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Chapter Text

The door is locked.  Jason tugs at it, broken fingers sliding against metal, and he can’t hold the sob tearing against broken ribs.

His fingers slip off, and he lets them, curling against the door.  He needs to find another way out.  He needs to—

Beep.  Beep.  Beep-beep-beep—

It burns.  It burns.  Fire sweeps over his skin, steals the air from his lungs, and his body dissolves into a mangled ruin of excruciating agony.

He can’t breathe.  He can’t think.  He can’t.  He—

Pain.  Nothing but pain.  Unending, unrelenting, undying.  Pain.

The pain vanishes.  Jason takes a full breath, and then another, sucking at the air he swears he’ll never take for granted again.  The lack of pain feels blissful.  Jason takes a second to marvel at the feeling before he opens his eyes.

It’s dark.  He—this isn’t a hospital.  Why isn’t he in a hospital?  He knows how many broken bones he had even before the whole place went kabloom.  Oh no, how long has he been unconscious?  Months?  Years?

Jason sits up and stares at the rubble.  This…does not make sense.  He’s in the warehouse.  He’s still in the warehouse.  He…should not be in the warehouse.

Jason looks down at himself.  He’s wearing the Robin costume, but there are no rips or tears.  No broken bones, no bleeding cuts.  He presses a hand to his chest and breathes easily, no wet, tearing gasp.

No burns.  No sign that he was brutally beaten before being blown up.

“Robin?  Robin!”

Alright, this is ranking a solid ten on Jason’s what-the-fuck scale, but at least Bruce is here.  “Batman!” Jason shouts, carefully getting to his feet and relishing in the lack of pain.  A dark shadow appears at the edge of the warehouse.

“I’m here,” Jason calls out, carefully picking his way through the rubble.  Magic?  It’s the only thing Jason can think of.  Maybe he has super-healing—though it’s never showed itself before.  Maybe it needed a near-death experience to manifest itself?  He thinks he’s heard of powers doing that before.

“Robin!  Robin!”  Batman’s voice slips from his customary growl to something more desperate.  Jason can’t help rolling his eyes at the clearly visible concern.

“I’m fine, B,” he says, grinning as Batman approaches, “I don’t know what—”

Batman ignores him.  Brushes past him like he doesn’t even exist.  Jason blinks, because what the hell, and twists at the low, choked sound behind him.

“Jason—” and it’s all Bruce now, no Batman growl in sight and Jason stares at the scene in front of him.  “No, Jason, please.”

There’s a body in Batman’s arms.  A beaten, broken body.  The limbs don’t look right, the costume’s charred, there are burns bubbling where the cloth has given way.

“Jay-lad,” Bruce sobs, and Jason stares at what is very clearly his body.

Okay, things have gone up to eleven on Jason’s what-the-fuck scale.

“Do I have a clone?” Jason asks, shifting closer.  He doesn’t want to see the—the ruin his body has become but he can’t quite tear his eyes away.  “Because when they say out-of-body experience, I don’t think they meant…this.”

The body isn’t breathing.  Jason doesn’t think it can breathe, given the way its chest is crushed.  Batman—Bruce is still crying.

“B, I’m right here,” Jason says, crouching down.  He’s not sure what’s going on, but Bruce’s sobs are tearing at his heart.  “I’m right here, I’m fine, see?”

Bruce doesn’t look up and Jason reaches out a careful hand to his shoulder.

Through his shoulder.

Jason scrambles back.  “What the fuck?” he says in a tone that would’ve gotten him an hour-long scolding from Alfred if he heard it.

He tries again.  His hand passes through Bruce’s face, and through the body’s chest.  And through the rubble, if he concentrates on it.  Bruce makes no indication that he can hear or feel Jason, and sits there sobbing with the body—with Jason’s dead body—in his arms.

“Okay, this is definitely the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Jason says.

“I’m so sorry, Jay,” Bruce chokes, “So, so sorry.  My son.  My son.”  It dissolves into a wail.

Jason, ears red, mutters, “I’m right here, old man,” and ineffectually tries reaching for him again.

Bruce finally moves, after what seems like an eternity—Jason should probably be more patient, but his experimentation has stalled with his distinct lack of ability to affect any changes in his surroundings, and he’s itching to go somewhere where they can figure it out.

They’ll definitely figure it out.  Jason may not be the greatest detective, but Batman is a genius.  He’ll know what to do, or he’ll know who to ask.

Then they can get Jason back into his body.

Jason casts an aside glance at the absolute wreck his body has become, and winces.  That’s going to hurt.

“But we can go to a hospital, right?” Jason asks, following behind Bruce as they go to the Batplane, “And get this…fixed?”

It doesn’t look like it can be fixed.  Honestly, it doesn’t look like Jason will be able to walk again.  It doesn’t look like Jason will ever be Robin again.

Jason droops as Bruce lays his body down very gently.  Maybe—maybe he can help Barbara.  Robin and the Batgirl, crippled by the Joker.

“It’s not fair,” Jason says, curling up on the empty seat.

Bruce has taken off his cowl and he looks shattered.  He brushes a gloved hand through body-Jason’s hair and tears slip down his face.

Okay, it’s possible that being crippled isn’t the worst thing.  He’ll take a wheelchair if it means getting that awful look off of Bruce’s face.

“It’ll be fine,” he tries to reassure Bruce.

Bruce doesn’t stop crying.

The look on Alfred’s face almost sets Jason to crying himself.

“I’m here, I’m fine, I’m right here,” Jason shouts, but they can’t hear him and he can’t touch them.

What he wouldn’t give for a hug right now.

Jason tries everything.

He tries to touch everything in the Batcave.  He sits on top of the Batman suit.  He waves his hands over the motion sensors on the property lines.  He whispers into Bruce’s ears.  He blows air onto Alfred’s face.  He stares at them while they’re sleeping.

He walks through them.  Several times.  Hoping for some sort of reaction—a chill, a shiver, something.

He tries to write words on the mirror.  Tries to levitate things.  Tries to make the candles flare.

He’s starting to realize he’s run out of time when he sees the coffin.

“I’m not dead!” he shouts, trying to interrupt the stupid funeral.  Bruce and Alfred are there.  No one else.  Dick hasn’t even bothered to come from whatever mission he’s on.

No one hears him.

That leaves the one thing he hasn’t tried.  The one thing he doesn’t want to try, because the thought of returning to that body makes him want to puke.  He wants to get healed first, or at least some painkillers, because he remembers the pain and he’s not keen on going back to it.

But he’s out of time.  Bruce won’t realize that he’s still here without some sort of signal.

Jason swallows and gets into the coffin.

It feels strange.  Not feels-feels because Jason can’t feel anything anymore, not the warmth of fire or the freezing burn of ice or a soft rug or running water or the edge of a batarang.  It feels weird in his head, the idea that he’s lying in his dead body.

I want to go back, he thinks.

Nothing.

He shifts in place.  Tries to meditate.  Tries to remember what it felt like to be alive, to push himself forward on broken legs, to pull on a door handle with broken fingers, to breathe through a punctured lung.

“Bruce?” he calls out hopefully.

Nothing.

He wriggles in place, closes his eyes, tries to imagine himself in his body.  His real body, not the Robin suit that never shifts an inch out of place.

“Come on,” he whispers.  He knows it’ll hurt.  But he needs to go back.  He’s not dead, and he doesn’t want to dig himself out of his own grave.

Come on.  He can do it.  He can go back.  He can—

The coffin lid slams shut and Jason bolts upright.

Upright, and through the lid.

He stares at himself, half-in, half-out of the coffin, and at Bruce and Alfred, neither of whom is looking at him.

“Fine,” Jason snarls, getting out, “I’ll make you dig me out then.”

Here lies Jason Todd.

They bury him with the woman who called herself his mother and sold him out to the Joker.  Jason shouts at Bruce for that for an hour before he realizes that Bruce doesn’t know.  How could he know?  She’s dead.

Jason lurks around his grave for a couple of days, cataloguing who comes by.  Alfred comes every morning with flowers.  Barbara comes by, in a wheelchair, and leaves with red-rimmed eyes.  There’s a black-haired kid, one that looks vaguely familiar, who appears with a camera, pats the headstone, and leaves quickly.

Bruce never shows up.

Jason takes a ride back to the Manor with Alfred on the fourth day.  He doesn’t need to change the clock handles, he just walks straight through it and down the steps to the Cave.

Bruce is sitting in the Batcomputer chair, looking like he hasn’t left it since the funeral.  There are Joker sightings open in ten different windows.  He doesn’t look like he’s reading them.  He doesn’t look like he’s there.

“I’m not dead,” Jason says, angry and hurt and tired and alone.  At this point he’ll take a hug from anyone.  Even Dick.  “Bruce, I’m not dead!  Find a way to fix this!”

Jason glares at him, curling his hands into fists.  If this is magic, or some weird new superpower, it should respond to his emotions.  If he gets angry enough, maybe—

He shouts.  He tries to throw things.  He tries to shake Bruce, yelling at him to get off his ass and do something, old man!

He tries to punch Bruce.  It doesn’t connect.  He just stumbles through him and out the other side.

Jason isn’t dead.  But it’s getting difficult to figure out what he is.

If it won’t get activated by anger, then maybe by fear.

Jason follows Batman out on patrol.  It’s tricky, given that Jason can’t wield a grapple or run fast enough to keep up—or fly, he tried that one and ended up screaming as the ground rushed at his face.  He wasn’t hurt, but it was terrifying and he doesn’t want to repeat the experience.

But Batman has to drop to the ground eventually, and Jason can’t actually get tired or hurt so all he has to do is follow the shouts.  It’s a novel feeling, walking the streets of Gotham at night without the faintest prickle of wariness.

The evening starts with a couple of muggers and by the time it reaches the jewelry store robbery, Jason is aware that Batman’s off his game.  He missed a thug in the robbery, his movements were too slow to avoid a hit by a mugger, and he lets the latest drug dealer vanish into the night.

Jason sighs and shakes his head and follows after Batman—and freezes.

The Bat symbol shines bright against the cloudy sky.

Oh no.

It’s Two-Face.

Jason doesn’t know whether to be relieved it’s not the Joker, or concerned because Two-Face nearly beat Dick to a pulp back when he was Robin and Bruce has a hard time separating Two-Face the monster from his old friend Harvey Dent.

Jason decides to go with terrified, because one of the goons gets in a lucky shot and bashes Batman with a metal pipe.  Batman goes down.

Jason tries to stop them, but their weapons go right through him.  They don’t hear his shouts or feels his punches.  “Stop, stop—” but Two-Face steps forward and ties up a limp Batman.

“No,” Jason hisses, crouching in front of Batman, “No, you can’t do this, you have to wake up, you can’t fall, wake up!”

Batman doesn’t wake up.  Two-Face flips his stupid coin.

It lands tails.

Two-Face draws his gun and Jason screams.

“Batman, no, Batman, please!”

He can’t watch another father die at the hands of this monster.

“Bruce, wake up—Bruce—Bruce!”

Two-Face curls his fingers around the trigger.

“Dad, please!”

Batman doesn’t wake up.

A shot rings out.

Commissioner Gordon saves the day.  The warehouse quickly turns into a shootout, and at some point Batman manages to struggle to consciousness and free himself before limping home.

Jason follows him silently.

Batman has three bullet wounds.  He nearly collapses in the Cave and Jason watches dully as Alfred stitches up his wounds.

There’s no point in speaking.  They can’t hear him.

He’s dead.

This isn’t magic, or a superpower, or anything cool.  He isn’t going back to his body.  He’s dead.  Dead and buried.  He can’t do anything but watch.

Alfred rests a hand on Bruce’s shoulder as the man sleeps, and he abruptly looks old.  “I know you want to be with Master Jason,” he says quietly, “But I don’t think I could bear it if I lost you too.”

Jason leaves, tears dripping down his face.

Chapter Text

He follows Bruce around everywhere.  He doesn’t speak—they can’t hear him—he doesn’t try to touch—they can’t feel him—he just walks and watches.  Staring at a world that doesn’t realize he’s looking back.

He’s dead.  It feels hollow inside of him.  It feels real—like he didn’t realize how badly the denial was clouding his vision until it disappeared.

