Chapter Text
Gordon held on to the handle attached to the ceiling of the car for his dear life. Red Hood had offered him a ‘shortcut’ to their unknown destination. While it sounded like a good idea at the time… Jim made a mental note to not accept Batmobile rides from strangers ever again.
“Kid, where’d you get your drivers license from?” Gordon questioned through his grit teeth as they skid inches past a fire hydrant.
“I didn’t.”
Gordon nearly died right there.
“What do you mean, you didn’t?”
“I mean, I know how to drive. Just not legally.” Hood squeezed through yet another alleyway that was way too tight for Gordon’s comfort. “Then again, I’m also legally dead.”
Jim only answered the man’s statement with a skeptical look.
“Hey, I helped build this stupid car, I think I know what I’m doing.” Hood promptly ended the sentence by ramming into a warehouse’s closed garage-style door head on and skidding to a stop inside. “This concludes your Batmobile ride. We take tips.”
“I have kids y’know.” Gordon reached for the over-engineered door handle only to find it locked.
“What’s two more orphans?” Hood looked at him with a smirk that belonged in a horror movie. Only after seeing Jim’s slightly worried expression in its fullest, did he did his head/eye roll and chuckled, “I’m kidding, Gordie. Jeez, I’m not a psychopath.”
“You left a duffle bag full of heads on the GCPD’s doorstep.”
“Like I said, teenage angst.” The doors unlocked and Hood shoved his open. “Hurry up, Gord.”
Gordon could barely blink before he was given a comm, dropped off in front of a condemned building, and was forced to watch as a bat-shaped silhouette waved to him and disappeared into the sky.
He slid the earpiece into his ear, hoping someone was willing to actually tell him what was going on. “Hello?”
“Knock on the door,” Hood’s un-modulated voice ordered as soon as it was connected.
Gordon nearly laughed. “Hell no.”
“You’re bait.”
“Hell no!”
“Trust me, I’ve got a plan.”
A third voice joined the men’s conversation, it was the same modulated, feminine one from the phone call a few nights before. “Uh, Hood, maybe you should think this one through a bit more.”
“Ba– O,” Hood corrected, “don’t worry. He’ll be fineee. Now, go knock on the door.”
“I think I trust the angel on my shoulder more than the crime lord whispering in my ear.” Gordon reasoned.
“Ex-crime lord. Now go, before we get caught.”
“Jay, please tell me you actually have a plan,” Oracle’s worried tone crackled over the line.
“Jay?” Gordon questioned, ignoring the rest of the girl’s sentence.
“We– uh– don’t have time for this,” Hood stumbled over his words. “Gordon, knock on the door, trust.”
“I’m not getting out of this, am I?”
“Nope,” Hood said at the same time Oracle spat out, “You don’t need to knock–”
Jim let out a sigh, before lifting up his hand and knocking thrice on the decayed wooden door in front of him.
“Hood, I swear to god,” Oracle gritted her teeth.
“I’ll have my eyes on him the whole time, he’s perfectly safe,” Hood shook her off, “Besides, you’ll have a tracker on him.”
“If anything happens to him–”
“I’ll never hear the end of it, I got that.”
“Hood–”
The two vigilantes’ banter was interrupted by a handful of quickly approaching voices from inside.
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” a deep voice grumbled.
“Look, man, I’m just lettin’ y’all know so I’m not the one gettin’ in trouble later.”
“Who the fuck would be knocking on the Red Hood’s door?”
“I dunno, maybe he ordered something.”
If Gordon had to guess, despite only hearing two voices, he heard about five sets of footsteps. He took a step back and slid his gun into the back of his waistband, covering it with his trenchcoat. It took another minute for the henchmen inside to actually open the door.
When they did, all of their faces first widened in fear before shriveling up in confusion. One of the goons in a red hoodie shoved another wearing a leather jacket, exclaiming, “I told ya!”
“Would you shut the fuck up?” The one in the leather jacket snarled, “Go ask boss what he wants us to do with ‘im.”
The tall guy in the red hoodie turned back into the crumbling building, while the remaining men started to surround Gordon. “Don’t put a mark on ‘im if ya don’t need to,” Leather Jacket ordered, he seemed to be the one in charge.
The rest of the group replied by lowering their fists and dropping their joyous expressions.
Leather Jacket rolled his eyes, “Look, feel free to rough him up, but it’s on you. Boss just came back, I don’t want to end up in a duffle bag.”
The men quickly got back to work, circling Jim and slapping a pair of cuffs on him. Gordon threw a few weak punches to keep the act believable, and pretended to struggle against his metal bracelets.
Leather Jacket sent two men into a nearby alley to double check no one was waiting for backup before turning to Gordon. “So what are you doing here?” He shoved Jim down onto his knees. “Little commish got lost?”
Gordon only replied with a frown.
