From Gotham with Love (Male OC x Fem Villain Harem)

Chapter 18: Under The Red Hood PT: 4

Time, a construct created in order for us to understand the passage of a certain period. Whether it be a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century, or millennium. Yet in all the years that had passed me by since I saw him, never in a million years did I even think once that this was how I would see him again. The long lost friend that I had both silently and desperately wanted back was now here but simultaneously I was speaking of a different person entirely. Different in the aspect of how he's transformed into someone dangerous enough to do what he's done and to overcome whatever opposition comes his way. While a part of me was more than glad to see him again, I should have been more careful with what I had wished for.
"Ughnnn....Jason?"
I muttered.

"Easy now Mr.Hoechlin, I wouldn't be so anxious to be moving about just yet given all the physical trauma you have just sustained."
I was met with the voice of an English gentleman. When I met the face belonging to that voice, standing next to him was the ever brooding Dark Knight.

"Nightwing...Jinx are they?"
Batman continued to scowl when I asked him.

"They're fine, Jason had shot him in the middle of his chest where his suit is strongest. Even at mid range from a 44 Magnum wouldn't kill him. But it would knock the wind out of him. Jinx on the other hand is back at your apartment resting."
A wave of relief had washed over me before everything else that had happened came to the forefront of my mind.

"What happened to him...what happened to my friend?"
I muttered as I gazed around me and into the dark bowls of Batman's dwelling.

"Master Jason was your friend?"
The Englishman asked as I nodded.
"I'm so terribly sorry."

"Just tell me how it happened."
I said as I forced myself to sit upright.

"When Jason was only 12 I caught him trying to strip the batmobile for parts. He succeeded in taking 3 of the 4 rims before I found him covered in dirt and holding a tire iron."
Batman said as he continued on with his story.
"After that I took him to get some Big Belly Burger. After we talked I thought that a reform school would put him on a better path. However that school was just a front for the next generation of criminals. Once I had it shut down I took him in, raised him, trained him, and then finally he became the second Robin."

I had felt a surge of repressed anger swell up from within me.
"Yeah, Jason told me what happened next. He told me about how you stopped looking for him before allowing someone else to replace him!!!"
I yelled.
"Here I thought you were supposed to be the world's greatest detective, and yet you still didn't figure out where he was before Joker had killed him!!!"

"Joker had sent me a video of him emptying his revolver into Jason's chest!!!"
Batman yelled back.
"I went over ever single micro second of every panel in that tape and found that nothing had been tampered with!! I watched as Jason was killed over and over and over and over again!! I spent days without sleep, chasing down every conceivable lead that I could think of... but I was to late. When I found out what really happened, Jason had infact still been alive. The Joker somehow faked Jason's death only to take him to a remote warehouse up north. But when I got there the bomb had already gone off...I held his body in my hands as it was ripped apart by the explosion, riddled with shrapnel. Autopsy report had shown that 95 percent of the bones in his body had been broken prior to the explosion. That doesn't even count for the internal damage or the damage to that of his psyche."
Batman lowered his head as if he was trying to bore holes into the floor with just his eyes.
"What happened to him is completely was completely my fault..."

"Master Bru...Batman, none of what happened was within your control as uneasy as it is to say."
The Englishman said.
"The fact still remains however that he is alive now."