Well, what do you know.  Ghosts are real.  That’s something Jason never saw coming.

He can’t see any other ghosts.  No one else aimlessly drifting through things or staring silently or making a ruckus no one else responds to.  It’s just him.  Alone.

This is going to be a fucking miserable rest of eternity.

It hasn’t even been two weeks.

Jason is sitting on the table next to the Batcomputer, swinging his legs, watching Bruce work on a case.  Bruce would never have let him sit on the table, so it sparks a little joy in Jason’s heart.  Even if it’s tearing at him to watch Bruce stare blankly at the screen.

The clock panel opens and footsteps sprint down the stairs.  Jason turns to look, because Alfred would never move that fast.  Bruce doesn’t turn.

Dick bursts from the stairs, his eyes wild.  Ah.  His dear big brother.  Jason noted a complete lack of attendance at the funeral—guess the street rat wasn’t big enough a deal to break off your super-important mission, hmm, Dickface?

“He’s dead?” Dick asks, staring at Bruce.  His face is pale, and his hair is tousled like he just pulled his helmet off.

Bruce says nothing.

Dick takes a stuttering step forward.  And another.  He’s looking at Bruce with a painful mixture of horror and hope.  “Bruce?  Is Jason dead?”

Still nothing.  “At least turn and face him, old man,” Jason mutters.  This is almost physically painful to watch.

He hops off the table.  He’ll go and haunt Alfred for a while.  Watching him cook is soothing, even if the cracked plastic mask on his face is not.

“Is my baby brother dead?”

Jason stops in his tracks.  Dick is trembling.  Bruce is silent.

“Dad?” Dick says tremulously.

“Yes,” Bruce replies dully, “He’s dead.”

Dick crumples like he’s been fucking shot.

“No, Dickie—” Jason runs over to him—is he concealing a wound?  Dehydration?  Ran out of those godawful sugary cereals and forgot to feed himself?—but of course he can’t do anything so he sort of uselessly flutters above Dick and aims a glare at Bruce.

He just buried one kid, is he planning on burying another?

Dick is crying—actual, broken sobs torn from his chest like they’re killing him and Jason has never seen his older brother cry—has, in fact, built up a mythology about the first Robin—and he has no idea what to do.

Well, he can’t do anything.  But he feels worse than useless because he has no idea what he would do if he could do anything.

A hug?  Dick is fond of hugs.  Jason glares at Bruce like he can spontaneously develop telepathy and force the man to give his son a hug.

Of course, as usual, he’s disappointed.

“Come on, Bruce,” Jason says quietly, “Don’t fight with him.  Not again.  Not anymore.”  How many Crime Alley orphans can he go around adopting?  Sooner or later, he’s going to run out and be forced to actually talk to Dick.

“Why—” Dick chokes, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jason goes cold.  He doesn’t know if ghosts can go cold, but he goes cold.  Because he knew they were fighting—they’re always fighting—but Bruce didn’t even—

“You were busy.”

Jason can see the words impact Dick, watches his older brother curl up like Bruce sucker punched him, and just.  He can’t deal with this.

He gets up and backs away.  Alfred.  Kitchen.  Cookies, maybe, the ones that Dick likes.

He puts one foot on the stairs and—

“He was my brother.”

It breaks something inside of him.

Funny.  He didn’t know that ghosts have hearts.

Alfred looks miserable, like he knows full well what’s happening down in the Cave—of course he does, because if Bruce didn’t tell Dick, someone did—and Jason almost turns to flee, to go back to the bedroom no one’s packed away yet, so he can pretend he’s a real boy after all, but—

But Alfred sighs and droops a little bit as he measures out ingredients for the cookies, and Jason stays.  Sits on the kitchen counter and watches as Alfred mixes and turns on the oven and scoops batter on the parchment paper.

Alfred looks better as he goes through the motions.  Not by much, but Jason has nothing better to do than watch him, and he can see the slight improvements.  The tension stripping away to reveal exhaustion.

The mixing bowl is slowly scraped clean, and the last little piece of cookie dough is arranged in the shape of a heart.  Jason’s breath catches in his throat.

Catherine Todd taught him that one, forming the dough and laughing and ‘the last one’s for love’.  And Jason continued the tradition when he came to the Manor.

“We’ll need all your love, Master Jason,” Alfred says sadly.

Jason touches the heart-shaped cookie and bites back a sob.

The cookies do not help Dick, who comes storming out of the Cave, eyes red-rimmed and face blotchy, slamming his helmet back on and wrenching the front door open before Alfred can offer one.

They do not help Bruce, who comes up to the table with a vacant expression on his face.

Dinner is a stilted affair.

Or, rather, dinner starts out a stilted affair.

Dick returns, his face hard and eyes flinty, and Bruce ignores him.  Alfred sets the table.  Jason amuses himself by taking a seat and waiting to see which one of them cracks first.

It’s a tense silence, but Jason rambles on about his day like it’s a normal family dinner, filling the silence the way he usually does except his reminiscences are more about the color of the sky and boy, it looked chilly except I couldn’t feel it because I’m dead, ha ha.

Okay, so it’s not a normal family dinner.

The silence seems slightly less stilted when he pauses to take a break.  Dick is looking at him—Jason freezes, eyes wide, before realizing that Dick is looking at Jason’s seat at the table, at where he would usually be, and not at the actual ghost kid sitting down to a dinner with his mourning family.

It shakes him slightly, so he slinks out of the chair.  Dick’s eyes don’t follow him.

Jason takes a little trip to visit Alfred in the kitchen—which is about when the shouting starts.

Sure is helpful that they wait until he’s out of the room.

Huh.

Dick goes to the cemetery and stares at Jason’s gravestone for a long, stretching moment before he starts crying again.

Jason leans against the side of it, feeling distinctly awkward.  “Stop with all the feelings, Dickie, jeez, you’re going to run out of tears.”

Dick plops down on top of the grass, puts down the flowers, and brushes his fingers against Jason’s name.  “I’m sorry, Little Wing,” he sobs, “I’m so, so sorry.  I didn’t even know—I was—I can’t believe Bruce didn’t—no, that’s a lie.  I can believe Bruce didn’t—” he breaks off and sighs.  “I’m sorry.  You don’t need to hear that.  We tried not to fight in front of you, but you probably caught us at it anyway.”

Jason blinks.  That was them trying to hide it?  He can’t believe the whole of Gotham hasn’t cottoned on that Bruce Wayne is Batman at this rate.

“I’m sorry, Jay,” Dick says quietly, “I’m sorry that I let my anger at Bruce cloud my relationship with you.  It wasn’t your fault.  I—I don’t know what you thought, and I wish so badly I could say this to your face, but our fighting wasn’t your fault.  You being Robin had nothing to do with it, and I wish that I told you that when you were alive.”

Oh, great, now Jason’s the one crying.  “It’s okay,” Jason croaks, “I’m listening.”

“I should’ve been a better big brother,” Dick’s voice cracks, “I should’ve stopped avoiding the Manor.  I should’ve been there for you.”  His voice hitches, and breaks entirely and Dick curls up, shuddering.

“I—I didn’t even try—I had—gods, Jay, you were only fifteen—I didn’t even—Alfred was planning your birthday party—Bruce was going to get you a car—and you just—you—”

“Stop it,” Jason sobs, slapping his hands over his ears because he doesn’t want to hear this, he doesn’t want this, he doesn’t—“Stop it, Dick, stop.”

“You were fifteen,” Dick breathes out, “You were my little brother.”  He says it like the words are poison, like they’re killing him from the inside.

Jason is dead.  And he still hasn’t stopped suffering.

Dick is staying for a week, and Jason uses the time to test his new theory.  That they’re happier when he’s in the room, even if they can’t see him.  Well, not happier, but at least not so goddamn miserable.

Alfred is the easiest to test.  His lines fade away the longer Jason is near him, and come back in stark relief whenever he goes somewhere else.

Dick is…unpredictable.  He keeps crying, whether he’s with Jason or not, but he gets into truly horrible arguments with Bruce whenever Jason stays away.  Jason waits until he can hear the start of an argument, and creeps back in the room—the argument isn’t resolved, but both Dick and Bruce seem to run out of steam and back away.

Bruce is—

Bruce is a little bit scary.  He’s dull and vacant whenever Jason is around, listless and lifeless and going through the bare motions, whether it’s eating breakfast or hunting down criminals.  Jason honestly thinks he’s making things worse.

But everyone else is shaken if they enter a room with Bruce when Jason’s not around.  He can’t prove it, because he can’t operate the cameras, but he sees Alfred with something fractured in his eyes and Dick walking like his heart is a bleeding wound, and however Bruce acts when Jason’s not there, its consequences are slightly terrifying.

It makes Jason feel a little better.  That he’s not entirely useless.  That if he’s stuck here forever, at least he can try to make them a little better.

It’s his fault they’re like this.

It’s his fault for running into that warehouse.

It’s his fault for getting captured.

It’s his fault for not escaping.

Jason failed, and it’s tearing his family to pieces.

But he needs to test the theory definitively, needs to go away from the Manor and see if distance and time have any affect, prove that he’s not losing his mind.

Jason decides to take a little jaunt back into the city.

He should’ve left it well alone.

He walks, because teleportation is not one of his abilities.  He isn’t sure who makes the ghost rules and why he can sink through the floor if he concentrates really hard and jump off the roof to land with no trouble but can’t wish himself to a different location.

But he has no issue with walking.  His feet don’t get tired, and he has all the time in the world.  He can go anywhere he wants, can travel the world if he feels like it.  That would be nice.

Jason will feel a whole lot better if the sum of his international experience doesn’t start and end in Ethiopia.

But this time, he just goes to Gotham.  To Crime Alley.  To all his old haunts.

He goes back to his old apartment and stands in the kitchen.  Its occupants are away, but there are toys scattered in the living room.  It feels like a home.

He goes back to the corner where he stole the Batmobile’s tires.  Where his life changed.

For a moment, he thinks—if he didn’t catch me, if he didn’t adopt me, if I wasn’t Robin, I wouldn’t have died—but that’s not right.

If he wasn’t Robin, he would’ve bled to death in the gutters.  Stole something above his pay grade.  Got caught in business worse than jacking tires.

These three and a half years were the best of his life.  It was a good run.  It was worth it.

He goes to the alley, the one he only figured out later was where Bruce’s parents died.  He goes and he curls up on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he says.  He doesn’t know if the ghosts of Thomas and Martha Wayne are there, but he says it anyway.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

He hurt all of them.  So much.  And Jason is selfish, is glad he has those three and a half years of happiness, even though he’s stolen everyone else’s chance at it.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.  He sighs.  “He was a good father.”  He looks up.  “You would’ve been proud of him.”

If they’re watching, if they hover out of sight like Jason does, then they already know.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get more time with him.”

I’m sorry I didn’t get more time with him.

Jason takes his time going back.  He dawdles.  He sees some kid scurrying around with a camera held to his face like Gotham at night is a tourist attraction and not goddamn dangerous.

He visits his grave again.  It’s going to take some time to get used to this.

But in the meantime, he can give his family what little comfort his ghostly presence offers them.  He can’t be Batman’s Robin, but this is better than nothing.

He goes back home.

And walks straight into a raging argument.

“—my brother,” Dick is screaming, “He was my brother and you had no right—”

“You made your opinion of this family clear when you walked away,” Bruce says flatly.  Alfred is hovering in the doorway, helpless to stop this.

“How dare you,” Dick hisses, “How dare you.”

“You barely knew the boy—”

“He was my brother, Bruce, you—”

“If you were home more often, then maybe—”

“No,” Dick shakes his head, takes a step back.  Jason swallows roughly at the sight of how far his family deteriorated in his absence.

“No,” Dick repeats, cold, “I’m done.”

He turns on his heel and walks back to his room.

“Master Bruce—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Bruce snaps at Alfred.  Bruce snaps at Alfred.

“Stop fighting,” Jason whispers, curling his arms around himself, “Don’t, I’m sorry, just don’t—”

Dick reappears, duffel bag in hand.  His face is a mask of ice.

“Master Dick, where are you—”

“I’m leaving,” Dick says flatly, brushing past Bruce to yank open the door.

