Table prompt #008 Compromised

[shauds]

Title: Compromised

Fandom: DC Comics

Prompt: #008 Compromise

Character/Pairing: Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown

Rating: PG

Word Count: 5385

Summary: Jason's working at a museum, trying out being mostly normal for a few months, when then new Batgirl crashes in and compromises the situation

Authors Notes/Disclaimer: Forgot to put this up when I first wrote it, requested by Mysticalmeowler on tumblr

The museum was a quiet place at night, granted it was mostly quiet during the daytime too, a good place to sit around thinking if you were looking for a place to think. If you weren't looking to think, well, nothing in the world was easier to fill than a silence.

He wasn’t looking to think right then, had, in fact, come to the conclusion some while ago, that the less scattered thinking he did the better off he’d be. So he hummed a tuneless song to the beat of his steps echoing through the museum as he made his rounds. The beam of his flashlight illuminated each exhibit one at a checking that they were all in their places, that the security measures were active.

They weren’t. Some idiot had gone and tripped the silent alarm. Far as he could tell, they were still in lobby, making enough noise to echo down a lot louder than his footsteps. Night guards were at best, paid hostages for if the bats found time in their busy schedules to stop something like a museum heist anymore. He was willing to bet the dumbass who’d planned this had already sent someone out to tie up the poor, underpaid night guard.

Right on cue, the next corner he turned, he was yanked up off the ground by the front of his shirt by a giant of a man dressed in all black.

”I’m legally required to ask if you have a pacemaker.” He said before the big guy had a chance to get a word in. Only answer he got was a head tilted in confusion. Well, he’d asked. The guard shrugged as well as he could in the hold, then he rammed his stun gun into the guy’s ribs and with a flick of his finger, unleashed electric hell.

His feet has just touched the ground, followed shortly by the collapse of his convulsing attacker when another came from behind and got a handful of his jacket, that guy got a roundhouse kick to the gut that sent his skidding across the smoothly polished checkered tiles. Really, what was with these guys and always going for his clothes?

Straightening aforementioned clothes, the guard approached the guy he’d kicked across the hall, pausing only briefly to scoop up the flashlight he’d dropped. It took him under a minute to have both of them cuffed and most definitely out for either the rest of the night, or until cops got off their fat, useless asses and got themselves to the museum for pickup.

As fun as it was to let them find him first, the sounds reverberating through the museum were becoming more than a little concerning. He did have a job to do, and just going off the quality of the goons assigned to catch him; these guys weren’t professional enough to know how to handle the antiques they were trying to steal. So much as a chip and who would be blamed? The Night guard, that was who. Well, him and the overseer who hadn’t listened about those laser cages, but that dumbass would have deserved it, because come on, lasers? Those were among the easiest securities to short out.

By the time he got there, the gaggle of would be burglars has already deactivated the laser systems, a and were in the process of shoving the collection of fourteenth century silver wear into a duffle bag like it was a jumble of common tin cutlery. Old meant fragile and next to impossible to replace. They couldn’t have stolen something from a modern arts exhibit?

”Hey.” He didn’t bother sneaking up on them. “Museums are for looking, do yourselves a favor and go rob a jeweler’s.” Jewelers’ had insurance; no amount of money would replace a six hundred year old decorative sword if these guys melted it down for scraps.

”Shut him up ‘fore he calls the cops.” Not even a backwards glace and they went the, ‘attack the guard,’ route instead. Not that he was complaining about it, but as his fist found a nose that would never be straight again after this, he was glad that his faith in humanity was pretty much nonexistent already. No room for him to be disappointed by the usual stupidity of Gotham’s criminal element.

”Cops already called, Professor.” The guard said when driving his knee into a solar plexus brought his face close enough for his words to carry through the screaming.

The two remaining, stepped over their fallen associate, the one without a broken nose, got his gun out first, so he got his hands crushes by the guard’s heavy duty flashlight first. The other tried to use his gun as a club, see not very professional, and didn’t have the time to rectify his mistake before he got an elbow to his already broken nose and an uppercut to his jaw.

”And that’s a wrap folks.” He spread his arms out and hopped over one of the groaning bodies, kicking the gun further away as he moved towards the windows to get a look at the sirens he heard growing nearer. “Bet I get a bonus for this.”

