group narrative: ra's al ghul, batman, nightwing, red hood What: Ra's gets taken down. Where: The sewers, then Ra's swank hotel. When: Now. Warnings/Rating: None.
Bruce was angrier than he’d been in a long, long time.
Helena was in a coma, hovering between life and death. Selina was, despite her claims otherwise, not okay, people had been murdered and tormented, his family put through hell, and all because of one man. This ended, now. Ra’s Al Ghul would fall. The security footage was the first step, the initial clue, and after pouring over every single frame he’d pinpointed the man they needed to follow. The executioner, because the decoy? Was not the man they were looking for. And so down into the sewers they went, the Bat plus two, and from there it was a matter of following the right paths. Eddie and his drones helped with that, and they ended up in the Financial District. Hotels, plural, and there wasn’t time to search every one, especially not if Ra’s knew they were coming. But he was nothing if not tenacious, and he refused to be stopped. There was no stopping. This was it, they were going to find him, and there were no other options.
A little digging, some putting together of pieces and following threads, and they had it narrowed down to one. Fury and rage and hate burned in his chest, and just this once, he was willing to tolerate the presence of guns. If getting Ra’s meant using any means necessary, well, then so be it. He’d done enough damage to merritt extreme force and more.
Firearms. Dick had been in the middle of an internal conundrum that had him asking Jason, being denied, feeling worse about it, grabbing his old police issue gun from Bludhaven, and then leaving it in the vehicle. He wanted Ra’s dead. If there was any time for him not to have a firearm it was then. But he somehow doubted he’d be inclined, willing, or able to stop anyone else. And he didn’t know what that meant. It meant he was willing to let someone else burn for something he wanted to do, but was unable to. Let someone else kill the man who’d killed him. Who’d taken his brother’s body. Who’d done unthinkable things to the people he loved. He was done.
He didn’t allow himself much time for the internal battle, that battle would rage on long after this one was over. And this one would end. Tonight. Regardless.
Getting caught was always a possibility; a definitive outcome given enough time.
Ra's expected nothing less from the Detective. When the lines went silent at City Hall, it was only a matter of time before he put two and two and two together to get six. So he did what he could, he saw Iris safely out, he sent what remained of his League back into the streets to vanish in the long shadows of Gotham's buildings, and Siren he sent back to the sewers she'd come from.
Then he sat down to wait. He ate dinner like he had the last time the Detective came for him, enjoyed the last glass of wine he suspected he would have in months and watched as they came on the security monitors. A single lean finger pressed the power button on the monitor, the screen going black as he rose from his chair. He refastened his suit jacket, buttons sliding back into their rightful holes. Time to find out if the Detective had found a better prison for him.
Jason didn't give Dick the gun he asked for. The question itself, that Dick would ask anybody, but particularly that he'd ask him, twisted him up. Since what had happened with the symbiote, it was a lot harder to think about death and what that meant, 'lethal force' and 'cleansing' and all the euphemisms he'd used in the past. His guns were loaded, but he hadn't touched them in weeks. It wasn't right for Dick to have one, didn't fit with the person he knew him to be, and he felt much more conflict than he could have imagined he would. He'd spent so long hoping everyone would see his side, come to his way of thinking. It didn't taste so sweet when it turned real, and they were too tangled up in it for him to even have a chance to think about why.
Plus, if anybody deserved to die tonight, it was Ra's. The man had literally killed millions of people. He'd decapitated civil servants on public television. He’d dug up Damian’s body, because a dead Damian was a better tool to him than the live version, not talking back and all. He'd put real fear into the eyes of the kids back at the warehouse, trying not to look afraid while scrabbling for their next drop of water, their next crumb. You weren't allowed to be afraid in Gotham, or the city ate you. Shreds of safety, ripped away because some pompous idiot thought it would be fun to be king for a day.
Well, the reign was over, and Jason did take a lot of satisfaction in being there to see somebody stomp on his crown. Unsettled or not, exhausted or not, there was still a cruel flame in him that burned a little brighter to see Ra's marched out, knowing what waited for him. He'd make sure that they put Ra's in a cell where not one person in shouting distance had ever heard his name.