Jason shouldn’t have left.  He should’ve stayed, he knows that they fight when he’s gone, why did he decide to go to Gotham—

“When will you be back?” Alfred asks as Dick stalks to his motorcycle.  Bruce is standing in the doorway, his face hard, his eyes shadowed.

“I won’t,” Dick says, and it rings with finality.

Alfred inhales sharply.  Bruce turns away.  Jason stares between all three of them because they’re breaking before his eyes and he doesn’t know what to do and this is all his fault—

He can’t be with all three of them at once.  He has to choose.

Jason glances back at the house—Bruce has disappeared.  Alfred looks like he’s cracking apart.  Dick pauses before he pulls his helmet on, and his eyes shine with unshed tears.

Jason chooses.

He’s been on Dick’s motorcycle a couple of times, but this is a very strange experience, with no wind to ruffle his hair or tug at him and his fingers passing through his brother every time he moves.

Bludhaven is a nightmare, and Jason grew up in Crime Alley.

Dick is walking down the street, heading to the grocery store, when he comes to a stop so sudden that Jason actually takes two steps through him.  He turns to see what’s caught his brother’s attention—it’s an ice cream shop.

Wait, no, Jason remembers this shop.  Dick took him once, let him choose whatever he wanted—Jason got a four-scoop sundae with ten different toppings, he recalls it vividly—and laughed when he dropped him back off at the Manor, high on sugar and glutted with ice cream.

Alfred wasn’t pleased.  Bruce wasn’t pleased either—Jason was hyperactive during patrol, right up until the sugar ran out.

Dick takes a stuttering step forward, and another, and shakily enters the ice cream shop.

“You ate a bowl of sugar for breakfast, you want another one already?” Jason mutters grumpily.  He still doesn’t understand how Dick doesn’t have scurvy.

Dick stares blankly at the menu for so long that the person behind him actually elbows him.  Dick jolts and orders some monstrosity with a bunch of scoops and so many toppings and—

“Why are you doing this to yourself, Dickie?” Jason asks quietly as Dick’s handed the same sundae Jason made for himself all those years ago.

It didn’t even taste good, Jason was nearly sick from all that sugar—he went on an ice cream boycott for a month.  Alfred was ecstatic.

Dick is crying silently, his tears dripping into the ice cream as he forces spoon after spoon into his mouth.

Jason lets his head drop onto the table.  He can’t watch this.  If this is Dick when Jason’s here, he shudders to imagine what Dick would do if Jason stayed in the Manor.

Dick goes home and throws up all the ice cream.

Nightwing’s been sitting on the top of a skyscraper for thirty minutes—so long that Jason decided to join him up there.  Closed doors and barred rooftop access mean nothing to him anymore.

He swings his legs and stares down at the drop.  Dick, who usually looks up and out, is doing the same.

“Little Wing,” Dick says softly, and Jason startles.  But Dick isn’t looking at him.  “You once told me that Robin was magic.”

Jason remembers that.  The Robin suit gave him something he didn’t have.  Spirit.  Safety.  Light.

“At the time, I looked at you and thought ‘this kid gets it’,” Dick continues, “He understands.”

Dick is still staring at the drop.  It’s high enough to be an instant death on impact.

“But you were wrong, Jaybird,” Dick says, and his voice breaks, “It wasn’t magic.”  His words are soft and choked.

“Because if it was, it wouldn’t have taken you away.”

“Bullshit,” Jason says wearily, “It was magic, Dickiebird.  But sometimes even magic isn’t enough.”

Things get better.  Slightly.

Dick goes a full day without crying and Jason celebrates.

Dick spends the next day in bed with a whole box of tissues.

It’s one step forward and two steps back, and Jason is tired and impatient and knows full well that he can do nothing about it.

He knows that Dick tried to be an older brother—when he wasn’t shouting at Bruce—but now it’s hammered into his skull.

A movie that Dick once took Jason to—Dick’s face goes pale and blotchy but he doesn’t change the channel.

A book that Jason read for school—he got an A on the report and spent a family dinner reading it out loud.  Dick sees the book in a shop and buys every copy.

The extra helmet Bruce bought Jason—Dick sits on his motorcycle, turning it over and over and over in his hands.

Every impact Jason made in Dick’s life—Dick walks into each one like it’s a knife.

Dick goes out with his friends.  Once.  Twice.  The third time he gets all the way to bed—bed, and the picture on the nightstand, Bruce smiling and Dick laughing and Jason in between, giving them both bunny ears—before his smile fades.

He rubs the corner of the frame and exhales.

Dick brings home vegetables.  Jason is skeptical.

Dick nearly burns a pot trying to boil water.  Jason is increasingly worried.

Dick ends up charring the vegetables—there’s smoke and Dick’s cursing and—

Something beeps shrilly and Jason dives for cover.

It takes him a moment to realize that he’s not real.

It takes him a moment longer to remember that he’s dead.

It takes him a full minute to recognize the smoke alarm.

Dick stares pitifully at his attempt at vegetable soup.  Jason is still jittery, but he unwinds enough to scoff.  “Just go back to Alfred’s cooking, circus boy,” Jason groans.

But Alfred means the Manor.  And Jason knows that Dick’s not going home.

They’re watching some random stand-up routine on TV—or, Dick is watching and Jason is flopped upside-down over the back of the couch because it turns out that blood can’t rush to your face when you’re dead—and Jason hears a snort.

He straightens up and stares at Dick.

Another snort, and then a full chuckle.

It’s rusty, it’s edging to hysterical, but Dick is laughing again, grinning at the TV and clutching his ribs.

Jason smiles.

There are…worrying stories coming out of Gotham.  Jason can’t help but listen to all the conversations on the street, and they keep mentioning Batman.

Dick glares at the newspaper, his eyes narrowed and his mouth pinched, before tossing it aside.  Jason can read the headline.

It’s not pretty.

The picture below it is even less so.

Something in Jason—the twelve-year-old kid that saw opportunity in a fancy car—shivers.

Batman: Vigilante or Villain?

Dick isn’t going back to Gotham.  He’s made that pretty clear.  And he definitely won’t go back for Bruce.

But Jason thinks it’s time he does.

Chapter Text

It’s even worse than he imagined.

The Manor is cold.  Not literally—Jason can’t feel temperature—but it feels like a mausoleum.  Alfred looks like he’s aged years in a matter of months.  Bruce is—

Bruce rarely ever comes out of the Cave.  He works down there.  He eats down there.  He isn’t sleeping.

He goes after cases like a starving man after food.  He rips into them and tears them apart with no consideration for care or collateral damage.

He’s terrifying.

Jason can barely keep up on patrol.  Batman goes from fight to fight, ending each one with deliberate cruelty.

It’s not supposed to be like this.  It’s not.

Bruce is falling apart—Batman with him, and Gotham with them.

It’s all Jason’s fault.

“Stop it, stop hurting him, Bruce, stop!”

Batman doesn’t stop.  The thug is clearly unconscious.  Jason can’t even watch.

“Master Bruce—”

“Leave.”

“What the hell is this?”

Jason stares at the case, unsure what to think.  What to feel.

“What the fucking hell is this, Bruce?”

It’s the suit.  The suit he’s wearing.  The suit he died in.  All stitched up, like you can’t tell where the rips are, where the bloodstains are—like you can’t map the precise location of every wound the Joker inflicted.

Like Jason can’t feel it, under his skin, every crack and cut and break and bruise.

The crowning indignity is the plaque at the bottom.

‘A Good Soldier.’

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Jason, sadly, is not corporeal enough to smash the case.

This does not stop him from trying.

“I was never your soldier!” Jason shouts as he chases after Batman, “I was your partner.  Your Robin!  You can’t just encase me in glass or—or bury me underground or—”

Jason stops running.  Except Bruce can.  And has.

“I was your son,” Jason whispers.

“What,” Jason asks as he stares at the unconscious muggers, “Is the point of your ‘no-killing’ rule if you break a homeless man’s hand in five different places for trying to steal twenty dollars?  Where do you think he’s going to get the cash to pay the hospital bills?  He doesn’t have the money to eat, Bruce.  He’s going to end up dead within the week.”

Batman walks away.

Jason winces at the screams—yet another fight, yet another hospital admittance, and Jason sometimes wonders why he’s even trying.

Alfred is easier—Jason joins him when he’s cooking and the kitchen seems a bit warmer—but Bruce is drowning so deep Jason can’t even reach him.

He isn’t helping here—maybe he should split his time between Alfred and Dick, a week here, a week there, and leave Bruce locked in the spiral he strapped himself into.

‘A Good Soldier.’  It sets Jason’s teeth on edge.  It’s a glaring reminder that Jason didn’t follow orders.

That he died because he messed up, he followed Sheila even when Batman told him to stay put, and he got himself blown up by the Joker with Batman too far away to save him.

“No, no, stop, please—” Jason is jolted out of his musings by the scrape of metal on metal.

The sound feels like ice down his spine.

The hapless drug dealer is backing away, arms raised.  Batman is taking looming steps forward.  There’s an iron pipe in his hands.

In the dim light, it looks very much like a crowbar.

Jason runs.

Back to the Manor, back home, and he’s curled on the bed in the room that still looks like it did when he ran away to Ethiopia.

Here, he can pretend it never happened.  He never went to find Sheila, he never got caught, he never got tortured and beaten and blown up.

He never died.

His family never fell apart.

But he can’t feel the sheets underneath him and the pretense isn’t enough in the face of his terror.

He can’t stay here, he can’t watch Bruce do this to himself, to this city—he can’t look at Batman and flinch every time he sees the Joker.

He’s going back to Bludhaven.  Back to Dick, who actually kept his sanity—because Jason went with him, left with him, left Bruce.

He’s supposed to be Batman’s Robin.  But he failed once already.

A disappointment in life, and a disappointment in death.

He whispers goodbye to Alfred and creeps down into the Cave.  Just a quick farewell before he makes the trek back to Bludhaven.

Jason stops at the bottom of the stairs.  Bruce is standing in front of the glass case.

“If you’re going to smash it, now would be the perfect time,” Jason says, inching closer.

Bruce isn’t moving and Jason edges close enough to see his face.

It’s pale.  Not blank, it’s too volatile to be blank, but nothing settles long enough for Jason to put a name to it.

Bruce cracks open bloodless lips, and whispers, “Jason.”

“I’m right here, Bruce,” Jason shuffles closer.

Bruce slides to his knees and stretches a hand to the glass.  He bows his head.  “I’m so sorry, Jay,” he says, and Jason can see the tears dripping off his face.

The hand curls into a fist as Bruce lets himself cry.

“I miss you so much,” Bruce’s voice cracks, and all of Jason’s plans to leave evaporate into thin air.

“I miss you too, Dad.”

It’s still awful.  It’s still awful, but Jason tries, goes out with Batman and hopes his presence will help things, hopes that Bruce isn’t too far gone to the darkness.

The Manor certainly feels warmer, and Jason does a fist pump when Bruce finally leaves to go sleep in his actual bed.

He does an actual victory dance when Bruce responds to Alfred with a ‘thank you’ instead of his usual curt dismissal.  Alfred’s eyebrows raise till they nearly hit the ceiling.

Bruce looks the slightest bit ashamed.

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce repeats, and it’s clear he’s not talking about dinner.

Alfred’s stern visage softens, “Of course, Master Bruce.”

That’s about when Jason spots the kid.

He’s happened upon him before, but it takes him a while to realize that there’s only one kid running around the city with a camera, and not a whole bunch of short nighttime tourists.  In Jason’s defense, no Gothamite with the slightest shred of self-preservation would be running around the most dangerous parts of the city, at night, with a very expensive-looking camera.

So Jason’s estimation of this kid’s survival chances are pretty low when he realizes, huh, that hoodie’s familiar, oh shit, is that a kid?

Jason’s estimation of the kid’s survival chances plunge into the negative when he realizes that the kid isn’t hanging around random parts of the city for kicks.  Oh no, this kid’s hunting Batman.

Jason is torn between being worried for Bruce and being worried for the structural integrity of the kid’s skeleton.

“Okay, Vicki Vale Jr.,” Jason hums as he turns away from the mugging Batman just thwarted and tracks the black hoodie, “Let’s see what you’re up to.”

