felt better. Talia had said that he would—promised it even. Yet as he stood over the beaten and bloody visage of the Joker, Jason didn’t feel any better at all.
In fact, there was a disgusting, nauseating feeling rolling around in his gut. Jason adjusted his grip on the blood soaked crowbar. He debated raising it again to bring it back down onto the Joker. The monster wasn’t quite dead yet, Jason didn’t think. If he focused past the blood over the Joker’s skin, Jason could still see him breathing.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring the crowbar back up. The blood slicked against it didn’t look like the Joker’s right now. It just looked like Jason’s.
Jason shuttered, releasing the bloody weapon from his grip. It dropped to the ground with a sickening clatter. Jason’s shoulders started shaking before he could stop them.
He was supposed to feel better. Jason absolutely did not feel better. If anything, he felt worse than before he started this tirade.
Jason had killed tens of tens of people at this point. It might have even gotten into the triple digits; Jason didn’t know. All of those lives taken were supposed to be training him to take this life. That’s what Talia said when he was still with the League, and that was what he was telling himself ever since he got back to Gotham. Yet none of that training mattered once Jason was standing above the Joker, covered in the monster’s blood.
When Jason was made aware of the fact that Bruce didn’t avenge him, Talia told him Jason needed to do it himself. Jason agreed with her: he already wanted to kill the Joker before the monster had killed him.
He wasn’t so sure now.
Maybe it was because he never had a personal stake in the crimes of all the other people he killed. Jason could dissociate himself from the act and be glad it was done. Those people weren’t around to hurt people anymore, so what? Jason did Gotham a favor.
It was harder to do this favor when all Jason could think of was his own suffering the Joker had put on him. This was almost what the Joker had done to him. All the pain and the despair that Joker inflicted on him in that warehouse came rushing to the front of his mind. He couldn't stop feeling the Joker's hands on him.
The nausea bubbling in the back of Jason’s throat threatened to choke him. Doing this in a warehouse was a bad idea.
He hadn’t even thought about it when picking the place. All he thought of when planning this location was how hard it would be for the Bats to find him. But Jason had unintentionally recreated his murder, only with the victim and assailant swapped.
If Jason was killing the Joker for raping and killing hundreds of people—for hurting one of his best friends, for hurting and killing Jason—then how was Jason so different?
Jason killed so many people. He stuck a sword through his brother’s gut. If he continued to go the way that he was going, he wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up killing a Robin that got in his way, too.
That did it.
Jason finally doubled over and lost what little was in his stomach. He clenched his middle as he heaved through the burning in his throat. Each breath in through his nose was a disgusting combination of bile and blood.
His hands were shaking. When did his hands start shaking?
Jason might not have as high of a kill count. He may have not killed a Robin yet, but he had already choked one out. He had already nearly killed his brother. He had beaten his sworn enemy black and bloody with a crowbar and a wicked grin. Jason had the Red Hood name, now. He hadn’t yet realized that he stole more than just that from the Joker.
There wasn’t only one monster here, covered in blood and lives they had taken.
His legs buckled underneath him. Jason crashed down to his knees, crumbling into the pool of blood on the ground. He brought his hands up to his face, pressing the back of his wrists to his eyes. Jason didn’t want to see the mangled body just barely clinging to life.
Jason let the sound of rain pouring down onto the roof to fill his senses instead of the smell of blood. Doing this is a warehouse wasn’t a good idea, but at least he had the familiar sound of rain to calm him.
He didn’t know how long he was crouched there near bile and blood before a hand touched down on his shoulder.
Jason flinched heavily. He curled in on himself, suddenly terrified. He knew how much he beat Joker wasn’t enough to kill the monster. Now he was worried that he hadn’t injured Joker enough to keep him down. Jason had no idea how long he was allowing the Joker to stabilize.
“Jason.” Dick’s voice called. Jason didn’t know if his shoulders tightened or relaxed.
Jason had no idea how to react. When he had imaged someone finding him with the Joker, it had never looked like this. It had never been with Jason undone, nauseated at his own actions.
“Little wing,” Dick tried again. Jason found himself turning toward the voice. He didn’t drop his hands away from his face. He didn’t want his brother—the brother he stabbed, the brother he left behind—to see Jason with blood on his face. “Come on, look at me.”
“You shouldn’t.” Jason responded, voice a little weak. It was nothing compared to the biting pithiness that he had used when he first talked to Dick again after his resurrection.
