Chapter Text
Khoa was angry.
No, scratch that.
Khoa was mad.
A year. A year he wasted on that damned, hopeless project, a year of self-discipline and limitations, of grinding his teeth, bound by his promise to Bruce like by the old rusty shackles. A prisoner of his devotion.
It didn't take long for him to feel like a caged tiger. A wild beast, trying to pass for the attack dog. Bruce didn't even have to put a collar on him - for Khoa did it himself.
But he had enough.
Only a fool could repeat this looping broken dance again and again and again and hope for different results. Khoa was many things, but he was never a fool.
He watches the screen, looking at the Batman incorporated members for one last time before disabling the trackers that he put on them. Hot irritation is brewing inside him as he sees them catching the last clown from the Joker Incorporated group, just to put him behind bars from where he could probably run off sooner or later. Not for long, though. Khoa will return for his head soon.
Joker's actions were an insult. The words he said to Khoa were an insult. His mere proximity in the presence of Khoa was an insult. And nobody could insult the Ghost-maker and come out alive. Even the thought was laughable.
He was a living representation of everything he and Bruce despised in this world. Ugly, raw, pure violence. Joker was a vile poisonous monster who stained too many people on his way, inflicting them with his over-consuming madness, bathing in the pain and misery of others. Sadism for the sake of sadism.
Bao Pham, Harley Quinn, Bruce Wayne. Batman incorporated. They all suffered from him. Perhaps, it was Khoa's job to put an end to his miserable existence.
To clear his head, he tracks down a human trafficking ring and gives himself to the primal pleasure of the hunt. He does not hold back this time, first in a year, free of his no-kill promise. That experiment was a failure, resulting in thousands of innocents losing their lives because of a bunch of low-life clowns. And so, he doesn't hold back.
He kills.
He maims and hurts and bathes his blades in the crimson color of blood, not even in the mood to play a little cat-and-mouse game with those sinners - just simply slicing them up.
There are a few people he keeps alive, of course. After taking a limb or a few, he drops them on a floor, standing on the top, victorious. They will be a breathing lesson for those who dare to think about repeating their crimes.
"You are free to go wherever you wish," Khoa announces, breaking the locks on the large-sized cages. The territory reeks of omegan fear and terror, mixed with the bitter scent of shedded blood. "There is an ambulance outside for those who require it. Your capturers will not harm you anymore." He adds as the dozen of scared eyes trace his movements.
The victims don't move out from their cells, fearfully stepping away from him when he comes closer. Blood drops from the edge of his swords, as he swallows a pang of irritation at their sheep-minded stupidity.
"Do not waste your life on fear," He says serenely, throwing swords back in the air, where they click to the magnetic harness. "It is no use to you if it stands between you and the exit from your cage."
*
Bruce is restless.
Something shifted in the world, and it feels like only he can sense it. A feeling of overwhelming, horrifying dread follows him wherever he goes, never letting him fully breathe, or eat, or drink. He is always on edge, prepared for something - something that he doesn't even know. A low blow. A dagger in the back. A bullet in the alley.
He taught himself how to be a predator. He made his body into a weapon. His soul is a part of the rustling shadows of the night. But it's still…not enough to ease his ever-persisting, eating-away terror.
If not Damian, he would probably lose his mind in one of those days.
Or so he thinks, jumping off his armchair and dropping the book he's been reading when he hears the creaks upstairs again. The silent portrait of Alfred can't help him now, and so he runs past it, stopping before Damian's room.
It's not the first time he heard something strange in their house. Now and then, there is an unexplainable whispers in the dark, quiet steps, sounds of doors opening and closing. And every time, there is no one here. Bruce checked everything from the basement to the roof, watched every camera tape, and found absolutely nothing.
Maybe, this house is hosting a ghost among them. After all, it's not such a wild thought - he saw firsthand what Zatanna was dealing with on her missions.
Or maybe, old chum, it's your wild imagination, Zur chuckles inside of him, before Bruce successfully shushes him.
"Damian…?" Bruce asks, after a second of hesitation. He knocks gently, not wanting to disturb his hormonal omega son. There is a faint sigh, and then the door opens in one quick motion, and Damian looks up at him expectantly. "Did you also hear a strange noise?"
