If Love Could Win (a HBO Max Titans Jason Todd fanfiction)

Chapter 7

My fingers tap wildly against the keyboard of my laptop as I hack into Wayne Enterprises. Due to Damian crying he knocked out earlier than he normally would as he's basically nocturnal and once he entered REM sleep I didn't waste the opportunity. Deep down inside me I knew I had to research what kind of bomb that was, needing to understand if that was truly what it was meant for. It was obvious that it was Wayne tech as Jason easily got his hands on it, but it definitely had to have been reprogrammed as Wayne Enterprises doesn't make weapons.

It didn't take me long to find what I was looking for once I got past the firewall and, fuck it's worse than I thought. The device was originally meant for the health industry but he managed to reprogram it. Even though I only got a quick glance I know exactly what type of bomb he made and its timer is cruel.

Jason turned it into an EKG bomb, otherwise known as a hair-trigger explosive, which has special prongs that become embedded once applied to its victim and any attempt to remove it or even slightly jostle it can set it off. But the real thing that stands out about this bomb is what Jason used as the timer.

Regular bombs have your typical time timers or motion sensors, but not this one. No, Jason reprogrammed it so that its timer was based on heartbeats, thus giving Hank a certain amount and when it runs out he'll explode. He made it so there would be an exact number of beats for him to go through with whatever he was planning, ready to break his former teammates hearts.

However, I can't say that I give a shit whether Hank lives or dies. Despite all the good he's done and how much he's misunderstood, there is absolutely no excuse for how he treated Jason and threatened his life so easily. In all honesty I'm surprised that this shocked the team as out of all of them Hank and Jason had the most strained and unfixable relationship.

There is no doubt that everything Jason is doing is wrong and that what is going to happen to Hank will be devastating, but he sealed his own fate when he went after Jason by himself with the intention of probably taking him out. He dug his own grave and sure the team will miss him, especially Dawn, but the bright side is that he'll finally see his brother again if he doesn't end up in Hell.

Violet would get a kick out of that.

Hank's story comes to an end tomorrow and it will tear Dawn apart, but he has only himself to blame. The one thing people never count on when it comes to Jason is his intelligence. He paints himself as stupid when in reality he's very intelligent, even if this is all Crane's work.

Jason would never admit but he's a huge nerd, and I'm not just talking about theater. Looks are deceiving in his case as he looks like a rebel who flunked out of school. People would never guess that he graduated high school with straight A's and that he enjoys every second of learning, mainly literature as he is quite the bookworm.

But it's not just book smarts that he possesses, no, if anything his real brilliance is found in his street smarts. Hank lost the second he decided to go after Jason because if there is anything Jason is better at than being snarky and impulsive, it's surviving. Sure, Hank's been through some shit, but Jason, oh that's a whole new level.

It also doesn't help that Jason is fresh out of the Pit. The Lazarus Pit had never been used on a dead person before but I know it made him go through the darkest parts of his mind and made him go through trials. It fucks with the mind and when Jason emerged it was obvious that it affected him. In every world he dies in he goes on a rampage for his first few months after resurrecting as he's so mentally unstable that he's unsure of how he's supposed to be feeling.

        Right now he's lost and being fed lies, letting the outside and inner voices sway him into submission. Plus his new found addiction is making it harder for him to hear the voice of reason and figure out he's being deceived. Compared to other world Jasons, his trauma with the Joker is minimal despite being murdered by him. He will still have nightmares about it, that's futile, but the damage Crane is doing will add to that.