There was a scuffle behind him, he spun on his heel, expecting there to have been a sixth burglar that he’d missed and got a heel to his gut that had him spinning even further, knocking the uniform cap off his head and sending him crashing into the nearest wall. Before he could even process what had happened he was on the floor, breath knocked out of him.

”Ouch.” He missed body armor, and he was changing out the shoes for ones with better grip first thing in the morning, he could always take them off and slide around in his socks when he didn’t need the friction. But first, he raised his swimming head to get a look at this new opponent he’d stupidly had his guard down for. He got into these kinds of habits, and when he got back on the streets, he was a dead man.

”Oh my God, I am so sorry.” Yeah, she sure sounded concerned, crouched in front of him within seconds, holding out his cap in offering. “The surveillance is out and thought you were a…” she froze, going still as the statues over at the Greek exhibit when she her eyes locked with his. “Jason?”

”Batgirl,” he snatched his cap from hands of the newest bearer of that specific cowl got to his feet.

”You’re here… what are you doing here?” Concern gone, now she sounded more like she was spoiling for a fight.

Great, Jason bit back the groan that was building behind his throat. ”Working.” He said and gripped Broken-Hands goon by his armpits to start dragging him to the others he’d left in the lobby, ready for the cops. “Now go away, crisis averted, you can go watch a warehouse explode or something.”

He got halfway down the hall before her quick, not-light-enough footsteps caught up to him.

”Hey, what are you doing here, are they, like, smuggling drugs in the paintings, or is there a conspiracy in the paintings, or…” She planted herself in his path, hands on her hips, “you’re here to assassinate some museum loving crimelord aren’t you?”

”Nope.” Jason tried to keep his tone light, to keep his frustration from bleeding in while he dragged his goon past her fast as he could.

Couple seconds later and she was back in his path, same hands-on-hips stance as before, like she thought it made her look authoritative. “Then what are you doing?”

”Working.” He repeated with a huff as he tossed Broken-Hands on top of the other two, then turned to head back to the middle-ages exhibit. “Now asks me that again, so I can give you that exact same answer again.”

“Okay,” she said spreading out her arms to block the door, a smile that might have signaled genuine amusement, had there not been so much apprehension behind it, curled on her lips. “What are you doing here?”

Jason blinked at her, she cocked her head to the side, her chin upturned in… a challenge? Really? “I work here.” He repeated, yet again, and tried to duck under her arms so he could finish the cleanup.

“Yeah, and Robin’s a natural blonde.” She got halfway through jabbing one of her fingers against his chest before she pressed the hand against the wall again. “ What are you planning, Todd?”

”Ooh, ya know my last name, how sure I am to listen to you now.” He batted her hand away and hurried past her. “And that’s just a variation of the same question.”

”So give me variation of an answer, but a variation that makes sense, maybe?”

He was tempted, sorely tempted to say he was planning on building kryptonite bombs and laying them out in the parking lot to catch superman or something, but he doubted very much she’d see the humor in that. “I’m planning on getting these guys outta her fast as possible so I can clear the next level of candy crush.”

”I don’t believe you.”

”I don’t care.”

”Oh, c’mon, the last time I saw you, you said I was gonna die which, coming from you has some pretty terrifying implications, and now you got nothing to monologue?”

”Die if ya want, it’s none of my business.” He hefted up the bigger of the remaining goons and slung the other over his shoulder. Hard to believe she’d found it all that terrifying with the way she was stomping after him now.

She muttered something about his strength level when he walked past her again, then shook her head. “And it was your business before? Or is Batgirl above your criticism, far as I heard, ya never went after C… the other one either.” She sounded offended, like him just genuinely not giving a damn any more was somehow an affront, and what would he have criticized an apparently perfect fighter for anyway?

Jason stopped himself and counted to ten under his breath, then with a heavy sigh, he turned to look at her, dragged his eyes over the new Batgirl’s suit, he could come up with half a dozen things to criticize, but he settled for just two. “You gonna keep your hair that long, ya shoulda at least tucked it into your suit, and the full face covering was better, less chance of breathing in the Rogue of the week’s airborne toxins, maybe some more armor?...” A lot more armor, if only for the sake of whoever was stuck stitching that thing up every time she got it torn.

”Did you just… criticize me like it’s a chore.” She muttered running a hand through her bright hair, features gone from affronted to bemused in the matter of a moment.

Jason shrugged and kept going. “And this is why I don’t bother.” He dumped the would-be defilers of his perfect record and rolled his shoulders to ease the strain carrying their asses had put on them. “You gonna leave now?”