"Perhaps just water pipes, Father," Damian says, raising one of his dark thick eyebrows and returning to his seat. He is somehow sitting at his phone while also sitting at his computer, and chatting in both of them. "Or maybe a small critter. Which, by the way, I ask you to spare if you actually find them. It's not their fault they don't know what the rent is.”
"Hmh," Bruce says. Unsurely, he fidgets with the hem of his cardigan. Every time he warned Damian about something in their house, it was a false alarm. He feels like a boy who screamed wolf.
Damian makes a pause in his important activities and glances at Bruce more attentively. Bruce can smell the faint omegan soothing scent of his, that he just learned to use. Embarrassingly, he feels like their roles are sort of reversed - that he is a scared child, and Damian is his worried parent.
“Are you feeling well, father?” Damian asks, his voice going softer. Bruce flashes him a reassuring smile, trying to look more stable: he is not sure that he's doing a good job.
“Of course, son. Probably just need to sleep more.” He says, yawning into his sleeve. “Those night patrols are going to give me gray hair soon.”
“Tt. I told you, I could've managed most of them. You don't need to strain yourself.” He earnestly says. Bruce feels that his heart is filled with overwhelming love for him. “Now, if you please. Me and Jon have a boss to defeat. So go to sleep and close the door.” He orders, picking up the PlayStation joystick from the table.
“Yes, sir.” Bruce murmurs, rolling his eyes with faint annoyance but feeling warmth and peacefulness inside.
It's alright, he thinks.
Probably, just wind after all.
*
There are a few raggedy boxes in the corridor of the Haunt when Khoa comes back. He curiously tilts his head, reading the labels written on duct tape by the scratchy handwriting. Clothes. Stuff. Weapons.
"Oh. Hi. Didn't hear you." Bao says with a characteristic lisp (a result of brain trauma after his fights with Joker's goons, as it seems), walking out of the door frame, his posture still lingering with the echo of teenager-like awkward hunching, even though he is a full grown alpha now, not the barely presented angry pup that he was in the beginning. Ah. Kids grow so fast.
"Hello, young man." Khoa greets, relaxing against the wall, arms crossed on his chest. "Your training is over, I suppose?"
"Well. Yeah. Finally getting out of your sight." Bao shrugs, playing indifference.
Khoa absently notes that he should've taught the boy the art of deception along their regular program.
"And so, where are you heading?" He asks out of curiosity. He can't say he will miss the kid. It was not in his capacity to. Not towards most people.
Possibly, he would forget about him in the first few weeks. But there was this familiarity in them living together, something akin to faint pride that Clownhunter was able to go through everything Khoa put him.
"I'm not sure," Bao says, glancing down.
His bruised hands clutch the straps of his old backpack, which now looks different from the rest of his style. Actually, Khoa never once saw him look so put together before. Gone were the clumsy punk clothes, replaced with casual wear.
"I was thinking... about taking a break. I need to figure myself out. Bludhaven seems alright in the autumn. After that - maybe..." He scratches his neck, seemingly embarrassed about something, until the set of his brows frowns with a daring determination, and he looks at Khoa's face, "I have a contact with Phantom-one. He invited me into their organization - they do what the Justice League or Batman Incorporated feels too high and mighty to do."
Hm. Interesting. His ex-stepson teaming up with his ex-student is not what he's been expecting, but that probably will work. Phantom-one is a melancholic, somehow timid omega, and Bao is a temperamental alpha - both of them could gain something from the perspective of the other. Yet, there was a faint blush on Bao’s tan face, and Khoa only hoped that it didn't mean that he should expect any step-grandchildren soon.
That thought is a bit unraveling.
"Well. Give me a favor, Clownhunter. Don't get murdered out there. I'd hate to waste my time on something so insufficient." He waits a bit to see Baos' nostrils twitch and his scent brew with annoyed anger, and smiles, lopsided and sly, inside of his helmet. "Besides. The world does need more crime fighters like you."
He puts a hand on the kid's shoulder. Bao looks up at him with a barely concealed surprise on his face, and then turns away, with a shy sort of grin.
