Ultimate 'Haven #1: My Red Valentine

[The Wonderful Wachter]

Ultimate ‘Haven #1
My Red Valentine

I can’t say I particularly grew up with a desire to be a hero. I mean sure, as kids, we think about all the injustice in the world and how cool it’d be to fly high in the sky and right all the wrongs with the passion of righteousness – despite probably not knowing the meaning of that last word. Who doesn’t tie a blanket or towel around their neck and zoom off the edge of the couch? I was no different… except for the introduction of a belt at the end of my heroic, childish exploits.

My first meeting with the cold, harsh truth about reality.

The world doesn’t care about right or wrong. All it cares is if you had the power to enforce it.

So yeah, I can’t say I desired to be a hero.

If anything, I suffered from borderline sociopathic fantasies. Okay. Fine. You caught me. They weren’t borderline. Just don’t blame videogames. Never had the means to play them until I started stealing. Those thoughts never quite stopped. I just learned how to control them, to ignore them… to realize, you could do anything so long as someone else was pulling the strings. Becomes easier to do something wrong – or something right – if the decision making is taken out of your hands to begin with. Just so easy to follow orders, to go with the flow.

Could say, I was born to be a sidekick. All the fun of being a hero, a fraction of the power, and none of the decision making. I could just enjoy smashing faces into to cement and leaping from tall buildings. I never had to worry about doing right or wrong because I had a purpose. I had direction. They told me to distract a bunch gun-waving thugs and I’d do it with a smirk on my face while the hero took all the credit in stopping the real crime. Just fine with me.

Never cared about my reputation.

Not even before I became a sidekick. I lived in the bad part of town – not like ‘Haven has any particularly good parts – raised by a man that was drunk or high on anything he could get his hands on most of the time. There, I could look out the window and see what happened if you had too big a reputation but not the means to enforce it. Not that being on the lowest part of totem was any better. You’d just as likely get a shot to head. You needed to surf around the middle, be skilled, maybe even the best at what you could do, and the target on your back would be smaller. Hell, you’re more likely given a chance to be recruited by some gang-lord with more men and better territory who is even more likely to dispose of you if you’re not just the right amount use to them. Maybe, if you were lucky, you’d even get promoted on up to Gotham.

Nothing wrong with that. I rose in the ranks pretty quickly when I decided I had enough of my old man and my crappy life. More than a few creeps out there have use for the juvies like me. We’d blend in and any punishment if we’re caught is a fraction of some pathetic twenty-something thug who can’t even hack a decent security system or pick a lock without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs would recieve. Plus there’s the whole, who’d suspect a nine-year old. Be amazed at the spaces an underfed pre-teen could hide from the law inside.

Yup. You’re hearing me right. I learned the basics to fighting crime on the other side of the line. And the second time I ever screwed up was probably the best thing that had ever happened to me. I discovered there was another way, another path to take… I learned of honor and respect through effort and deeds, not fear or threat. Most people would never realize it’s possible for honor to be a foreign concept to the lowest dredges of life. I couldn’t afford to have honor or personal pride… not if I wanted to eat.

Too bad, turning my back on my old life didn’t help me to understand just where the line between right and wrong is. Only difference is I had good people, decent people, in my corner for the first time since I had been born and they were the ones who knew the calls to make. It’s always been a blurry concept to me. I had the power to take a life but not the right to. Just why was it wrong to kill, or at least, maim a drug-dealing pedo? Not like the justice system here in the Haven could be relied on to throw the book at them.

So why the hell not?

Why not back the guy to edge? Say he fell? That’s what you can tell yourself and others.

Tell me… Just tell me. That’s all I want.

I don’t want to be a hero.

I was happy being a sidekick.

So happy… yet I threw that all away. All my teachings. There’s no R patch over my heart anymore, only a X. Yes… I know the art of symbolism. That’s why I have a skull for a mask… or had a skull. That sophisticated faceplate so full of circuitry and protection had cracked under the pressure. Its pieces were scattered about the floor along with a fair amount of blood from me and the three other people in the warehouse. My costume was torn and frayed, that black fabric that wasn’t quite cloth had given way. Couldn’t take it. Just like me. I’m surprised I still have my cape after all I’ve been through.