”Why, you want some privacy to shoot those guys?” She asked, folding her arms.

No, that would have gotten him fired, but Jason didn’t bother trying to explain that. “The cops will be here in a couple minutes. You really wanna be here for that?”

”Why not? We got a good working relationship.”

”Yeah, maybe they’ll cut you down when I hang you from your cape.”

He would have, but he wasn’t risking his captives getting out of his sight just to get into it with Batgirl, he didn’t want to have to explain to the overseer why he’d kicked her out of the museum if the surveillance system went back on anyway. He’d been through worse, he could handle standing in a room for five minutes. Still, he had to count to more than just ten to keep himself calm.

”So… candy crush?” She looked up at him after only a couple seconds of silence. “I can’t figure out how to get past level five-three-four.”

Jason sighed and pulled his cap to shield a little more of his eyes from her. He wasn’t talking to Batgirl about candy crush because he didn’t want to talk to Batgirl. It had nothing to do with the fast that he was close to rage quitting and hadn’t gotten anywhere near that far.

***

”Your hair looks a lot better than last time.” She ventured while the cops dragged the burglars up and out to the waiting patrol cars.

Jason hastily stopped running his hand through his hair and slapped on his cap to hide the red locks from view. “Don’t talk to me.” He’d already had a shock blanket laid over his shoulders by those useless bastards, he was required to give a statement before he could lock himself in his office until they all left, he did not want to deal with her anymore.

”Then don’t be terrifying, I talk when I’m nervous.” She let her cape fall over her shoulders.

Jason motioned to his superman themed shock blanket, his eyebrows raised. She let out an endearing chuckle and he rolled his eyes, suppressing his own smile. The cops, useless dumbasses, lost their hold on one of the guys and he made a run for it, they caught him again, but the guy was both nursing bruised ribs and he’d been cuffed, he shouldn’t have gotten away to begin with, Jason scoffed.

”Okay, fine. Hey, does Oracle know about this? Cause if she doesn’t she’s gonna flip out when I tell her, but maybe the blanket will…”

”Nobody knows, and you’d better keep it that way.” He growled out, more from reflex than anything else. He knew it was pointless, it didn’t matter what he did now, they were probably already developing tracers for his location, finding out where he lived, where he did his grocery shopping. And fuck it; it was only a matter of time before they showed up again.

”Aaand we’re back to terrifying.” She put a couple more feet between them, and then settled in to tapping her foot against the waxed linoleum tiles, her head angling around to survey the room. She was blessedly quiet the few minutes it took the cops to approach them. One of looked new, freckled and young and a little pudgy, the other… well he looked like his partner if his partner had been left out in the sun to prune.

Jason took in a breath, and prepared himself for dealing with them, but they bypassed him, heading right for the Batgirl instead.

”I know you Bat’s don’t usually stay around long enough for the reports, but since you are, uh…” The cop tapped a pen against his notebook. “You wouldn’t mind giving us a rundown of what happened here, uh, Batgi..., Miss Batgirl?”

”It’s just Batgirl.” She said it plainly enough, but Jason noticed the way she stood a little taller and her demeanor brightened with pride. “And I was…”

”Furry.” Jason coughed into his hand, drawing the attention of both cops and more ire from Little Miss Batgirl. He bunched the fabric of his blankets in his hands, and plastered his face with all the innocence he had left in him.

Batgirl lowly grumbled something under her breath, and turned back to the cops. “I wasn’t here for most of it, you’ll have to ask that grouchy night guard what happened.” She flicked her finger at him like she had gum stuck to the end of it.

”Uh.” As one, the cops looked between Jason and Batgirl, if he was being honest, Jason would have said he found it a little creepy, but no one was asking there. “Right,” the older one said, his voice gentle as the touch of a feather while the younger lightly patted Jason’s back. “Would you be okay walking us through what happened here son?”

”Should we get him another blanket?” The younger one asked her, his eyes gone incredibly wide.

”He does look a little cold…” Batgirl reached towards Jason and pulled the Superman blanket more tightly about his shoulders.

Younger cop nodded once. “I’ll go…”

”No!” Jason brought down his hand in a cutting motion and pulled the blanket off him. “I’m fine.”

”You’re sure?” Batgirl asked, grinning at him.