“Yeah.” He mumbles, shoulders stiff but smile persistent. “Try not to die too, old man.”
*
When the news from Gotham spreads and Icon alarms him about it, when he finally sees Batman running around on the dirty-gray streets on the cameras in his Ghostnet again, Khoa doesn't think much. He navigates the Ghost stream to that forsaken, cursed city.
Not because he needs to see Bruce again after he was in a coma from the moment Insomnia got defeated, no. It just would be mature to discuss the Batman incorporated news in person, along with his decision.
He couldn't hope for Bruce to understand and take his side. Bruce was the most stubborn omega Khoa ever met. Yet, with all the rumors about the split in that weird little bat family and the recent isolation that Bruce is exposed to under the antics of Catwoman, maybe he will be slightly more vulnerable to Khoa's persuasion. Maybe.
Autumn paints Gotham into its natural colors of melancholic decadence and decay.
Khoa hates Gotham - with a burning passion - but he can't deny that right now, it has some strange charm. In a way, it looks like a manifestation of Bruce's trauma. An isolated demiplane, born from his pain and misery. Gloomy and weeping and lonesome.
His steps are feathery light as he gets closer to the Brownstone house of his old friend, where they spend a few good months at the moment of their reconciliation. It is nothing like the Wayne Manor, and even less like the Batcave, but any time Khoa suggested buying it back for him or at least sponsoring him with a bigger and better-equipped place, Bruce just scoffed, scrunching his nose.
"I have everything I need here," he was saying, in a quiet intimate murmur, and then glancing at Khoa coyly, "especially now."
Khoa watches the dance of fallen leaves for a moment, until they sink into the moonlit puddle, pushed down by the wind. He turns the invisibility mode on his suit and follows the familiar steps into Batman's lair.
Breaking into Bruce's nest is nothing he hasn't done before. The Manor was much more entertaining to explore, with its secrets, the old whispers of the wooden floors, the watching eyes on paintings of Bruce's ancestors (half of whom were declared mad - a fitting upbringing. A tragic Prince of Gotham, heir of the cursed bloodline, Ophelia - like figure in the rain stained window)
Khoa stalks the walls of Bruce's house, noting the details about it. It is warm. Well lived in. There is some attempt to keep the place clean, but Bruce has always been pathetically bad at self-care and basic survival skills, too used to having someone to watch over him, dependent on it despite being orphaned; so Khoa side eyes the mess that just lies around in the chaotic style. Some of it looks like it belongs to the teenager, and based on the rumors about Batman only having Robin by his side lately, Khoa has a confirmation that his youngest, Damian, is somewhere around.
Not home now, as it seems.
Thankfully.
He finds Bruce, as expected, in the garage, hunched over the table where he works on his gadgets. If the upstairs was a mess, then there was no word to describe how unkempt the place was down here.
When he gets closer, it becomes clear that Bruce himself isn't in the best shape. He is captivating as always, of course. Khoa notes, with a rumbling pleasure in his chest, that Bruce's hair is finally getting longer, almost like it was when they first met.
His favorite length.
A soft mop of wild, raven black curls, begging to be touched.
Bruce looks annoyingly domestic, ridiculously demure in the long and loose chunky cardigan, and in the dark blue pajama pants.
But. Despite all this, despite the look of a little omega housewife, the aura around him is uneasy.
There is something very wrong about all of this.
Khoa stalks closer, to have a look at his face, at his eyes, and hears the chaotic, incomprehensible whispering, sees the dark circles on the pale skin, and tastes the frantic anxiety poisoning the air.
Bruce suddenly turns his whole body towards him, and the Batarang flies at Khoa at full speed, aiming for the heart.
"As always, full of drama." He notes, throwing the batarang behind his back carelessly after catching it between his fingers. His suit turns off the invisibility mode, and Bruce looks surprised.
"Khoa?..." He asks, with a suspicion in his quiet voice.
"Expected someone else?" Khoa quirks an eyebrow.
"I…no."
“Hn. I believe you, this time.” Khoa grins, lopsided.