The kid is surprisingly good at clambering across the cityscape without a grapple.

The kid is also good at not getting mugged on the bus.

This…is a very familiar part of town.

What the hell, kid.

Jason thought the whole point of having a manor was so you can’t be bothered by your neighbors.

Jason’s theory number one, i.e., the kid is a squatter, is disproved by the ease with which the kid disables the security code, and also by the pictures on the wall.  The house is definitely empty, though—Jason checks each room and finds absolutely zero evidence of any parental figure.

Or any figure, for that matter.

Jason’s theory number two, i.e., the kid is Vicki Vale’s, is very much not disproved by the darkroom he enters, the multitude of pictures the kid has, and the sheer amount of security hiding his albums.

“How long have you been doing this, kid?” Jason asks, staring in shock at the stack of albums.  He would’ve noticed a little kid running after him with a camera.  Right?

The kid finishes in the darkroom and opens up his laptop to a bewildering sheet of numbers and symbols—and Jason has absolutely no clue what he’s looking at.

Theory number three, i.e., the kid is a new supervillain, is gaining traction.

He enters in some numbers and creates a chart.  It shows a downward trend centered around a steep drop-off…on the day Jason died.

What the absolute fuck is this kid doing.

“He’s not getting any better, Jason,” the kid whispers, and Jason almost has a heart attack.

The kid’s not talking to him, though.  He’s talking to the photo of Jason in a newspaper clipping he’s framed.

No.  Not a photo of Jason.  A photo of Robin.

“What the fuck, kid,” Jason hisses.

The kid’s name is Timothy Drake, which sounds vaguely familiar.

Jason’s genius detective skills come by this information by lurking really close to the kid when he gets a phone call from his parents.

His parents, who are definitely not in town and seem to be extending their trip.  Timothy does not seem surprised by this.

Jason eyes the stack of albums beneath the booby trapped floorboard.

He doesn’t have a good feeling about this.

Jason decides to hang around Timothy Drake in lieu of returning to the Manor.  He has no idea what the kid is doing with the mass of information he’s gathered—or how he guessed that Jason was Robin, and what that means for everyone else’s identities—and surveillance is ridiculously easy when little things like walls and obnoxiously stalking people in daylight aren’t concerns.

Timothy Drake is very good at lying to school administrators.

Jason puts a mental check in the ‘supervillain’ column.

Timothy Drake is not very good at dodging fear toxin.

Jason revises his estimate of the kid’s survival chances to about ten degrees below absolute zero and wishes for corporeal hands to strangle the idiot’s very fragile and easily breakable neck.

Jason wonders if his presence influences people other than his family.

The kid prints out several sheets of paper with a grim, determined expression.

Surprisingly, the kid does not go straight to Vicki Vale.

Very surprisingly, the kid buys a ticket to Bludhaven.

Jason bursts out laughing at the look on Dick’s face when the kid calls him Nightwing and all-but-orders him to return to Gotham.

“Aren’t you the Drake kid?” Dick asks, having ushered the boy inside and out of hearing of any nosy neighbors.

“Yes,” the kid straightens, holding out his hand, “Timothy Drake.  You can call me Tim.”

“Hi, Tim, it’s nice to meet you,” Dick says, still looking like he got hit by a two-by-four, “How did you get all the way here?”

“I took the bus,” Tim replies, with clear disdain for Dick’s interrogation skills.

Jason is clutching his stomach, nearly in tears.

“I meant,” Dick says, his voice sharpening despite the easy smile on his face, “How did you know where I lived?”

Tim shrinks back a little.  “Research,” he mumbles.

Dick’s smile doesn’t waver, but even Jason can feel the sudden chill in the room.

“Well, I’m not sure why you came all the way here, but Bludhaven isn’t the safest city.  I’m going to call your parents to come pick you up.”

“Good luck with that,” Tim retorts, “And I came because you’re Nightwing, you used to be Robin, and Bruce needs you.”

Dick, to his credit, doesn’t miss a beat.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Tim.  Are you okay?  Do you have a fever?”

Tim scowls and digs through his bag of papers before handing a couple to Dick.  Jason reads them over his shoulder and watches Dick’s shoulders tense.

The first is a newspaper article on the death of the Flying Graysons.  The second is a picture of Robin, mid-swing, from a newspaper.  The third is a picture of Nightwing, one of the kid’s own.

“There are only four people in the world that can do a quadruple somersault.  Only one of those four lives in Gotham.  I watched Robin do a quadruple somersault.  I don’t have a fever, and I’m perfectly fine.  I’ve known who you are for years.  I know about Bruce Wayne too.”

Jason is impressed.  And his supervillain theory is looking increasingly less likely, which means he has no idea what the kid wants.

Dick sets the papers down.  “How do you know I can do a quadruple somersault?” he asks quietly.

Tim hesitates.  It’s the first pause he’s seen from the kid.  He slowly returns to his backpack and draws out another picture.

This one’s in a frame.  It’s a photo of Dick, smiling brightly at the camera and dressed in a brightly colored circus uniform.  He’s hugging a small, black-haired boy who’s smiling shyly.

“Because you promised to show me,” Tim says softly.  He’s looking at the picture like Dick is holding his heart in his hands.

“This is the day my parents died,” Dick says, hollow.

Jason winces.  And then he winces even harder, because the kid is tiny in the photo and Jason has a sinking feeling that he knows exactly why Tim remembers that day so well.

Dick traces the outline of the little kid’s face, and returns the photo to Tim.

The kid makes a near-audible sigh of relief as he carefully packs the frame away.

“I’m not Robin,” Dick says quietly, “I haven’t been for years.  My home is here.”

“Bruce needs you,” Tim insists.  Jason is on the kid’s side.  It’ll be a whole lot easier to keep everyone happy if they stay under one roof.

“Look, Tim—”

“He’s getting more reckless,” Tim says, pulling out more papers—the graphs Jason saw him make, newspaper clippings, charts—and handing them to a bemused Dick.  “He’s getting more violent.  Gotham needs Batman.  And Batman needs a partner.”

“You shouldn’t have gone there,” Jason mutters.  The kid has no idea the minefield he’s stumbled into.  Jason doesn’t know about all the issues between Bruce and Dick, but he definitely knows that Dick’s ‘retirement’ from Robin wasn’t by choice.

“Batman has made it clear that he doesn’t want a partner,” Dick says, clipped, “And I’m not returning to Gotham.”

“But—”

“Look, Tim, you’re a good kid.  And smart, to have put all of this together.  But I’m sick of trying with Bruce.  It was bad enough before—” Dick stutters and swallows, looking pained.  “It was bad enough before.  I can’t pull him out of this pit.  I’m not the one he wants.”

That hits Jason like a physical blow.

“Jason would want you to come back,” Tim says, his eyes wide and pleading.

“I totally want you to come back,” Jason backs him up.

But Dick pastes a brittle smile on his face.

“It was nice to meet you, Tim,” he says, and ushers the kid out of the door.

“Fine,” Tim says, staring at the shut door.  “I’ll do it myself.”

That sounds…ominous.

“You think I’m Batman,” Bruce repeats blankly, staring at the kid standing on his front stoop.  This is even more entertaining than Dick.

“I know you’re Batman,” Tim corrects, his cheeks red, “I talked to Dick Grayson, he confirmed it.”

Bruce sighs, “Look, I’m sorry for whatever Dick told you, he likes his practical jokes—”

“He can do a quadruple somersault and Robin can do a quadruple somersault and there was a new Robin when you adopted Jason and Jason died when Robin disappeared and there are always reports of you being injured when Batman is injured and you’re always on a business trip when Batman is with the Justice League and I’ve followed you and I have pictures and I made some graphs and you’re getting more reckless and Gotham needs you.”

“Kid,” Jason says faintly, “Breathe.”

Tim has gone completely red, and now looks like he’s holding his breath.

Bruce looks utterly unprepared to deal with a hyperventilating child on his doorstep.

“Would you like to come inside?” he says awkwardly, “I think Alfred’s about to make tea.”

“I—yes.  Thank you.”

Jason hovers at Bruce’s shoulder, half-convinced that he’s going to do something really stupid and sticking as close as he can to ensure that Bruce doesn’t fuck this up like he did with Dick.

Bruce studies the charts Tim gives him.  Looks at the photos.  Scans the data.  He doesn’t look surprised by any of it.

Tim sits unnaturally still, his eyes fixed on Bruce.

“You’ve been out on the streets at night?” Bruce asks, holding a photo with the particular tick above his eye that means he’s displeased.

Tim looks like he thinks it’s a trick question.

“Where are your parents?” Bruce asks, looking at Tim, and—and Jason recognizes that look, he saw it on Batman’s face when Jason was slurping a smoothie in the same car he just jacked three tires from.

“Business trip,” Tim recites easily.  Bruce’s frown deepens.

Jason is thrilled at this appearance of normal, overprotective Bruce.

Jason is furious that it’s directed at a kid who already has parents, has a house, has money and family and everything Jason fought so desperately for.

Jason is sad.  Jason wants Bruce to be happy.  Jason is—

Jason is dead.  And nothing he wants matters anymore.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Bruce says, and easily shepherds the boy to the door, “I would imagine your parents would be very worried to know that you’re exploring Gotham at night.”

A shoddy threat.  Jason’s well aware that the kid’s parents don’t care what he’s doing. 

Bruce throws all of Tim’s carefully compiled research into the trash.  Jason leans against the case that holds his uniform and sighs.

Tim no longer attempts to hide that he’s stalking Batman.  Batman snarls and forces him home every time.

“Go.  Home,” Batman growls.  Tim stares at him, unflinching.

“No.”

“Go home.”

“No.”

“You can’t keep doing this.”

“Sure I can.  How long can you keep doing this?  Wrangling a teenager instead of keeping the streets safe?  There’s nothing you can do to stop me save actually, physically locking me up.”

Batman looks like he’s seriously considering the idea.

“You can’t stop me,” Tim juts out his chin, “Someone needs to be watching your back.”

Jason understands the feeling.

Batman growls again, and drags Tim home.

Jason didn’t know that it was this easy to make Batman cave.

Tim grins as he sits at the Batcomputer, legs swinging.

“Stay here,” Batman orders, before leaving.

Tim catches sight of That Fucking Case and his smile dies.  He glances at the computer—it’s been a quiet night so far—and quietly pads over.

“Hi Jason,” he says.

“Hello Timbo.”

“I—I’m going to try to keep him in one piece,” Tim says quietly.

“Good luck with that,” Jason says wearily. 

“He really misses you,” Tim says softly, like it’s a confession.  Like Jason doesn’t know.  Like it isn’t killing him inside.

It’s funny.  Back when the Joker had him, back when everything was screaming pain and fire, Jason, for a split second, wished for death.  Wished for it to all stop hurting.

And it didn’t.

“I can’t—I’m not trying to take your place, Jason,” Tim says, and there are definitely tears in his eyes.  “You were Robin, you—you were Batman’s light.  And I—someone needs to make sure he comes home every night.  This city needs him.”

“Kid, I’m not going to be upset that someone’s watching his back,” Jason raises an eyebrow, “I can’t do it—well, I’ve been doing nothing but watch his back.  But he doesn’t know that.”

Tim places a hand on the case and stares solemnly at Jason’s torn uniform.  “This city needs you,” he says, almost too quiet for Jason to catch.

In retrospect, Jason should’ve realized that meant ‘this city needs Robin’.

Jason’s with Batman, because there’s a slight decrease in the percentage of goons that get arrested with broken bones when he’s close by, though the number has gone down a little more sharply since a thirteen-year-old starting listening to the comms.

Jason’s seen the charts.  Tim runs them multiple times.  He’s confused by the effects of Jason’s presence, but Jason, hovering over his shoulder, can interpret the data easily enough.

Jason’s with Batman.  And the Bat signal goes up.  And Jason isn’t fast enough to get to the police station without a grapple, but he’s definitely able to find a couple of police officers and listen to the radio chatter.

Arkham breakout, he hears.

It’s the Joker, he hears.

He doesn’t hear much of anything after that.

Something is screaming inside of his head.  He thinks it’s him.  Something is screaming and no one seems to notice, because no one ever notices, because he’s invisible and intangible and—

He doesn’t exist.

