#jason 1

It was Jason. He's alive. I don't know how. Alfred's voice had been ringing in his ears for hours. He couldn't remember right now how the conversation had gone after that moment. Because as soon as he heard those words, a tidal wave of emotion had swelled up above him. So high it blocked out all the light, left Bruce completely in darkness. Holding his breath.

And then it crashed down around him.

Grief first -- he remembered holding Jason in his arms, limp, cold. The terrible weight of death like gravity pulled harder on the lifeless. Sometimes he still felt that weight in his arms, even now. But then joy, unbridled, wild, like a fire tearing through him, scorching, too fast, too much, too intense. Jason, alive. Alive again, with that attitude that couldn't be contained and a smile that would melt a room when he was really happy. How could Bruce not feel joy, remembering that? Remembering him as he was? But then crept in suspicion. Fear. Anger. Was this really Jason? How could he be alive? Oh, there had been plenty of cheated graves in Gotham, even bonafide resurrections -- but had anything good ever come of those? What if something else had taken Jason's place? What if... What if he was changed?

It was that last question that finally made him don the cowl and slip out into the city. He could've gone to where Alfred had said they ran into each other. But no. No, Bruce followed his gut and found himself at the belfry. Approaching a particular gargoyle. He stood there, silently, staring up at the figure while the tidal wave crashed over him all over again. Everything, all at once. "So. It really is you," he said finally, standing very still in the shadows of the belfry.

The night air was thick with smoke and fear. Wanda crept forward silently, no glow dancing around her fingertips. She didn’t want anyone to see her, or the family she was leading towards the docks. The bridges were out, and there was no telling how far Magneto would take this, but if his rage was anything like hers (and she was worried that it was exactly the same) it was safer to get people out. 

There was a barrier around them, but a mental one. Making teleportation impossible, and if she drew too much attention, she had a feeling Mutants would come down to stop her. They wouldn’t want to lose their bargaining chips after all. 

She was probably being unfair. She couldn’t help but feel for the Mutants, she remembered how it felt to be persecuted. But then she had years where she was judged only on her own actions, and sometimes she had come up wanting there as well. Tonight, she wanted to change that. Tonight she wanted to do some good. She didn’t want to risk opening or a portal or anything that might draw attention, even flying the family one by one would be dangerous and exhausting. But a boat might be just the trick. Gotham was just over the bay after all. 

“Here, get in,” she whispered to the family. The boat was small, and wouldn’t likely be noticed or missed. “Stay low and quiet. I’ll guide you as long as I can, but then the current will have to take you.”

“Where do we go?” the mother asked, clutching her two girls tightly. “When we land, what can we do?”

Wanda bit her lip. “Give me a moment,” she said. This was so small, so simple, the first thing she had learned to do when she realized her powers. She closed her eyes and focused, focused on the city across the water. Listening. Racing through the streets, blurry and hazy, all the edges soft until – there. A masked boy, a hero. She could feel it in his mind, that desire to do good. To prove himself, just as she was doing. ‘Hello,’ she whispered in his mind. ‘I’m Wanda. And I need your help.’ 

Steve could hear the trouble a mile away. His motorcycle (specially designed by Stark for speed and silence, though he refused to call it a stealth-cycle) zipped up to the mouth of an alleyway. Where he’d just a heard a grunt of pain, followed by a yell. Something was happening down here, and if Steve didn’t care of it, others would. Like Enforcers. 

He turned off the cycle and slipped down the alleyway. Through the shadows, and around a dumpster, he saw them. Three Enforcers surrounding a single boy, wearing a red mask over his head. Steve didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one, but he wasn’t about to let things get out of hand. “Hey!” he called out. “This doesn’t seem like very fair odds.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, nodding over to the figure. Red Hood. He’d shown up on his radar before, through SHIELD and the Avengers, there were a lot of rumors about what he did inside the Gotham city limits. Clint wanted to see it for himself. “I’ve gotten that sense. Hear there’s a lot of... clean up to do in Gotham.” He paused, turning the sword in his hand. “You sure that’s a road you want to go down?”