Bruce smiles back at him - it's a little bit of an exhausted, sleepy smile, the one where he tilts his head ever so slightly to the side, looking all cute. It makes Khoa jittery every time with no avail, and he steps closer, taking his helmet off, while Bruce leaves his little bat toys, and wipes his oiled hands with an old unwashed towel on the table.
“You definitely need a new butler, pretty boy.” Khoa murmurs, before they meet in a kiss. Bruce's stale scent of anxiety and stress changes with bursts of a soft omegan sweetness. Khoa cradles his hair in his hand, and Bruce sighs, resting his head on his shoulder after they part.
That's alright. Khoa can lift the weight off his shoulders to bear it instead.
They stand like this for some time.
“By your living conditions, I assume it was not an exaggeration that Batman and Robin split from the rest?” Khoa muses. Bruce gets rigid in his hold and pulls away to fidget with his gadgets once again.
Curious.
“It's fine,” Bruce says, voice low.
Khoa didn't even ask him if it was.
“Then we find ourselves in similar predicaments, I'm afraid.” He answers, waving his hand in the air.
“What do you mean?” Bruce frowns.
“Bruce.” Khoa tsks. “Do you really not know?”
Bruce looks up at him, lost. Khoa sighs, crossing his hands and leaning on the table.
“Come on. Use that pretty head of yours, we both know it's not only here for aesthetics.”
“I-...”
“Seriously. You are like a child with too many toys, Bruce.” Khoa scolds. “Your idea about Batman Incorporated? Does the name ring a bell?” He mocks. Bruce does look ashamed for essentially forgetting his own project.
“Alright. Sorry. Life has been…Life has been insane lately, and I didn't check how you are doing.”
“Not me, anymore.”
Bruce gives him a confused look again, and Khoa loses his patience. He calls Icon to show Bruce the recordings from France, where the Joker Incorporated team got them, and where the Batman Incorporated Empire fell.
He watches Bruce's reactions. Drinks in his emotions.
Bruce is upset to see Joker, devastated about their losses, and heartbroken about Khoa's promise to deal with him - about him threatening the rest of the Batman Incorporated to stay out of his way.
“Minkhoa.” Bruce turns to him, eyes sparkling with anger, like pools of thunder. He only calls Khoa by his full name when he is pissed.
“I know what you are going to say, I am?” Khoa scowls, crossing his arms on his chest.
"Don't you understand? He is playing with you! It's his mind game, and you are letting him win by playing by his rules! It was never about Batman incorporated - it was about me, and it was about you, and your promise to me, because he wants me isolated. But now you're just following the path he set for us."
"I don't understand?" Khoa scoffs, with a mean half smile twisting his lips, "It's you who doesn't get it, Bruce. Wingman is dead. Thousands of innocents are dead. All because of your stupid, naive rule-"
"Don't you dare!" Bruce snarls, baring his tiny omega fangs. "Don't you dare blame me for it."
"Well. Whose fault is that, then? If we simply eliminated those sinners, people who actually deserve to live would still be here."
Bruce shakes his head, his eyes glistening with a wet despair. "You don't get to choose who deserves to live and who deserves to die. You don't, Khoa. It's wrong."
"Ah, and there it is again. Your stubborn naivety. Your childish outlook. A kindergarten level of morality." They circle in the room like two feral animals caught up in a strange dance. "The whole picture eludes you because the only place you look at is far behind you in your past." He hisses, jumping at Bruce suddenly like a snake making an attack on its prey. He grabs Bruce's wrists, and forcefully pins them to the cabinet behind them, making it shake from the sheer force. A vase falls down and shatters with a loud noise, but they are too caught up with each other to even notice. There are less than ten centimeters that keep them apart, but it feels like a billion miles.
"You promised me!" Bruce cries out, with a childish whine creeping in his voice; his rosy omegan scent getting spiked with distress and rage. He struggles in Khoa's hold, and Khoa knows that if he really wanted to, he would be free. "You promised me to try and I was such a fucking idiot for believing you, again -"
"I did try. I tried, for you, but I will not participate in something I do not deem successful." Khoa shakes him once, wanting to bring Bruce to his senses.