Without my hero, I had to be something else. I had to become something else. Needed to make myself more threatening… Needed to be everything she was not to account for the escalation we had caused… this was our fault and she ran away. I couldn’t do that. I had to run towards it.

I couldn’t stop what we had started.

Now, as I stare death in the face, I wonder one complicated question…

… does it still count as a Mexican standoff if I have my weapons pointed at the other two guys but they’re practically ignoring me?

My arms waver, so tired, so exhausted. My eyes take in everything. The fool in the tuxedo, what little bit of his face shown beneath the remnants of his red mask and hooded cape was shrouded behind matted, bloodied hair. Scalp wound, not fun, I had delivered that. It was the least the bastard had deserved after all he had put me through. All the tragedy he had caused. Some Red Hood he turned out to be. Don’t get why my teachers thought him so dangerous. Wasn’t even a proper gang-leader. He is, what he was, an idiot with a preference on personal fashion than anything practical. His own arm shook too, the scarlet pistol in his hand unsteady as his free hand pulled out the strange shaped knife buried in his shoulder.

“Take the girl and go, Jason.” I can’t believe he had the nerve to act so familiar with me. On the other hand, not like there had been enough time for the whole X motif to catch on.

I glanced down at the girl. It was my fault she was here. She had come to stop me. Tried to stop me. Got herself involved in matters so far below her upper class life that I’d be lucky she’d still be breathing by the time I got her to a hospital. She looked so small, laying there between the three of us. Her purple cloak clung to her tiny frame like a mourning shroud. So small. So weak… In the chaos of the fight, I’m not sure which one of us delivered the blow that put her down.

A stray strand of blond hair escapes the recesses of her hood. A beacon of hope and light in this place of darkness as her slow intakes of air moves it ever so slightly.

“Listen to him,” the second man demands. “The Court still has use of you.”

The Court… the Court of Owls. And here was their Talon come for Red Hood’s head. He’s bigger than the Hood, more muscular and outwardly threatening. A bandolier of knives with owl-shaped hilts hung from his shoulders and I wouldn’t be surprised if those big circles his mask called for eyes were every bit as sophisticated as the circuitry in my domino mask. Among the three of us, he had the least amount of injuries. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to say he was injured at all. I could see the blood stains yet the bleeding had stopped.

No wonder he’s so hard to kill. The Talon has regeneration.

I glance at both men then back down at the girl. I sigh as I know what I have to do. I have to be sidekick now… Need to listen, to save her. Then I could focus on them.

Still, doesn’t mean I have listen without putting up a fight first.

I attack.

The X-shuriken fly from my fingers and embed themselves in hands of both Hood and the Talon. The clatter of a knife on cement, the blast of a gun misfiring… music to my ears. My leg snaps out as I rush them, kicking the side of Hood’s head and hearing a satisfying crack of bone meeting boot. I rebound off him, spinning, to twist under a blow from the Talon and I bring my palm up. Straight up. Straight into the Nursery Rhyme’s jaw. Quite the cadence the clacking of his teeth make. And as he’s distracted, my hands clap together, signaling my suit to release the pent up charge. Red exes glow only for a blink on the back of my gloves before I lash out with a mirrored open blow to the man’s abdomen.

Feels like a sledgehammer. Acts like one too. The Talon flies back as the miniaturized explosion opened a hole in his uniform and slams into one of the many tanks the warehouse housed.

I did what I could. I grab the girl and go, nearly screaming as I feel skin ripping apart on the side of my stomach with the exertion. Not so long ago, she’d been bigger than me. Now that had changed, I had changed. I carry her despite my exhaustion, despite everything. I work through the pain.

Alley.

Docks.

Not empty… Not alone.

The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. It had been a gamble, I knew it, but a part of me had hoped. I close my eyes. This feel. It’s the right feel. She’s here. I had lucked out. I sit the girl down as gently as I could manage.

I glance back at the warehouse, hear the echoes of the Red Hood’s pistols. . . I might just make it.

“I know you’re here,” I call out to the shadows. I don’t bother looking in the recesses or configuring what remained of my mask towards tracing heat signatures. It’d be useless. She’s every bit as good as me… maybe more so. “And I know you can hear me.”