He doesn’t exist, and that fucking clown is still drawing breath.

Batman doesn’t kill.  He knows that, he got the memo, the rules were made explicitly fucking clear.

But Jason doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to expect an exception in this case.

“How could you let him keep breathing?” Jason hisses.  He lost track of Batman, but the police scanners are picking up reports of explosions near the docks.  “After what he did to me?”

Don’t you care, Jason wants to scream, but that’s not fair.  He knows Bruce cares.  He’s watched him cry over Jason’s dead body.

But he didn’t care enough to bend his precious no-killing rule.

Jason remembers the viciousness with which Batman has been dispatching criminals for the past year and—

Okay, so perhaps the no-killing rule is in place for a reason.

Jason gets to the docks as laughter echoes around him, echoes in the bones he no longer has, and—

Jason is dead.  If the Joker was dead—if he—if—

Jason hasn’t seen another ghost around.  But he’s not willing to put his conviction in that.  Not when it comes to the Joker.

Not when it comes to the possibility of spending eternity alone with a monster.

The Joker taunts Batman about the Robin he failed to save.  Jason hovers in the corner, unable to stand getting any closer.  Batman loses more and more of himself to rage, and his control is being siphoned by the tenuous threads that hold his one rule in place.

“You should’ve heard the way he screamed,” Joker laughs and laughs and laughs.  “Bird bones are so delicate.”

Batman snarls and lunges and completely misses the booby trap in front of him.

Knockout gas.  Batman doesn’t have time for his rebreather.  The Joker smiles.

And Jason—Jason curls up in the corner, breathing too fast, his stomach churning, stuck inside another warehouse, another crowbar, another ticking bomb—

There’s nothing Jason can do.  He shouts, he screams, he swings fists through anything in reach, but he’s not really there.  He doesn’t exist.

This is the locked door all over again—helpless and hurting and he wants Batman but Batman’s down and Dick isn’t coming and Robin’s dead—

There is a too-small figure sneaking around the rafters in a familiar uniform.

That fucking kid again, his mind automatically registers.

Robin, his mind automatically registers.

NO, his mind screams.

The Joker is delighted.  “Another little bird!” he laughs, “Maybe one day I’ll find your nest!”

The crowbar comes down.

Tim is on the good drugs, struggling to stay conscious and loopy enough that he’s visibly satisfied, instead of hiding it behind fake contrition and logical reasoning.

Bruce, on the other hand, is furious.

“You could’ve been killed,” he hisses, his face white, and his eyes aren’t quite focusing on Tim.  Seeing another dead boy in his place, another broken body he carried out of a warehouse in flames.

Jason clutches his head in his hands and tries to make the screaming stop.

“I wasn’t,” Tim says, giddy on relief.

“And that’s a miracle,” Bruce snaps, “You aren’t trained, you didn’t—I have absolutely no idea what you were thinking, if you were thinking at all—”

“I was thinking,” Tim says, sullen now.  He’s almost pouting.  If Jason isn’t having a minor breakdown, he would consider it adorable.  “I was thinking that you were down and the police wouldn’t be able to help without making everything worse.”

“You weren’t thinking,” Bruce says coldly, “You jumped into a fight you couldn’t possibly have won.  You aren’t trained.”

Tim raises his eyebrows coolly, a very clear ‘and whose fault is that?’.

Bruce’s expression cracks a little further.

“It isn’t safe,” Bruce hisses, and both of them turn to That Fucking Case.

Tim loses the smile, but not the conviction.  “If Gotham loses you, it’ll never be safe again,” he says quietly.

The garage door opens and a motorcycle roars into the Cave—Dick barely lets it stop before he’s jumping off, crossing the Cave in wide strides.

He yanks the helmet off—eyes wide, face pale.  He stares at Bruce, and then the kid asleep in the cot.

“What the hell happened?” Dick breathes out.

Bruce is staring at Dick like he can’t quite believe he’s actually there.  Jason imagines what Dick knows—the Joker, Batman, a Robin showing up, a burning warehouse—and winces.

“Bruce,” Dick snaps, halfway between terror and fury.

“He saved me,” Bruce says simply.

Dick swings straight into rage.  “How could you?” he snarls, “After—after everything—after Jason—after—Robin is the last thing I have of my family and you keep using the name to murder kids!”

Bruce goes sheet white.

“I didn’t approve of this,” he says slowly, “I never wanted him out there.  He put on the suit and came to get me.”

Dick stares at him, eyes narrowed, lips twisted into a snarl.  “Tell me this isn’t going to happen again,” Dick demands.

Bruce takes a second too long to answer.

“Goddammit, Bruce, you can’t keep doing this—”

“How, exactly, do you think I can stop him?” Bruce snaps, “Because I’m all out of ideas.”

“Tell his parents!” Dick throws up his hands, “You are not personally responsible for every kid in this city!”

Bruce slumps back in his chair.  “His parents are away,” he says quietly, “I tried calling them five times.  The first three times, they didn’t pick up.  The fourth, they barely let me get in two words before they hung up.  The fifth time, it went straight to voicemail.  Either they haven’t checked their voicemails, or they sincerely do not care that their son leaves the house every night.”

Dick stares at Tim’s slack, sleeping face, and turns back to Bruce.

“I think it’s the latter,” Bruce whispers, “Because he’s been doing this since he was nine.”

Dick looks like he’s been punched.  Jason feels like he’s been punched.  The kid is tiny enough now—at nine?  How has he not been killed?  How has no one noticed?

“His earliest pictures were of you,” Bruce looks up at Dick.

Dick exhales heavily and collapses into a chair.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually considering this,” Dick says wearily.

“I can’t stop—”

“There’s a big difference between being unable to stop someone’s behavior, and actively enabling said behavior.”

“Dick.  I cannot keep him off the streets.  I can only ensure that the next time he walks into a fight, he knows what he’s doing.”

Dick looks up.  “Jason wouldn’t want you to do this,” he says quietly.

“I just want you to stop fighting,” Jason mutters.  Tim looks very young in that bed.  Smaller than Jason was.  Untrained, and yet so stubborn.  Smart enough to run circles around Batman.

“What do you want me to do?” Bruce asks softly, spreading his hands.

Dick stares at Tim.  The kid is breathing slow and deep, unaware of the tension above him.  His cast almost dwarfs him—his leg’s broken in three places.

Jason’s was broken in five.

“He’s just a kid,” Dick says softly.  Bruce doesn’t say anything at all.

“Weekends,” Dick says abruptly, when it’s almost morning.  Bruce blinks at him, the closest thing to confusion he allows himself to show.

“I’ll come up on weekends,” Dick elaborates, “To help.  The kid doesn’t go out until I’m satisfied he’s ready.”

Weekends.  Wow.  Jason got once-in-a-blue-moon ice cream and movies, and the kid’s going to get personal Nightwing training every weekend.

Jason reminds himself that someone needs to make sure that Tim doesn’t get himself killed.

“And you,” Dick turns to Bruce, his eyes hard, “Are going to call for backup.  You cannot do this alone.  Next time there’s an Arkham breakout.  Next time you find a case too big to do alone.  Next time a new player comes to town.  You call me.”

Bruce regards Dick for a long moment.  Jason hunkers down in anticipation of another raging argument.

Bruce nods, “Okay.”

The kid learns fast.

Not the casework—there, he might just have Batman beat, he’s a startlingly good detective and Bruce looks like he’s been side-swiped by a truck when Tim easily solves the case he’s been stuck on for a week—but the fighting.

Tim’s fast and light on his feet—he doesn’t pick up the escrima sticks that Dick favors, but a bo staff, and soon he’s good enough to make Dick work for a win.  Bruce takes over the hand to hand, and Tim is a quick study.

He isn’t brash or reckless or cocky.  He thinks fast and moves even faster.  Nightwing’s grace and Bruce’s detective skills and none of the failings that made Jason fall.

If there’s ever a kid who deserves Robin, Timothy Drake might just be it.

“You’re stalling,” Tim says, matching Dick’s movements as they circle each other.

Dick raises an eyebrow, and attacks—Tim blocks easily and Jason flinches back on instinct, even though the bo staff would’ve gone straight through him.

“Not the fight,” Tim narrows his eyes, “Robin.”

Dick hums and presses the attack again.  Tim dodges, and his follow-up sends Dick stumbling a step back.

“I’m ready.  You know I am.”

Dick sighs, and lowers his weapons.  Tim doesn’t lower his—he learned that little trick of Dick’s the hard way.

Dick quirks a small smile.  “You’re right,” he says, “You’re ready.”  His face falls.  “I wish you weren’t.”

“I’m going to be okay,” Tim says, brightening, “You trained me.”

Dick smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes.  “You’re going to be okay.”  He doesn’t sound like he believes it.

Tim is dressed up for his first night of patrol, Robin suit on—he’s made some minor adjustments, more red and less green—and he wavers in front of That Fucking Case.

Jason wishes that people would stop staring at that when they want to talk to him, it’s fucking creepy and he hates looking at the torn uniform.

“I’ll keep him safe,” Tim promises, eyes shining with determination, “I’ll make you proud.”

“I don’t doubt that, baby bird.”

Jason ambles behind Tim and Bruce as they head to the Cave—Alfred’s clearing up the remnants of dinner, and Dick’s in Bludhaven this week.  Batman and his newest Robin work well together, and the city does seem brighter with a Boy Wonder back at the Dark Knight’s side.

Things are getting better.  Jason wonders if his being here is contingent on a purpose, if he’ll fade away when his family is happy again.  He wants to—he doesn’t want to spend the rest of forever trapped behind a glass wall as he watches them grow old—and he doesn’t want to—he doesn’t want to leave them.

Jason misses a step.

He can’t breathe.

The air is stale, panic shudders through his limbs, confined and constricted and—

Something’s wrong.  He can feel it.  He can feel it.

Chapter Text

He swallows, and he tastes dirt.  It’s the first thing he’s tasted since he died.

Jason leaves the Cave.  Jason runs.

Breath is stuttering in his lungs, he can feel splinters under his fingernails, he feels afraid.  Terrified.

He doesn’t know what’s going on.  He doesn’t—there’s a desperate flicker of hope in his chest, and it’s matched with an equal amount of dread.  He sprints to the graveyard—it’s raining, wet and dark and gloomy and he can feel the mud squelching between his fingers and—

Jason stumbles to a stop, horrified, ten steps from his grave.

There’s a body shivering there, covered in dirt, limbs twisted and wrong, eyes glazed over.

Jason screams in the same voice as the creature, “Bruce!”

What the fuck what the fuck what the goddamn holy fuck—

He’s alive.  He’s alive.  He’s alive!

If that is Jason Todd, then who is he?

What the goddamn hell is going on.

Zombies.

No.  Zombie Jason isn’t eating anybody’s brains.

Zombie Jason is also not listening to him, if he can hear him at all.

A zombie and a ghost.  Now they just need a Vampire Jason and they’ll have the trifecta of the undead.

“That is not the way to the Manor!” Jason hisses, but he can’t touch his body any more than he can interact with any other living thing.

Zombie Jason stumbles along the road, dazed and covered in mud and dressed in a ragged suit.  Every so often, Jason feels the rain on his skin.

Zombie Jason is real—he’s watched five people do double-takes on seeing him.  Jason can’t feel him, but some sensations slip through.

Zombie Jason is real.  He’s real.

“I’m alive,” Jason whispers, still stunned.

He was in that grave for more than a year.

Jason’s what-the-fuck scale has been improperly calibrated this whole time.

He’s alive.

Batman will find him.  Bruce will come.  And then they can fix this, the way they should’ve done back in that warehouse, and this whole year will just be a bad dream.

“The Manor,” Jason sighs, “Can we please just go to the Manor?”

Gotham is a big city.  And sure, the odds of tripping over Batman on the streets at night is probably once a month, but if Jason can just get his body to go to the Cave—

“Hello?  Are you okay?  Hey, kid?  Hello?”

On second thought, a hospital is a good idea too.  Jason hovers over the doctors as they take his blood and send him for scans and murmur in confused voices.