Bruce's beautiful face twists into a sharp grimace. Khoa can feel his pulse, his quick heartbeat.
"You're weak, Minkhoa. You talk so much about me being weak, pathetic, vulnerable, whatever - but it's you who couldn't handle a little portion of what I was enduring for years."
"Urgh, forget about our competition, Bruce! It's not about it!" Khoa snarls, desperate to make Bruce understand. "You will die if you continue like this. He is obsessed with you, and you will end your misguided path in the teeth of that maniac." Bruce just stares at him, closed off. "You have to admit it, Bruce. This is pure masochism. The guilt that you can't fucking let go is so grand, that all you're life you've been on a path of doomed self-assigned martyrdom, and your rogue gallery, the Joker - they are just tools of your eternal punishment."
Bruce growls, now truly resisting. He flips them up, his fists grabbing Khoas's cape.
"You think your logic is so perfect. What about the fact that you are a murderer too, Khoa? You were going to kill Clownhunter for killing twenty-seven people - all of which were criminals. Isn't that what you do? You are so quick to punish others for the crime you commit hourly."
"I-" Khoa starts, but then gets distracted.
"What's with your hand?" He suddenly asks, grabbing Bruce's - metallic - wrist. "Who did this?"
There must be something utterly dark to his face, that makes Bruce look at him warily, quickly losing the fire. Khoa's eyes are probably pitch black, as they always are when he gets angry like that.
Bruce is uncomfortable. Khoa made him uncomfortable, that he could read from the body language - but it didn't make him any less intense.
Bruce glances away, futilely trying to get his hand free.
"It's fine." He says.
It's fine, he says. That makes Khoa even angrier.
He squeezes the cold metal harder.
"Don't play with me. Who did this, Bruce?"
Bruce purses his lips, and after a moment, his piercing blue eyes stare at Khoa again.
"You. It was you, if you must know. You from another dimension."
Ah. Of course. The only one who is skilled enough to do so, is Khoa himself.
Realizing that he is still the one who is pressed to the wall, Khoa kicks Bruce in the stomach, not aiming to hurt but to put him down. Bruce lands on the shiny bumper of the Batmobile, and before he can stand up, Khoa pins him down again.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why would I? Ghost-maker doesn't care about anything," Bruce says, mockingly, with a bitchy sort of faux innocence in his voice, quoting Khoa's own words. His eyes gleamed with some strange sort of self-destructive madness that Khoa didn't see from the times they were teenagers.
"You are so insufferable." Khoa grinds his teeth. His whole body is like an arrow about to be sprung. It's like Bruce is deliberately trying to get under his skin. Like he riles him up to use as a tool of his self-destruction.
"Says the most arrogant, selfish man alive." Bruce spits back.
They stare at each other for a second, until their lips crash together. While Bruce's hand tries to figure out how to get under Khoa's armor plates, Khoa just grabs and rips Bruce's cotton pants apart in between his legs.
Bruce had a fire in his heart that was so magnificent it could light up the world - but instead, he crawled to Gotham, like an abused dog, like a child with Stockholm syndrome, and let it take and take until there was almost no fire in his eyes until he became a withered shadow of a shadow until there was nothing but pain in him - and Khoa can't forgive that. That someone so brilliant, so bright, wasted himself away on misery and never endless self-sacrifice that meant absolutely nothing.
"I should've just taken you away and locked you up that day you rejected my offer.” Khoa snarls, pushing Bruce down roughly. "I should've never let you decide because you don't know what is good for you. You're not fit to make adult decisions."
"Shut up," Bruce hisses as Khoa strips off his armor. “You don't fucking know anything, Minkhoa. Why do I even bother with you if the result is always the same?! You will never truly understand me.”
Khoa has a sudden, very strong urge to plunge his blades into the wicked creature. He impales Bruce on his cock instead, fast and furious, and both of them moan.
He can't bear the look on Bruce's face right now, the gleam of his hateful icy eyes, so he flips him on his stomach, and fucks him like a toy, using his omegan hips as a handle to rock him back and forth on his cock, hoping to make Bruce feel utterly helpless because that's one of their favorite games to play.
