Author's Note: My take on Bruce and Jason's reunion in the Under the Red Hood graphic novel series. Bolts on nicely to End Credits. Enjoy.

Title Card

It is raining heavily as we graduate from the street to the rooftops. The Red Hood is fast, faster than he ought to be in that equipment, and very agile. My attempts to ground him as we scale buildings and cross chasms prove useless. Every line is cut before it can go taut, every injection of speed to close the distance gives him onus to push harder. Not only is he able to evade my reach, not only is he able to sustain the physical effort without fatigue, but he is also able to verbally taunt my every failure. More than that, I do not even believe he wishes to escape: I believe he wants to toy with me. I hear it in his voice.

"Too slow, big man!" He yells after cutting another one of my lines. He did not see the second as it wraps around his opposite ankle. I stop his charge on the rooftop of the Monarch Theatre by yanking him down to earth along with the line. He gives his first grunt of pain but is quickly back on the offensive, firing expertly with one hand whilst the other cuts the line yet again. I cannot manoeuvre in close enough to subdue him. He is back on his feet, brandishing his pistol with casual ease. There is no cover for me to withdraw to should he begin to fire and the distance between us is only ten feet, not enough to avoid the rounds altogether. I reach for smoke but a deft shot knocks it from my hand. It does not detonate and I am left at his mercy.

"You know, don't you?" He says with a chuckle, "you know I'm not just another gun-toting gangbanger. You know my reactions are too fast for you to take advantage of. Drop the batarang in your left hand now." He instructs. I reluctantly do so. "I could shoot you point-blank in the head, big guy. The Kevlar in your cowl would absorb the majority of it, but the force would definitely knock you unconscious. Then it'd be child's play to finish the job."

"If you wanted to kill me." I reply knowing an individual as knowledgeable of me as he is would not stand and gloat if murder was his agenda. I would be dead already. "But you don't."

"How do you know I'm not just nervous?" He asks. His hand and arm are rock-steady even after holding his pistol for almost two minutes. He has no fear of murder, not even when it would mean my death.

"Because you're too disciplined, too in control of the situation and yourself to allow fear any ground."

"So let's dance." He says throwing both his pistols to one side in favour of his knife. "I want to see if you've lost a step already."

We charge at one another and meet as the downpour is joined by distant thunder. I block what I assume are attempts to cut my vital arteries, something a blade that sharp could accomplish with only a few strikes, and pay the price. His movements are soundless and sleek. A moment later, my utility belt lies on the ground, cut clean off my waist with surgical precision. "That counts as one step lost." Red Hood says with a laugh. I respond by burying a fist in his abdomen. He lurches forward from the hit then uppercuts me with his helmet in rearing back to height. I move out of range.

"Still hit hard as hell though old man! Not bad." He says with mock applause. "But enough foreplay. Let's actually fight this time, no more love taps." We engage in close-quarters again. His skills are on par with Dick in terms of striking technique and variation. And if it were Dick I was fighting, I could roll with the punches and kicks and likely overpower him. But Red Hood hits harder, far harder. His strikes travel beyond the Kevlar and carbon-fibre weave of my survival suit and deal significant damage. My conditioning means I can withstand the assault, but every blow landed stings and burns. I am not helpless in reply though. His head may be protected from harm, but his body suit is just as vulnerable to powerful hits as mine. For six minutes, we are equal to one another.

His speed of movement again proves the slight difference in advantage. I do not see the knife in his hand until he has cut through my mask and, when I finally cast it aside, he lunges in and tears at the face-plate, temporarily robbing me of sight. I am falling over the edge seconds later. I counter the inertia and special orientation with two complete somersaults and using my cape as drag. When I stand up, I feel the absence of my face-plate and know my true identity is exposed for scrutiny. The downpour and thunder continue to pound the landscape as I stand up in Crime Alley only feet from where my parents were shot. As soon as I am up, my fists are raised for another round with the Red Hood who stands out of striking range. He scoffs and shakes his head, presumably in disbelief at who I am.