‘Catatonic’, he catches, ‘near comatose’.  Well, yeah, his mind’s currently drifting above his body, there’s definitely something wrong, but it’s probably a bit beyond the expertise of any normal doctor.

“Call Bruce,” Jason says, “Come on, get the identification over with, call Bruce, the people at the cemetery must’ve already reported me missing.”

Jason feels sorry for whichever poor schmuck stumbled over his desecrated grave.  They’re going to have nightmares for years.  Hell, Jason’s still creeped out, and it was his own body.

There’s a conversation about notifying the police and checking missing person reports.

Jason grins, giddy with glee.

He’s going home.

The police come and go.  The name on the chart still says ‘John Doe’.

It’s not that Jason isn’t patient—being a ghost for a year will do that to you—it’s just that he didn’t expect it to take this long.

Sure, a couple of days isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but Bruce should be tearing through every hospital in the city.  Jason isn’t hiding.  Why hasn’t anyone come?

Jason pats his shoulder—his fingers go through the hospital gown—and leaves to head to the Manor.  Maybe he’ll be less antsy viewing the other side of the things.

Alfred sets the breakfast table, as serene as ever.  Tim stumbles downstairs, about as aware as Zombie Jason before he gets his hands around a coffee mug.  Dick bursts in, cheerful and grinning.  Bruce ambles in and promptly dives into the newspaper.

None of them look concerned.

None of them look tense.

No one even mentions his name.

Jason runs to the cemetery.  His plot is filled over, pristine and untouched.  He can still feel the splinters under his fingernails.

He goes back to the hospital and curls up in the empty chair at Zombie Jason’s side.  Everything is cold.  He can feel for the first time, and everything is so very cold.

“Come on, Bruce, are you really just going to leave me here?” Jason mutters, pacing around the room, absently watching the nurse check the IV bag, “Aren’t I a security risk at the very least?  What if I tell everybody that the infamous Batman is Bruce Wayne?”

He freezes.

The nurse blinks down at his body.  “What was that, dear?” she asks, bending down, “Did you say something?”

Zombie Jason is still and silent.

But Jason swears he just said ‘Bruce Wayne’.

Clearly there’s still a connection between Jason-the-ghost and Jason-the-zombie.  Jason gets flashes of sensation—the bruise in his elbow from the IV port, the scratchy sheets, the freezing room—and Jason’s words occasionally come out of Zombie Jason’s mouth.

Okay.  He can work with this.  He doesn’t need Bruce to come rescue him.  World’s Greatest Detective, his ass.  He didn’t even notice when his own son dug himself out of the grave.

Jason ignores the part of his mind that tells him that Bruce no longer cares, and gets to work.

“My name is Jason Peter Todd-Wayne,” Jason repeats, clear and loud, every time someone walks into the room.

“My name is Jason Wayne,” he mutters a week later, because only a few syllables have ever managed to make it out of Zombie Jason’s mouth.

“Jason Todd,” he recites wearily to the ceiling a month later.

He’s almost gotten there—one of the nurses has started calling him Jay, the others are still arguing whether his name is Jason or Jase, he can get the last name next and—

Zombie Jason gets out of bed.  Disconnects the IV line with quick, practiced movements.

“Hey, wait, what—”

Goes to the window.  Scrambles out easily, swaying from the ledge.  Jumps to the dumpster.

“What the fuck,” Jason says, staring out the window.

Jason has no clue what his body is running on, but it’s apparent that conscious or not, it retains Jason’s fighting skills.  Add that to the very visible lack of any valuables, and the dazed sixteen-year-old wandering through Gotham’s alleys is left alone.

Jason tries his best not to scream in frustration.

He almost got through to the nurses in the hospital, and now all that hard work is down the drain.  Now his body is walking near-defenseless through the streets of the most dangerous city in the world and, trained or not, Jason knows he’s going to end up at the bottom of Gotham Harbor.

Not all the unsavory people in this city are after money, and with the track record Arkham has on keeping Rogues locked up, Zombie Jason is going to end up as collateral damage of another explosion.

Jason’s steps stutter a beat, and Zombie Jason mirrors him.

Oh god.

Oh god.

Jason does not want to see what the Joker will do if he happens upon an undead Robin.

If there is any sort of justice in this world, please no.

If there is any sort of justice in the world, Jason wouldn’t be in this situation.

The only consolation is that here, at least, he has a much higher chance of stumbling upon Batman.  Those chances will skyrocket if he manages to climb up on the roof, but Zombie Jason is content shuffling through the alleys.

Not all the people lurking in the shadows are enemies, and Zombie Jason gets a warm hoodie and sweatpants, a couple of burgers and hair ruffles from the working girls, and a chocolate bar from a relieved man Zombie Jason accidentally saved from a mugging.

Jason curls his arms around himself.  Being jealous of his own body is idiotic.

He just wants to feel warm again.

It takes Jason a week to realize that these are his old patrol routes.  Zombie Jason has a little more than muscle memory if he’s keeping these streets safe.

For a moment—a brief, jolting moment—Jason is happy.  Because these are his old patrol routes and that means that Batman or Robin will be covering them, they’ll see him, they’ll bring him home, they’ll—

But the new Robin doesn’t leave Batman’s side.  They don’t split up for patrol.  And these streets rarely ever see a Bat’s shadow.

Jason thinks, if the kid wasn’t Robin—

Jason thinks, if he was still running around with that camera—

Jason thinks, if I didn’t die—

Jason thinks, if I only followed orders, if I only listened, if I didn’t run away—

There’s someone following Zombie Jason.  Jason’s stalking his body, he can tell when other people are doing it too.

They’re not dressed as a clown, so Jason is wary but not outright panicked.  He left the Manor—and Alfred and Bruce and Dick and Tim, he doesn’t even know how they’re doing without him, can’t even check up on them without worrying that he’s going to end up misplacing his body somewhere—almost two months ago.

Maybe they’re a new mask.  They most certainly aren’t the normal brand of scum—Jason’s body isn’t exactly easy pickings and they’ve been following him for a full day.

It’ll be hysterical if a Rogue recognizes him before Batman does.

Jason keeps one eye on his body and one eye on the patch of darkness in the shadow, tensing despite himself.  He can’t fight.  He can only watch.

Who knows?  Maybe the scuffle will alert Batman.  A ghost can hope—

Jason’s legs still and crumple.  The streetlight shines off of the dart in his neck.  There won’t be a scuffle.

There’s more than one shadow.  Dressed all in black, head to toe, with wicked looking daggers.

Jason isn’t quite sure who they are, but he has a sinking suspicion.

One of them flips Jason’s body onto his back.  “He looks very much like the second boy,” the shadow says.

“That boy is dead,” another one says quietly.

“His grave is empty.”

Jason goes cold.  They know who he is.

“The Demon’s Head will be pleased.”

They know who he is.

The goddamn fucking League of Assassins.

They know who he is.

And they’re not calling Bruce.

Jason doesn’t bother trying to speak.  He’s given a room in the massive, multi-storied, half-underground hideout that is Nanda Parbat, and several caretakers who watch over him.

And test his reflexes.  Jason has no idea what they’re looking for, but Zombie Jason is very good at fighting back.  He doesn’t speak, though, not unless Jason does, and his stare is dead and vacant.

They talk around him like he doesn’t exist.  Only problem is that Jason does exist, and he can hear just fine.

It seems that Talia al Ghul has a plan, and he’s at the center of it.

Jason takes the opportunity to explore a secret assassin hideout, because little things like locked doors and booby traps and solid stone don’t stop him.

If the League finds a way to fix him, great.  He might even send them a thank-you card.  But Jason doesn’t like the sound of this plan, and turnabout is fair play.

It takes him a couple of days to explore the whole place, mainly because he keeps drifting back to his body to make sure they haven’t started experimenting on him.

The hideout is as creepy as Jason suspects.  Ra’s al Ghul is a terrifying presence permeating through the hallways—though the man’s creepiness factor is slightly reduced by the fact that he, too, cannot see Jason—there’s a weird, bubbling green pit in the lowest floor, and various assassin-y rooms of weapons and poisons and all sorts of unsavory things.

Bruce trained here? Jason thinks, wrinkling his nose.

Though he can now see where the Cave got its inspiration.

Jason finds the kid on day twelve of hanging around in an assassin hideout far, far from home.

He realizes three things in short order.

First, the kid is a child, not yet ten years old.

Second, the kid is definitely, one hundred percent, Bruce’s.

Third, he’s going to fucking murder Talia al Ghul.

Damian al Ghul, they call him. 

Ibn al Xu’ffasch.

Heir to the Bat.

The kid is fucking eight years old.  Eight, and he’s standing on a training mat, sword in hand, with a cut across his arm that’s bleeding freely.

Jason settles with deadly grace behind the man that calls himself the kid’s trainer, and seethes.

He was trained by Batman.  Dick was nine when he became Robin.  Jason is well aware that he has little room to talk about children growing up to be soldiers.

But Bruce’s training was never like this.  Training hurt sometimes, but never like this.  Jason never went to his room clutching a broken wrist for failing to master a form fast enough.  Jason was never set upon by four assassins as a test of reflexes.  Jason never had to snap on a commanding mask and project nothing but haughty confidence because every sign of weakness would be pounced upon.

“Dad,” Jason says for the first time in weeks, “Dad, you need to come and get us.”

Bruce doesn’t know about Damian.  Jason is positive Bruce doesn’t know about Damian, because he would be here in a heartbeat if he knew.

The kid is so alone.  Talia sweeps in to verify that his training is progressing as planned, and sweeps out again.

Jason bares his teeth at her and settles in the corner of Damian’s room.  He hasn’t forgotten that his presence seems to make people feel a little better.  And of the entirety of the League of Assassins, this kid is the only one he wants to help.

Talia is getting frustrated with his lack of progress.  As soon as Jason started staying away from his body, it lapsed back into a near comatose state.  Jason’s not all that concerned.  He doesn’t like the sound of her plans and he doesn’t want to wake up in the middle of a League hideout, surrounded by enemies.

They can kill his body again.  Jason will still be a ghost.  It’s not like it makes all that much of a difference to him now.

“Kill it,” the trainer orders.

Damian looks at the bird in the cage.

Jason balls his hands into fists.

The eight-year-old boy looks up, his eyes as bright and determined as Bruce’s.

“No.”

“You stubborn fool,” Jason bemoans, burying his face in his hands.  Damian shifts through his cooldowns, not letting a single pained hiss escape his mouth, even as the movement pulls at several healing bruises.

He’s definitely Bruce’s kid.

You would think a thousand-year-old guy would have more patience, but between Damian’s newfound disobedience and Zombie Jason’s lack of responsiveness, it seems like Ra’s is running out.

“Both your projects are close to becoming failures,” Ra’s says coldly as Talia kneels, “Fix them.  Before I do it for you.”

Jason can read between the lines easily enough.  Throw one under the bus, so the other will survive.

He doesn’t know if Talia actually has a maternal bone in her body or if she’s just that tired of him, but the shifty glances are enough for him to abandon watching Damian’s training and head to his room.

His body lies limp in an assassin’s grasp and Talia gives it a cold stare before sweeping out of the room.  Four assassins follow her and his body and Jason follows all of them as they head deeper and deeper.

There’s only one thing that’s this far down.

“Lady Talia,” someone murmurs as they descend the final set of stairs, “Are you sure?”

“If this does not heal him,” Talia says, “Nothing will.”

Jason edges closer.  The pit is a bubbling, acidic green and Jason is reminded of a toxic green smile, eerie laughter, whistling metal—

His body is thrown into the pit, and suddenly, everything is on fire.

He’s drowning, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe—

Everything is burning, everything hurts—

He snaps his eyes open and sees nothing but green.

Chapter Text

The first thing Jason does when he claws himself out of the Pit is lunge at Talia al Ghul’s face.

Two assassins move to intercept, blocking him—and he can feel their strikes, he can feel his bone snap as they twist his arm behind his back, he can feel the rough stone under his knees as they force him down.

Talia crouches in front of him and for the first time in nearly two years, someone is looking straight into his eyes.

“Welcome back, Jason,” she smiles.