Bruce's pussy is gushing with slick. It suckles Khoa right in - hungry and needy, tight soft walls contracting and massaging his hard, hot cock.
Bruce needs him. He just doesn't understand that. Because he's a damn fool.
Khoa drags out, feeling how spurts of slick and precum cling to his cockhead, and he rubs Bruce's clit with it, grinding himself between Bruce's pussy lips. Bruce gasps and arches his back when Khoa plunges right in after delicious teasing, and his nails scratch the black hood he is sprawled on. The room is quiet, except for the loud, squelching sounds of their mating, of angry slaps of skin on skin, of the Batmobile creaking and shaking from the force of Khoa's thrusts.
His hands roam around Bruce's body, groping and squeezing his plump, omegan flesh, and stopping on those big and heavy tits to fondle them. He tugs and teases those delicate rosebuds of Bruce's nipples, wishing to take them in his mouth. Bruce can't help it, he makes an arrangement of sweet little moans, because while he trained himself to be cold and stoic in every other way, in sex he still had no walls around, no masks, and it was him at his core, overly sensitive and delicate and responsive.
The pace Khoa takes is brutal, fucking into the tight and delicious heat of Bruce's cunt as he owns it, owns him. Bruce meets his movements with his hips, the glutton for the punishment he is.
Both of them don't speak, reduced to some primal state, too enraged for coherent thoughts.
Bruce comes when Khoa grabs the locks of his raven hair and cruelly tugs it back. Body shaking and inner walls spasming, he does so with a soft, whiny cry, and stills, curling up into himself and hiding his face, trembling. He doesn't move, just lays here under the mass of Khoa's lithe body, pressing his forehead to the cold surface of his car.
He looks defeated. Khoa doesn't want him to look like that. Not in this way. It's like Khoa did something horrible. Despite all his radical beliefs, he wouldn't want to become like that other Ghost-maker, the one who cut Bruce’s hand away. A thought about reckoning flashes in his head, but he stores it for later.
Overcome by strange feelings, he leans closer, his hands cupping Bruce's scarred shoulders, slowing down. His chapped tan fingers stroke Bruce's milky skin.
"Bruce..." Murmurs he, nuzzling the sensitive and soft back of Bruce's neck. He hasn't finished, and he is still hot and heavy inside of the tight warmth of his friend's pulsing cunt, and now it feels more intimate than everything they've done this evening.
Bruce sniffs, and Khoa plants a gentle kiss on his shoulder. He knows Bruce is often very emotional after sex, like most omegas. Khoa can indulge him, even in the midst of their fighting.
Bruce glances at him, eyes sad and tired and wounded. His face is flushed and framed by curled up from the sweat hair.
Why can't you understand that I only think about your own benefit, Khoa wants to say as Bruce finally leans closer to him, but the words remain unspoken and dissolve on the tip of his tongue.
The doorbell rings upstairs, alerting both of them.
"Father? I'm home!” They hear, muted. Robin, Khoa recognizes. Damian.
“Get off me,” Bruce growls quietly, pushing Khoa aside. Khoa doesn't resist, and his hard cock obscenely slips out, shiny with Bruce's juices, red and angry with lust. “A minute, Damian.”
Bruce grabs a cloth from the remains of his torn pants and wipes away the slick that is running down his plush tights, his face is closed off and uncompromised again, and he doesn't spare Khoa a single glance as he searches for a new pair of pants in the drawer nearby.
Despite everything, Khoa feels like it was him who just was used.
He stands here, like a complete moron. The humiliation that he feels feeds the anger inside of him again.
He tucks himself and swiftly gets his armor on, feigning indifference.
When Bruce is a millimeter from the door, he shoots the batarang right in front of him, nearly slashing Bruce's neck.
“Next time I see you, Bruce, my blades will not be so merciful.” He seethes. “So stay the hell out of my way.”
Bruce gloomily grabs the batarang into his hand. It leaves the wood of the door where it was impaled with a loud pluck.
“The feelings are mutual.” He says, glaring back at Khoa with an aura of heavy, oppressive self-righteousness.
Khoa disappears as soon as Bruce opens the door.