“The Joker is gone,” Dick continued, as if that made this better. Jason’s stomach flipped. If anything, the Joker being gone just made this worse. Somehow, Dick seeing this man dead felt worse than any of the other people Jason had killed. “You can look. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right,” Jason spat. His traitorous body leaned into Dick’s hand anyway. “I’m just like him.”
Dick, the insensitive fucker, gave a little chuckle. “You really aren’t.”
Anger surged in Jason’s chest. He finally removed his hands from his face, lowering his shaking fingers. He sent a glare in Dick’s direction, but paused at the expression at his face.
It wasn’t humerus like Jason thought it would be. It wasn’t angry, either, which was Jason’s second guess. If anything, it looked more concerned and sympathetic than anything.
How could Dick be sympathetic at a time like this? He saw the Joker’s body. No sane man would do that to another human being. This wasn’t just murder or making sure he was avenged: it was torture. Jason had tortured his torturer. That didn’t make Jason better than him, it made Jason the same.
It made him worse. Still, he didn’t move his face away when Dick’s hand cradled his cheek instead of resting on his shoulder.
“I mutilated him,” Jason croaked out. He kept his gaze on Dick instead of the bloody heap that he knew was laying nearby. “I beat him with a crowbar. A crowbar.”
“That’s almost as bad as what I did.” Dick said, nonchalantly. The sentence was wild enough to snap Jason out of his spiraling. He finally focused his full attention onto Dick, wide-eyed.
“Almost?” He breathed. Jason watched each and every microexpression on Dick’s face, searching for an answer.
“I used my bare hands,” Dick said, and then Jason knew. His stomach swooped, but for a completely different reason. “And older brother rage. Almost.”
“Almost.” Jason repeated with much less incredulity this time. Dick had just said that he beat the Joker with his bare hands, so bad that it was worse than what Jason had just done. He was having a hard time picturing Dick—golden boy, rule follower, Batman’s greatest achievement—doing something like that.
It couldn’t have been worse. Jason had nearly killed the Joker before he stopped himself. He finally let his eyes bounce down to where the Joker was last laying.
Instead of finding the mutilated heap, all Jason could see was the stain of blood on the floor. He surged forward a bit, confused and terrified. Where had he gone? Was he going to come back? He must have been so, so angry at Jason. Things only got worse when he was angry at Jason.
“Where—?” Jason choked out. Dick’s hand slipped off of his cheek.
“It’s okay,” Dick tried as he forced Jason’s shoulders back. He squeezed them, trying to get Jason’s attention back onto him. “Bruce took him away. He’s en-route to a hospital.”
Jason blinked. He turned his gaze back to Dick. The fact that the Joker wasn’t too far gone wasn’t computing in his brain.
“I know,” Dick continued. “The Joker will stay alive. The chemicals he was changed with makes him almost impossible to kill, or so Bruce told me.”
“When you…?” Jason asked, trying to hold onto that last part of that sentence rather than the first.
He didn’t want to think about the relief he felt knowing that he hadn’t killed his murderer. That was wrong. Jason had put himself up as the vigilante who took out the trash. He should be angry that he didn’t finish this job. Instead, he couldn’t help the weight off of his chest because he couldn’t get rid of the filth.
“When I almost killed him, yeah,” Dick confirmed with little fanfare. “I felt like you do. But it will be all right. Bruce will fix it.”
If Dick had said those words to him before Jason beat the Joker within an inch of his life, he knew he would have reacted differently. Before this hollow in his chest made its home, Jason would have thought that the only way Bruce could fix this was to make sure the Joker never breathed again.
But now, Jason knew that if he was responsible for that, he’d never be able to breathe normally again. He couldn’t believe that there was a difference between avenging yourself and being avenged.
He’d think about it more later.
For now, Jason found himself leaning even heavier onto Dick’s hands. He let his brother maneuver him into his arms. Within his older brother’s embrace, he didn’t even think about how big he was now. He just felt like the Little Wing that Dick had held before.
“I want to go home.” Jason whispered into Dick’s shoulder.
Dick nodded against him. He didn’t say anything about the blood that still covered Jason from head to toe. He said nothing about the bloody crowbar on the ground, nor the pool of blood they were kneeling in. Instead, Dick just gathered Jason more into his arms and helped him stand.
“Okay,” Dick said gently. Jason had missed how his voice sounded like that. “Let’s go home.”
Dick helped Jason wobble through the warehouse. He wondered if this is what it would have been like if they had found him in another warehouse. He didn’t care.
He was still going home.