A silhouette reappeared in the doorway, “Boss wants ‘im inside, now.”
Within a second, two arms interlocked with the crooks’ of Gordon’s and lifted him to his feet. They nearly dragged him up the doorstep stairs and into the building, which on closer inspection, looked to be an abandoned orphanage.
Real cozy.
“Gordie, you doin’ good?” Hood asked in his ear.
Jim faked tripping over a can so he could let out an affirmative grunt.
“Alright, once you get to the main room let me know, they have something fucking with my thermal vision, I can’t see shit.”
“Hood!” Oracle exclaimed, “You said–”
“Relax, I know what I’m doing.”
“When you get back here I swear–”
“Don’t worry I can do all that shit at the cave, I’ll just have to deal with the brat.”
“You’re so lucky that bullet para– I mean– fuck you.”
“Real smooth, O.”
“Oh shut up, just get me access to the power.”
By the time the two were done verbally abusing each other, Gordon was pushed into a large open room, he guessed it was the dining hall based off of the tables stacked on top of each other off to the side and the stench of decaying food.
In the center of the back wall, there was a makeshift platform raised about three meters off the ground, built with scraps of wood and discarded bricks. On top of this platform, was a chair that looked like something straight out of Game of Thrones, pipes, remains of furniture, and splintered rafters stuck out in all directions, framing the man sitting upon the rusty tetanus hazard of a throne.
The man was tall, built like a truck, and glaring straight at Gordon with his mask’s white eyes. He had his feet a bit further than shoulderwidth apart, his elbows rested on his padded knees, with his chin stacked on top of his hands like a tower of bodyparts. Between his broad shoulders, Gordon could make out that familiar red bat. His helmet was nowhere to be seen.
“Hello, Gordon,” his tone was one Gordon imagined a viper might have whilst talking to his meal.
Gordon felt even more uneasy than before as people started melting out of the shadows, circling him like rabid dogs.
“Speechless?” The fake Red Hood hissed through his teeth, “Let him go,” he waved off the people holding him in place before turning back to Jim, “Come closer.”
“I would listen to him. Hasn’t been acting quite right recently,” Leather Jacket whispered in his ear as he pushed him closer, knocking Jim off balance and sending him to his hands and knees.
The real Hood’s voice spoke in Gordon’s head, “I hear shit, you there?”
“In the main room, now what?” He grit, slowly working his way to his feet and praying no one could hear him.
“Take off the comm, throw it at the wall in front of you.”
“Theres a massive platform there.”
“Better, throw it on top of that and get ready.”
“They’ve got guns on me.”
“Yeah, yeah, I gotcha, don’t worry.”
Gordon sent one more internal prayer to the dingy ceiling above him before ripping the comm from his ear and chucking it at the platform of debris as he stood, squaring his shoulders and preparing for whatever Hood had planned.
A whole lot of fucking nothing followed.
Guns snapped to aim, pointing at least a dozen red dots on Jim.
Gordon missed Batman.
Batman’s plans –while still often kept secret until the right time– actually fucking worked.
The fake Hood looked at Gordon, picked up the comm, looked at it closely, started laughing manically, and stuck it in his ear. “Whatever your plan was,” he bellowed into the mic, “it didn’t–”
The earpiece promptly blew up.
It wasn’t a small explosion.
God no.
That would’ve made things too goddamn easy.
The tiny device that was able to fit in Gordon’s ear, the thing Hood had him put IN HIS EAR, blew up the whole fucking throne, podium, wall, and then some.
The lights above began to flicker before turning off entirely and plunging the room into darkness. Gordon took the opportunity to duck behind a discarded table and load his hidden gun, cursing under his breath.
What did I do to deserve this?
The lights came on all at once nearly blinding Gordon with the haze it left in his vision. Gunshots roared through the air, both from the new hole in the wall and the remaining goons in the building.
Gordon did his part to shoot people in the feet and knock a couple out from behind while Batman –well, Hood dressed as batman– worked through the crowd with ease, cutting through calves and cracking jaws whilst simultaneously dodging bullets.
Once the room was cleared, Gordon finally turned to look at the acting Batman and practically yelled, “Are you kidding me?! You put that thing in my ear?! And then blew someone’s head off with it?!”
“I didn’t do it, that was all you and him,” he shrugged, “Besides, he’s fine.”
“Fine?”
“It was Clayface, the bomb was to get me an opening and to melt his clay until I could figure out a more permanent solution,” Hood explained as he made his way over to the podium and began scooping half-crusted, half-melted mud up into a containment pod they used almost specifically for Clayface.
“How– how’d you know?”
“First of all, it was obviously a shape shifter. Secondly, he left clay at the scene earlier today. I noticed some residue on the safe, tested it, found out it was clay, the rest just fell into place.”
“Ah.”
“Mind getting me a few more containment pods?”
“Yeah, uh– Sure.”