Melted Gold

Grievous

A young man with ebony hair and sapphire eyes walked the streets of Gotham with a lolli-pop in hand, cat hoodie and ripped jeans. He looked harmless as he walked the sidewalk, the hood hiding freckled face as he turned down an ally and continued to move with little care to the world around him. He popped the candy in his mouth and leaned against a wall for a moment, humming a song in his head before he took a deck of cards out from his pocket and started to play with them, shuffling them from one hand to another. He inspected his black painted nails before he shoved off the wall and continued to walk.

The sun was down by the time the kid stopped again, creeping up on what looked to be an abandoned apartment complex, ducking low to keep out of view. He peeked into the building before vaulting over a shattered window and crept inside. He inched closer to the stairs, crawled up them on all fours to stay as low to the floor as he could. Keeping himself on hands and knees he slipped passed rooms filled with druggies and drunks lost in their own addictions. He found a room with caution tape plastered to the door and pulled out one of the playing cards and jimmied the lock, swinging open the door and shutting it tight before flicking on the lights and looking around.

"Okay, I'm in," Jason said into the walkie and started to ransack the room.

"Be careful," Joker's voice hissed back, "Grab what I told you to and then leave, do you understand?"

"Got it," Jason said and opened all the drawers, pried loose all the squeaky floor boards, pulling everything out from hidden crevasses and stashed them in to his hoodie. Inside the closet he and grabbed the purple suit and scrambled to unpin the deadly silken flower off the lapel before attaching it to his sweater. "On my way out."

"Hurry up, kid," Joker hissed and Jason quickly made his was from the building and out the door, ducking back in to the crowd and vanishing in to the background, pulling another lollipop from his pocket and popping it in his mouth, playing with the petals of the silk flower on his chest.

Joker had started sending him out on away missions a few weeks after they left Mama's. They were never in one place for long, grabbing what they needed from little bolt holes around the city and moving somewhere different. Joker had dyed Jason's hair black to make it easier to lose him in a crowd, bought him the hoodie as a joke, saying if Joker was Alice, he might as well be Cheshire Cat. They had argued over the fact that there was already a Cheshire running around but Joker said that if he put him in a white rabbit hoodie, he would be way to easy to spot in the dark. Jason said he wouldn't wear a white rabbit hoodie anyways, he'd look ridiculous.

So, Jason became the Cheshire Cat to Joker's Alice, there one moment and gone the next, vanishing as if by magic. He wove around more people and ducked around a couple corners and through ally ways, dashing down the streets and then leaving the city all together and headed for the hills and towards the warehouses, ducking inside and headed up where Joker was building a computer system.

"Hey Jack," Jason smiled and dropped everything he had found and set the flower beside it all. The pile was made out of vials and capsules, there were some memory cards and a gun, plus a few things that would seem like junk to anyone else but were deadly when used properly. Clacking teeth were a fun gag...if they didn't explode when you wound them up.

"Were you followed?" Joker asked and Jason shook his head, stripping off the cat hoodie and pulling on a t-shirt, collapsing on the mattress near by with a yawn, "Get some sleep kid, we'll get something to eat later."

"Where do you keep getting cash from, Jack?" Jason slurred and Joker gave a small smile and pressed a finger to his lips and winked, "Another secret?"

"I'm full of them," Joker said and ran his fingers through his curls, "Sleep, kid."