"Just look at you. You haven't changed at all, Bruce. Lost half-a-step, but after five more years of dragging your ass through the streets, that's damn impressive." He is not surprised by my identity. He already knew who I was before combat began. I can hear it in his voice, the familiarity underpinning his words. He has known me a long time to speak so brazenly to me. "I guess we should keep things fair." He offers whilst reaching up and utilising some unseen interface technology to release and remove his helmet. My eyes widen in shock at the sight that greets me.

"My God…" I cannot help but say aloud upon seeing the boy's living face again. My hands drop of their own accord. He wears a domino mask over his eyes, but his features and lop-sided grin are unmistakable. He shakes his head.

"Afraid not, big man, wanna guess again?" It's his voice. Older perhaps, slightly deeper, but it is definitely his voice. I am speechless for several moments, unable to collect my thoughts in a meaningful way.

"Surely you cannot expect me to believe this…this ruse." I finally utter without much conviction, recalling Clayface's impersonation of him at the graveyard only a month or so ago. He laughs.

"Oh yeah, the boneyard fiasco with your new darling Robin. You must've cottoned on when we switched over, me and Clayface. At the start of that shindig, the guy holding the knife to the kid's throat and whaling on you like a nun in an orphanage, that was me. After the tumble through the mausoleums, that was him."

"This is nonsense. You are not him. You cannot be him." I say. He sighs lethargically.

"You sound so hollow right now. Here." He removes his domino mask, uncovering the fiery blue eyes that I remember staring me down a thousand times before. Cosmetic surgery could gift the same structure and elocution lessons the same voice, but nothing can replicate those eyes. They are his eyes. "Tell me it's nonsense now Bruce! Tell me I'm not who you think I am now! What's my name Bruce? Who am I? Say it!" His anger and resentment make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. An echo from the past, a ghost that haunts my every waking moment is yelling at me. I can barely articulate the two syllables needed to lay waste to natural law and scientific fact. Somehow though, I do. Saying it is like opening a tomb.

"Jason."

His anger bizarrely gives way to relief in the wake of my admission. He grins at me. "Yes."

"There is no way I will ever believe this is possible." I tell him bluntly. He rolls his eyes.

"You already believe it, Bruce. You haven't made a single move towards me. Three minutes we've been stood here now and you've done nothing to take me down, nothing to cover up your identity. But I tell you what…" He closes the distance between us until he is less than a foot away. "Stop me now." I do nothing but stare at him. How can I do anything else? The last time I saw him, I was holding his lifeless body in a chapel. I watched him get buried next to his mother. He was seventeen years old. Now he looks twenty-one, as if his death in Ethiopia five years ago had never occurred.

"How is this possible? I buried you…"

"Guess you did a bad job then, huh?" He retorts with a smirk before removing a glove. He places a bare hand on my side where the only dry patch of my suit lurks beneath my cape. He presses into the material hard. "There's a whole handprint for you to tinker with." He offers before spitting blood into my face. "And there's your blood sample for DNA analysis." He is daring me to take a swing at him. I remain still in the aftermath. My God, it really is him. And once I run the tests on this evidence, I will have no room left for denial. He knows it.

"I will not let you hurt anyone else." I say firmly. He produces a detonator.

"That's cute. Tell me how that promise is going in two seconds." He depresses the trigger. I turn in time to see a whole apartment block explode in a deafening fireball that overpowers even the rumbling thunder. When I look back, he's on a rooftop two buildings away. "Meth lab, crew of fifteen working all of the Narrows and Bowery. Looks like someone's a bad liar around here and for once it isn't me." He says before disappearing from view. I do not follow. I am numb. Somehow my greatest mistake in life has risen from the darkest reaches of my subconscious and been made flesh again. The Red Hood, a man that has single-handedly destroyed Gotham's criminal underworld with his antics and left the city on the brink of tearing itself apart in gang warfare, is the dead child I failed to save. Except he is no longer a rotting corpse but a firebrand and murderer. I return to the rooftop and retrieve my face-plate and belt, using fast-setting resin to seal the mask into place again and Jason's blood sample with it.

The boy touched me. It was a hand yearning for more than to simply give fingerprints. He wanted me to know he was real. He needed me to say his name aloud. Somehow I get the distinct impression he felt he could only exist again if I acknowledged him. My thoughts are interrupted by Alfred on the communication link.

"Sir? Are you alright?"

"No. I am returning to the cave immediately. There is something we need to discuss. Now."