No response.

“I once spared you. You know what that means. You know what your honor demands…” A gamble… a gamble… “You owe me your life. So… So I need you to give me hers.”

The wind blows, whipping my cape about me, and I knew she accepts the terms. The shadows stir. A figure drops down to the alley. I had never before in my life ever been so thankful for having a crazed ninja stalker. “Take her. She needs treatment.”

The shadow nods.

Good.

I don’t have time to worry about the girl. Don’t have time to worry about her identity or how the assassin would save her. She’d have to figure it out on her own. Our shared journey is over. I have to finish what our masters had started. I have to stop them before the threat becomes global. Yet I can’t.

A hand grips my ankle ever so lightly. Reflexively, I wanted to stomp and counter. I stop myself. “Let go.”

“You can’t…” she gasps, “Hood…. He’s… He’s—“

“Hush now,” I turn and kneel before her, brushing the hair from across her face. “I know who he is. And it doesn’t matter.” I lean down, our lips don’t quite touch through the fabric of our masks but I could still feel her warmth. A good sign. “Survive and keep vigil,” I recite with weighted breath.

The shadow presses closer. I look up beneath heavy lidded eyes. “Thank you…”

---X---

Not much had changed inside the warehouse by the time I find my way back to Talon and the Red Hood. The former’s left arm now hung uselessly at his side while the latter had been reduced down to a single stunstick shaped like a magician’s wand. They had fought to a stalemate. Fantastic. Time for me to break it.

One last clap, power runs low, Xonfas form in my hands. Don’t let the name fool you. They’re just red colored tonfas. My gloved fingers grip them tightly. We – I – had to end this or I’d lose my chance forever.

We dance, the three of us, a dance of death. Three of us… each a different legend, a different generation. I hold my own. I more than hold my own. I excel. I had accepted my end. I could feel that something was wrong inside of me. Only sheer willpower to be the last man standing kept me going. Parry, counter, strike… dodge. Must be magical to watch from afar. I finally understand just what my masters had tried to teach me about those fights you can never forget.

I’d never forget this one.

Course, I won’t have a chance to.

Hood and I hit Talon at the same time. His stunstick buries itself deep into the wound I had made earlier with my double-palm-blast strike. A discharge of electrifying energy straight into the body. My Xonfas crack and smack against our foe’s skull followed by a roundhouse kick to finish him off. He crushes through a crate as he falls back, impaled through the chest on a piece of wood there.

So close…

Blood bubbles up through my throat and out my mouth. My feet have gone cold. Can’t really feel anything below the waist. Not sure if it’s shock or nerves. Doesn’t matter in the end. I’d bleed out the second the knife is removed from my stomach.

I collapse to my knees, choking.

Red Hood grabs me before I drop completely. He holds me in an oddly comforting embrace. Is… is that crying I hear? His hood is gone. I see a face so familiar behind blurred vision that I could impose my own on it and have a similar result. That… jawline. Those tears.

“Jason, Jason.” He rips off my mask, “Don’t die. Not now. Not like this.”

I smirk, my weak limbs reaching towards him, grabbing his tuxedo jacket. I know why Cluemaster gave me that job so long ago. It hadn’t been just for my skill. He knew something like this would happen. He knew I was the only boy who could make it happen.

“We… We— just.”

Blood bubbles out the corner of my mouth yet still I smirk. Hood knew nothing. He knew nothing about who I truly was.

“I didn’t want this…”

My hand falls out of his jacket. “G-g-gotcha,” I laugh through the pain.

“What?”

It’s like he sees me for the first time. Truly sees me. In my hand lays his doom. A doom of his own making. A trigger. My finger is already on it.

Once a thief, always a thief.

Red Hood looks over with dread at the nearest tank filled to the brim with a drug that make steroids look like baby food. We’d come here tonight to destroy them. He’d come here to destroy them. Those were his charges planted across the side of the tank.

“You can’t.” He drops me. So much for the concern. “Don’t do this!”

I don’t respond immediately.

He doesn’t run.

One last smirk. “This is for Kate.”

I release the trigger.