Jason huffed out another deep breath, but refrained from rolling his eyes. Sure, he knew security guards in Gotham, any city with supervillains really, were known for being useless, but this was just freaking ridiculous. “Yeah I’m sure,” he balled up the blanket and threw it at her face before getting a shocked squeaking noise out of her before he looked back to the cops and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Right this way.” He turned and set a brisk pace, leading them back to the ‘crime scene’.

”Careful guys, he’s very, very delicate right now!” Batgirl punctuated her call with a light chuckle.

Jason stopped walking and spared a couple seconds to fix her with a scathing glare that had made pimps jump out of windows to get away from him. All it made her do was hold onto the balled up blanket a little tighter.

***

”Jason Todd, left out the Peter, aged twenty three, working as a night guard at the museum for about six months.” Barbara droned on as she scrolled down the pages of data that filled her computer screen. “Good record, punches in and out on time.” She shrugged and let out a puff of air, holding up her hands on either side of her. “The only thing he really lied about on his applications is his age.”

”That’s all.” Steph was leaning over the back of Barbara’s chair so she could read over the woman’s shoulder. “Is there some kind of mystical artifact coming in that we don’t know of, or like, a mafia owned restaurant across the street?”

”Closest mafia owned anything to that museum is a massage parlor five blocks away, I’ve hacked their feeds, and facial recognition has no hits on Jason, red-haired or otherwise as far back as the three months they have on file.” She pressed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and hummed softly. “Good reviews, I’ll have to send someone over to check it out.”

Steph pouted at Barbara, who’d closed the tap on Jason to begin researching the massage parlor. “Really?”

”What? It’s the best way to gather intell from those kinds of places.” She minimized that window too. “Wendy could use some time away from work.”

”I meant the stuff about Jason, Red Hood, you know, the crimelord. Didn’t our great and mighty Batman spend a month looking for him a while back?”

”And now you’ve found him, there’s no sign he’d been engaging in major criminal activity, we’ve got nothing other than a place of work, that’s eight hours out of the day we know where he is if we need to find him.” Stephanie opened her mouth to interject, but Bab’s held up a hand to silence her. “Right now, the best thing we can do is leave him where he is and not provoke him.”

Steph thought back to his chagrinned expression when a young medic had draped a shock blanket over his shoulders, then the look he’d sent her when he’d been leading the cops away. Damnit.

Barbara must have seen something of what Steph was thinking, because she turned from her screen and poked at Steph’s arm, causing Steph to shake herself back to the present. “What?” She asked.

”I think I mighta provoked him already.” She bit her lip and looked back at the screen.

***

There was no assassination attempt waiting for Steph when she took the bus home that morning. Her mom ‘woke her up’ for college with a plate of waffles and soft kiss to her forehead before crashing from a long nightshift at the hospital.

She wasn’t stabbed on her commute to the college, and though she watched the rooftops the whole way there from beneath any cover she could find, she never noticed the glint of a sniper hiding waiting for a chance to take a shot at her.

By lunchtime, both the all-nighter she’d pulled, and the phil480 class that was supposed to be easy had tired her out too much for her to bother with the added vigilance. If someone was coming for her, it would most likely be at night, when she was Batgirl, and Batgirl could take care of former crimelords who she’d already gotten the drop on twice. Even if she couldn’t, Barbara wasn’t going to dig any further so there was no way Jason would find out Steph had told anyone where he was.

Like the others, she thought there more important things to do that worry about what one Rogue might when there was every chance that all she had to do was put away her stick, not poke the hornet’s nest and he’d leave her alone.

That was a mistake.

Phil480 was the last class of the last day of the week, and Steph was, as per usual for the last minutes of her last classes, recovering from a not-very refreshing nap, waiting to be released from the weekday purgatory. It was almost over, the professor had already left to grade papers in the privacy of his office, and the rest of them where just gathering up their strengths to leave too.

”Stephanie.” A voice called out to Steph, and it took her a couple seconds to pull herself to something more closely resembling wakefulness.

”Uh huh.” Steph yawned and tried to put a name to the girl’s face, Bethany, Brianne, something with a B…

”Cute red head asked me to bring this to you.” Something-With-A-B said, sliding a glittery purple envelope into Steph’s view.

”Huh?” Steph dragged a hand over her face and wiped away a thin trickle of drool with the sleeve of her sweater before reaching out to claim the envelope. Her slow mind unhelpfully chugging along through the list of red heads she knew. Barbara probably.