Jason nearly dislocates his arm trying to tear it out of their grasp.  He’s furious, all the helpless rage and howling frustration and seething fury that built up over nearly two years and now he can finally do something about it, finally feel the crunch of cartilage under his fists, the give of skin under his fingernails, blood and broken bone and every bit of violence he’s been unable to use—

“Jason, I—”

“Get the fuck out.”

“You are still—”

“I don’t want to see you.”

“We’re trying to—”

“I will tear your throat out.”

Talia sighs and double-checks the restraints.  “I’ll come back when you’re less angry,” she says.

“Don’t hold your breath, you conniving bitch.”

Everything is green.  Everything is green.  It’s a haze around his mind, around his limbs, and every thought tastes of pure, vitriolic rage.

Jason wants to hurt something.  And that terrifies him.

Wait a minute.

He’s alive.

He’s actually, honest-to-goodness alive.  He’s locked in restraints he can’t phase out of, he can feel the fingers on his arm when someone comes by to draw blood, he can look straight at Talia al Ghul when she comes to visit him and she actually looks straight back.

“You’re just going to keep me here for the rest of my life?” Jason snarls, testing the restraints again.  The green haze tints everything an odd color—Talia’s hair and eyes go oil-slick black.

“Jason,” Talia blinks at him in wounded surprise, “We rescued you.  We’re not keeping you here.”

Jason shakes a restrained wrist pointedly.

“You were lashing out,” she says, taking a seat by his side.  She brushes the hair out of his face—Jason’s instincts war between getting the fuck away from the crazy assassin and leaning closer to the first touch he’s had in months.

His irritation spikes.

“We’re not keeping you here, Jason.  We saved you.”  She blinks at him, and if he wasn’t watching her for weeks, he would’ve never noticed the sharpness in her eyes.  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

You discussing your goddamn plans like I’m a chess piece, Jason opens his mouth to answer, and then slams it shut.

They don’t know he was a ghost.  None of them know.  They have no idea that he’s had free reign over this hideout for weeks.

Jason doesn’t want to imagine what they’d do if they realize.

“The Joker,” he spits out, because Talia is still waiting for an answer, “A warehouse.  Not fucking here, wherever this is.”

Talia’s face falls into sadness like he can’t see the gleam of satisfaction in her eyes.  “Oh, Jason, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this—”

Talia spins a convincing pack of lies.  Jason is impressed.  It would’ve worked, if he wasn’t a ghost, if he wasn’t watching his family, if he didn’t stare at his own body crawling out of his grave, if he didn’t spend the last several weeks eavesdropping on their operations.

Talia takes his lack of verbal denial to mean acquiescence.

“I’m so sorry, Jason,” she says, still mournful, “But you’re better now.”

Jason’s mouth moves without his conscious permission.  “Where’s Bruce?”

Talia blinks.

“Bruce.  My father.  Where is he?  When did you tell him?  When will he get here?”

Talia does a carefully crafted construction of hiding guilt and remorse behind bland hope.

“I called him as soon as you woke up and started talking,” Talia lies, “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.”

They remove the restraints after that, like Jason won’t notice the guards following him around.

Adjusting to a corporeal body again is strange.  Jason doesn’t realize that he got used to passing through people and sinking through floors and jumping off of high places until he stumbles back and bumps against shoulders and generally acts like a baby giraffe.

It doesn’t help that this body’s grown in the two years that Jason was a ghost, that it’s taller and broader than he remembers it being, and no longer lean in the way that only hunger knows.

His clumsiness is a fucking joke to the rest of the League, he can hear them snickering behind their hands every time he trips or falls.  He’s covered in bruises all the time and he’s sore and aching—but every one of them is a reminder that he’s real.  That he’s alive.  That he came back.

He half thinks that the last two years were a dream.  But he knows the floor plan of the League hideout like the back of his hand—even if he misses the booby traps and locks he pretty much ignored before—and he confirms that it’s been two years since he died.

He was a ghost.  He came back.  He was there the whole time, he knew it, why did no one else bother to—

Breathe in.  Breathe out.

The Lazarus Pit comes with a few cute side effects.

One, a lock of his hair has gone bone-white.  It doesn’t look half-bad, and Jason ignores it.

Two, it’s healed every single wound he’s ever had.  The scars.  The malnutrition.  Jason knows he was always going to be a brawler, but it’s quickly become apparent that he’s going to look like Bruce.

Three, it’s turned him crazy.  Green has quickly become his least favorite color.  He’s so goddamn angry all the time—at first he thought it was just Talia, just two years of bottling everything up, but he gets annoyed at the smallest things, and annoyance tips into fury without a second thought.

He keeps walking into walls.  Unsurprisingly, this does not help his temper.

Jason is mildly surprised when Talia brings up training.  She suggests it as a way to get used to not being dead.  Jason has to admit it’s a fair point.

And he’s hoping to see Damian again.  He isn’t a fool, he didn’t dare mention the name to Talia, but maybe she’s doing a Bruce and collecting all his children to make sure he comes when he’s called.

It’s a stupid idea, but Talia and Bruce’s weird love story has always been stupid.

Damian isn’t at the training session.  The man that thinks it’s fun to force little boys to kill innocent animals is.

Jason smiles with all his teeth.

Talia almost looks proud when she comes back to the training room.  She circles the body on the floor and gives Jason a quick once-over—he only has a few bruises added to his collection.

“He’s still alive,” Talia notes, nudging the man.  He groans weakly, unable to move.  Jason may have shattered his spine, things got a bit hazy after the green came back.

“I don’t kill,” Jason says coldly.  The one rule.  The one thing that Batman will never ever accept from him.

Talia’s sword moves so quickly he doesn’t even notice until the man’s breathing cuts off with a gurgle.

He takes a single, startled step back.

“The weak are meant to be culled,” she says firmly.

“I don’t kill,” Jason snarls.  The man’s blood is seeping over the training mats.

“It’s not killing,” Talia says, wiping her blade clean, “It’s revoking their right to existence.”

It’s revoking their right to existence.

Jason feels sick.  He spent two years without a right to existence.  He doesn’t know if he was special or if others have been ghosts as well.  He doesn’t know who to ask.

Injured, hurt, in pain—at least they exist.  Death isn’t a mercy.  Death is the greatest torture of them all.

“Where is Bruce?”  He asks the question every morning, always interested to see what new lie Talia will come up.

She hesitates, and his gaze sharpens.  “What?” he snaps, “You said you told him.  Where is he?”

Talia forces her face into an expression of sympathy that’s about as believable as fool’s gold.  “Jason,” she starts.

“I don’t want to hear any more of your bullshit, Talia!  If you told him, he’d be here already.  I’m his Robin.  I’m his son.”

Talia hesitates again.

Jason clenches his hands into fists as a green wave washes over the room, “Stop lying to me!”

“Jason, I don’t want to hurt you,” Talia says softly, and Jason hasn’t heard a bigger lie in his life.  He scoffs.

Her face pinches, and she nods to one of the servants, who leaves and comes back with a newspaper.

“Jason,” Talia says gently, like he’s a wild animal she’s trying not to spook, “There’s a new Robin.”

Of course there is, Jason bites himself back from sneering.  He’s not supposed to know that.  He forces himself to roll his eyes, “I don’t want to hear your lies—”

Talia places the newspaper down on the table.  It’s a picture of Batman and Robin, dated from a few months ago.

Jason can’t stop his fingers from trembling.  They’re okay.  They’re safe.  They’re alive.

“This—you made this up.  This is fake.  I don’t believe you.”  Not his most convincing line, but the thread of anger always-present in his tone helps sell it.

“Jason,” Talia says softly, “This is real.  I can show you more papers.”  She nods at the servant again and they leave.  When they come back, it’s with a stack of paper nearly six inches high.

She puts paper after paper down in front of him and Jason forces himself to keep up an expression of growing rage as he scrambles for any photos of his father he can find.

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Talia says softly.

“He thought I was dead,” Jason says finally, his voice flat, “He got another Robin.  So what.  If you told him I’m alive, he would be here, I’m his son—”

“Jason,” Talia cuts him off, and places the last newspaper on top.  It’s dated from two weeks ago.  It looks the same as the others, no visible evidence of doctoring.

The newspaper tears as Jason curls his fingers into fists.  It rips right down the middle, a jagged line through the photo of the black-haired, blue-eyed boy looking at the camera.

‘Drake Heir Adopted By Bruce Wayne’ the headline proclaims.

Green.  Green everywhere.  Green surrounding him, drowning him, surging through his veins with how dare he and interloper and how could you take everything from me and how long were you waiting to replace the street trash with the rich kid and—

Jason can see the kid in front of him, the smug, satisfied smile on his face, the new Robin suit, and he can vividly imagine curling his fingers around that fragile neck and squeezing until something snaps.

Four years.  Four years the kid was waiting to take his place.

Jason doesn’t know if he’s angrier at Bruce for taking in another son like he forgot about his death, or the kid for sneaking his way in to the family he spent four years stalking like he doesn’t have his own rich parents.

Wait a minute.

What happened to the kid’s parents?

Jason blinks and the green recedes—the room is trashed, Talia and the servants must’ve fled at some point, and everything is covered in shredded newspaper.  Jason searches through the remnants until he finds the one on the adoption, Tim standing solemnly with Bruce’s hand on his shoulder.

Parents dead in a plane crash.

Tim is leaning into Bruce’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Jason remembers going to the Manor after he found his body, remembers seeing Tim shuffle in and Dick smiling and Alfred serving breakfast calmly and Bruce drinking coffee and reading the newspaper.

They didn’t need him as a ghost.

They don’t need him as a person.

He had three and a half years.  It was a good run.  But Jason knows that he’s a street kid, and that he will always end up where he belongs.

They’re happier without him.

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Talia says softly, “I’m so sorry they replaced you.”  Jason twitches.  He doesn’t want to hear this.  He doesn’t want stay here.  He wants to go home.

Not to Bruce.  Not to the Manor.  Back to Gotham.  Back to Crime Alley.  Back to the streets he knows like the back of his hand.

“It’s okay, Jason,” Talia says, “It’s okay to feel angry.  It’s okay to feel betrayed.”

What the fuck is she on?  Jason feels his frustration rising—of course he feels betrayed, but he died—what, was he supposed to expect that they wallow in their grief for all eternity—

“It’s okay,” Talia says softly, “You can make them all pay.”

Jason’s thoughts stutter for a moment.

The green comes back.

They replaced him.  They betrayed him.

He can make them all pay.

He can make them all pay.

“You will train every day, sunrise to sunset,” Talia tells him, her eyes cold, “I will arrange to find teachers in whatever style you’d like.”

Green pulses in and out.  He’s so angry he can taste it.

“What do you want to learn?”

“Everything.”

Talia smiles.  “And once you are done,” she says softly, “Not even Batman himself will be able to stand in your way.”

“No killing,” he informs her.

“The weak are to be—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the rhetoric a hundred times.  No killing.  I’m going to break Batman into pieces and when I put a bullet into his head, I want him to know that his death is what breaks his one rule.  I want him to die with the knowledge that he couldn’t stop me from becoming a killer.”

Green curls around his fingers and tightens them into fists.

There’s a faint flicker of surprise across Talia’s face, but she acquiesces easily.

They’ll never see what’s coming for them.

He doesn’t see Damian at all.  He doesn’t even know if the kid’s safe.  If he killed that stupid bird.

He doesn’t dare ask.

Jason isn’t a kid in Crime Alley, learning to hit hard and run fast, learning how to keep himself safe in the midst of looming monsters.

Jason isn’t a teenager in the Batcave, learning to fight under the tutelage of Batman, learning how to keep the streets of Gotham safe.

Jason is a near-adult in the League of Assassins, learning how to be a shadow, learning how to destroy anyone in his path.

He learns fast.  He always did.  The League’s training is quick and hard and brutal, and it tempers the green enough to make it a blade, to hone it into a weapon and not a madness.

He snaps a woman’s arm in two and breaks four of her ribs with a solid kick and absently wonders what Bruce would think.

It doesn’t matter, Talia’s voice whispers, he isn’t here.

There are considering glances tossed his way as the months go by.  Assassins who clearly thought he couldn’t stick to the no-killing rule.  Talia doesn’t look surprised, but he can only ever catch half her tells.