”God, could you be any slower?” Oh, Jordanna, and she was pissed again, great. She snatched up the letter before Steph could, and turned it over in her hands.

It was only then, when the Jordanna brought the envelope between Steph’s eyes and the harsh lights, that she noticed the feint outline of the wires behind the paper. Uh oh, red head, sketchy envelope, wires. Shit.

”Uh, I need that back now.” Steph said, reaching for the envelope though she didn’t know why exactly, it would serve Jordanna right to be blown to tiny little pieces by an ex-crimelord.

”Why.” Jordanna stepped out of reach, a mean smile on her face as she slipped her finger under the flap. “Who’s it from.”

”Jordanna, I swear, if you open that…” Too late.

There was a ripping sound, the envelope being torn open, and Steph had just enough time to yell for everyone to get to cover, duck under the desk, hear some shocked variations on screams and then a… poof?

A poof. She was expecting a BOOM. The screams now were now of a higher pitch and interspersed with laughter.

”What the… “ Steph peeked out from under her desk and found that her seat had been coated in glitter, edible glitter, going by the sudden sweetness of the air. A slow look at the rest of the place showed that, everything else around Jordanna had been met with a similar fate. Furniture and students alike.

Everything covered in sparkly purple sugar, and Jordanna, fuming with the envelope still clutched in her hands, had gotten the worst of it.

”I did tell you not to open it.” Steph said, slowly inching back under the desk

Yeah, screw not poking the hornet’s nest, Steph was going to do… something to that asshole.

***

She was standing in that one shadowy corner of his office watching him slaughter his way through the hordes of zombies that assaulted his avatar. He’d cleared it out just that day for exactly this type of situation, tilted the lamps away, moved the table overflowing with the day guard’s magazines to another corner and shifted both the console and soft indigo chair so he could keep the corner at his field of visions, edge.

The only time his eyes left his massacre was to shift across the security feeds displayed on the other screens and the silent alarms. He was two waves away from beating his previous high score when she finally got tired of him ignoring her and spoke.

”I know you know I’m here.”

”Uh huh, ya need something else for your investigation into that nefarious museum heist?” They had him trapped in a corner of the house, and the ones that climbed the walls were coming at him in droves faster than he could get at them, damnit, didn’t look like he was beating that record unless he got real lucky. Considering there was a Bat in his office though, it was safe to say this definitely wasn’t one of his luckier days.

”You know why I’m here.” She stomped out of her hiding place. “That was… I can have you arrested for that you know, endangerment and destruction of private property, and you’re just… Edible glitter, really Todd, that’s, it’s petty’s what it is, and you know I couldn’t not tell them where you are. Do you know how much trouble I would have been in if you did something, and I knew where you were, and I didn’t tell them?”

There she went with the last name thing again, so scary. He rolled his eyes. “Hold up, did you just admit to the dangerous criminal that you did the thing he warned you not to do because you think he’d stoop to a childish campus prank?” He gasped and got out his final in game grenade. He was going out, but he was taking as many of those undead bastards with him as humanly possible. “You really did need some criticism.”

”I thought it was a real bomb! I thought people were gonna get exploded, then I had to clean it up, all of it, after class, do you know how long it took?!.”

”Pow.” Jason said as the screen lit up with the fire of his explosion, dasvidaniya assholes, his view tilted as his avatar fell and the game over screen informed him that he was dead. He sighed, and he’d been so close too. He spun lazily in his chair to face her. “And I’d have thought Batgirl had better things to do than bother a night guard.” He motioned at the window with his controller. “I’ll let you know if I get taken hostage or whatever.”

”Yeah, you’re real scary, Jason.” She said, scowling down at him. “Y’know, Oracle said to leave you alone, cause you weren’t making any kind of scene, hell, I think she was more interested in the massage parlor five blocks from here. No one gives any kind of crap what you’re doing right now, so on top of being petty, it was pointless.”

”You done yet?” Jason cocked his head at her, ignoring the brief stabbing he felt in his chest. “Yes? Good.” He spun back to his game and respawned to begin the map again. Maybe he should try out the multiplayer lobby for once, kill some time.

”Unrepentant asshole.” She scuffed at the ground and left through the door instead of the window.

The countdown started up again, but Jason didn’t really see it. “No one gives a crap.” He scoffed, shooting a glance at the window. Yeah, what else was new. Just more to whine about at that week's session