It makes him want to sneer.  The Lazarus Pit isn’t some kill-seeking thrill.  The Pit makes him angry—it’s rage beyond control, fury without a limit, it amplifies every passing irritation into a seething frenzy.

It doesn’t make him want to kill.  It makes him want to hurt.  And even in the throes of uncontrollable rage, Jason knows that death is the end of the game.

He doesn’t feel like ending the game just yet.

Talia comes back with another newspaper.  She passes it to him wordlessly.

Jason takes a deep breath, forcing the green down, before he looks at it.

His preparation is pointless.

He destroys three rooms and wounds twenty assassins before Talia orders everyone to leave the vicinity.

The green is a sea, and he’s drowning.

HA-ha-HA-ha-HA-ha-HAHAHAHAHA—

“He’s still alive,” Jason hisses, pacing around the room, but the green has left enough coherence for the words to come back.  Talia sighs, like she isn’t sitting on the one intact chair in a ruined room.  “That fucking clown is still alive.”

“Jason,” Talia says, sympathetic.

“He didn’t even avenge me,” Jason snarls, “He didn’t even care enough to—to—how could he?”

“It’s okay, Jason,” Talia says softly, “He will answer for his actions soon enough.”

“I thought he loved me,” Jason murmurs, a tone that’s supposed to be too quiet for Talia to hear.

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Talia says consolingly.

She doesn’t ever call Bruce ‘Beloved’ in his presence.

Jason only catches the conversation because he’s practicing sneaking—it’s the skill that suffered the most while he was a ghost, and now he stands out in any crowd with his frame and his hair and the aura of danger he can’t help exuding—and he stills in the shadows as he strains to hear.

“—doesn’t have much time left, he is getting angry—”

“—still refuses to obey—”

“—the dead one can only hold his interest for so long—”

Jason leaves before he’s caught.

Jason rolls his neck and glances at the groaning forms of his opponents.  Talia is watching—or, more accurately, she’s leaning against the wall and tapping away on her phone, but Jason knows her awareness is on him.

“I want to go to Gotham.”

Talia’s fingers still for a moment, a tell she can’t quite hide.

“Oh?” she says, sounding disinterested, “Do you think you’re ready to take on Batman?”

“I think I’ve learned all I can here,” Jason makes a show of surveying the room.

Talia looks up from her phone, frowning.  “Don’t get overconfident,” she snaps, “You cannot beat him in a fair fight.”

Jason blinks.  “Who said I was going to fight fair?”

Ra’s al Ghul is goddamn creepy, Jason can feel his spine shiver when the man looks at him.  He doesn’t look like a man who’s more than a thousand years old, who’s been in the Lazarus Pit more than anyone else alive.

He doesn’t look like he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stave off rage, because red is the only thing that keeps the green at bay.

“You think you’re ready to return to Gotham?” Ra’s asks, his gaze flicking over Jason like he’s a bug.  “You think you’re prepared to face the Bat?”

“Better than any of those lunatics he’s locked up, at the very least,” Jason bares his teeth.

“He trained here before you,” Ra’s says coldly, “He has years of experience on you.  You think you can take him down?”

“I don’t need to take him down,” Jason smiles.

Ra’s raises an inquiring eyebrow.

“Nightwing.  The Replacement.  I get my hands on a couple of birds and the Bat will come running,” Jason says, and green is edging around his vision again, “I’m going to destroy him before I let him die.”

Ra’s smiles.

Jason gets on a plane.

Gotham is the same stinking cesspool of a city he left.  He takes a deep breath—pollution and long-present remnants of fear toxin and Joker venom and the gas du jour of the Rogues—and smiles.

He’s home.  It’s been almost three years, and he’s home.

Jason admits he didn’t entirely think this plan through when he nearly stabs a man for pushing past him on the street.  The green is ever-present and if Jason wants to keep his presence discreet, he can’t go around punching anyone who irritates him.

He hoped to hide until he’s ready to put his plan into action.  He can’t have the Bats knowing he’s back until everything is in place.

Jason stills, and adds a final touch to the costume he’s created.

A red helmet.

If he’s going to reclaim his death, he might as well go all the way.

The Red Hood sweeps into Crime Alley with a vengeance.

It’s a solid plan.  Jason spends most of the day holed up in one of a couple different safehouses, and the nights terrorizing every drug dealer, pimp, and lowlife in Crime Alley until he’s tired enough that the green fades away.

He’s making a name for himself.  Carving out territory.  At first, several gangs think he’s the Joker or an affiliate, but Jason thoroughly disabuses them of this notion by breaking the kneecaps of everyone who dares to mention the Joker’s name in front of him.

Others are smarter.  Because the second thing they look at, after the red helmet, is the bat emblazoned across his chest.

Talia raised her eyebrows at that one.  Jason painted it as red as blood, and dared her to say something about it.

She merely gave him an inscrutable look and left.

Jason’s safehouses are League safehouses.  He knows he has a couple of a shadows following him, in or out of the mask.  He points out to Talia that he doesn’t need babysitters.  Talia retorts that they’re for his protection.

The Pit makes him angry, it doesn’t make him stupid.  And yet Talia never notices that Jason doesn’t ask her for the price of her protection.

He grew up in Crime Alley.  He’s very good at spotting the fine print.

There’s a second set of eyes on him tonight.  Not the shadow.  Curious, but wary.  Very, very good at hiding—if Jason wasn’t trained by the League, he might not have detected him.

He certainly didn’t when the kid had a camera and no training.

Jason stops on a rooftop and feels the presence slink closer.  He was wondering how long it’d take before the Bats realize there’s a new player in town.

“Red Hood,” the kid says, and Jason turns.

“Robin,” he acknowledges, and it comes out as a twisted sneer.  The kid at least has the sense to keep a rooftop between them.

“What are you doing?” the Replacement asks.

“Minding my own business,” Jason replies easily, “Unlike you.”

“You’re wearing a bat,” the Replacement says.  His bo staff is in his hands.  The last person he fought with a bo staff ended up with five broken bones from her own weapon and Jason took great pleasure in snapping it into pieces.

“You own the bat or something?” Jason laughs, and the sound is harsh, “I can wear whatever I damn well want.”

“I’m not sure Batman will see it that way,” the kid responds.

Jason makes a show of looking at the empty rooftops surrounding them.  “I don’t see the big guy.  All I see is a kid playing dress-up in a suit that isn’t his.”

The Replacement goes still.  Jason takes a step forward.  “Funny,” he says quietly, “All this talk of owning symbols.  That R isn’t yours.  You’re nothing but a placeholder, a pretender playing at being a hero.”

“Why don’t you come over here, Hood?” the Replacement snaps, “And I’ll show you how well I pretend.”

Jason grins.  Looks like he found a sore spot.

“Big words for a kid, Robin,” Jason sneers, “Oh, wait—you’re not the real Robin.  I can’t call you that.”  Jason taps a finger on his helmet as if he’s in thought, “No, you need another name.  How about…Timothy?”

Robin freezes.

“As fun as this conversation’s been, I have places to be and people to punch,” Jason raises a hand in farewell, “I’ll see you around, Timmy.”

The kid doesn’t follow him.

Jason waits until he’s three streets over to release his grip on the acid threatening to eat his vision—seeing the kid standing there in his colors, wearing his symbol—Jason wanted to throw Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne off a roof and impale him on his own staff.

Needless to say, several criminals end up in the hospital that night.

He needs to be patient.  He can’t ruin the plan by rushing in now.  The kid needs to be alive for the plan to work, which means Jason cannot run through the city and hunt him down and take out his knife and—

He needs to be patient.

The second birdie is the one Jason wants to see.  He’s watched Tim’s training, and the kid picked up stuff fast, but he’s only had two years of experience so far.  Jason knows he can take him, especially with the Pit rage in his veins.

But Nightwing has had more than a decade under the mask.  Luckily, the Pit managed to temper Jason’s brash rage into a cooler, deadlier fury.

Nightwing lands on Jason’s roof like he’s a threat—sudden, swift, cutting off easy access points.  Textbook Bat.

That’s Dick’s weakness.  He’s learned from Bruce, and only Bruce, while Jason has a year of League training and a childhood of whatever the Alley beat into his bones.  He can’t match Dick’s acrobatics, because no one can, but Jason knows Dick’s training—he knows how the older vigilante moves and he knows how he’ll act.

“Someone told me that there was a new Bat in town,” Nightwing chirps, his stride menacing but his voice cheerful, “And I had to come see for myself.”

“Take a good long look, asshole,” Jason says, spreading his arms wide, “And if you call me a Bat again, I’ll break your face.”

“Then what am I supposed to call you?”

“Red Hood will do.”  Jason smirks at the brief flash of rage that crosses Dick’s face.

“Funny, I didn’t know that the Joker was looking to return to his roots.”

The smile slips off and there’s a gun pointing at the center of Dick’s head.  “Say that name again,” Jason says quietly, “And I’ll rip out your tongue.”

A brief flash of satisfaction crosses Dick’s face and Jason silently snarls.  Looks like that particular trigger made its way to some bat ears.

At least he doesn’t have to worry about Batman joining the party.  The assassin is lurking around here somewhere, he can feel the prickle on the back of his neck, and they know what to do if Batman shows up.

“I’d love to stay and chat, Dick,” Jason emphasizes the insult, and rejoices at the brief hesitation, “But Crime Alley isn’t going to clean itself up.”  He backs up until he’s at the edge of the rooftop.  The next one isn’t in easy reach, but Dick is blocking off the good access points.

“You’re not cleaning up Crime Alley,” Dick says coldly, “Chatter on the street says that it’s two matches away from going up in flames.  You’re going to have a gang war on your hands.”

Oh, is that what chatter on the street was saying?

“What would a bird know about chatter on the street?” Jason asks.  He can see Nightwing shifting closer, eyes on the gun Jason is still pointing at his face—Jason makes a point of not firing it often enough that anyone would realize that they’re all rubber bullets—as he edges forward.

Jason steps back, and off the ledge.

He falls out of view before catching a railing and curling out of sight.  A dirty trick, perhaps, but Jason isn’t fighting fair.

He has the advantage as long as they don’t know who he is, and the only way he’ll win is if he uses their weaknesses against them.

He refuses to admit that Nightwing’s frantic shout tugs at his heart.

“What do you need?” Talia asks when he appears in the League safehouse.  Jason’s tracked down the other pieces of his plan, picked up parts on his rampage through Crime Alley—the cuffs and collars he found when he busted a human trafficking operation—but certain things can’t be smuggled in by local gangs.

“Explosives,” Jason says, and the green presses in.

Talia gives him that look again, wariness and suspicion and the faintest hint of fear.  Like she’s doubting his sanity.  Like she’s beginning to have second thoughts about putting a loaded gun in his hands.

Jason gets the explosives and smiles, razor-sharp.

There isn’t a gang war about to explode in Crime Alley, because he’s put a third in the hospital and the fear of the Red Hood in all of them.  The streets are uneasily quiet, but that’s because they’re all licking their wounds, not because they’re preparing for a fight.  The large quantities of weapons smuggled in and money changing hands are all between League operatives.

But that isn’t what the Bats hear.

Jason owes an apology to the Rogues Gallery.  He never knew it could be this much fun to pull together all the individual strings that made the web of his plan, to lay each individual tile of the beautiful puzzle, to cast the wide net of his trap.

Jason double-checks his weapons.  He puts on his helmet.  He ignores the shadow hovering in the background.

And then he presses the trigger.

Somewhere in Crime Alley, a warehouse full of drugs goes up in flames.

Chapter Text

‘Timothy’ Red Hood says, and Tim loses the ability to breathe.  By the time he can move again, Hood is gone.

He tries to convince himself that it’s a coincidence, that Tim’s a common name, that Hood didn’t know what he was talking about.

It doesn’t quite stick.

Hood falls.  Falls, and a part of Dick is already screaming as he scrambles for the edge, readying his grapple even though it’s too late, he’s too far and—

There’s no body lying twisting and broken on the ground.  There’s no one there at all.

It takes Dick a solid ten minutes to get his heart rate back to normal.

There is a warehouse in flames on the edge of Crime Alley.

They knew this was going to happen.  Crime Alley is a powder keg on the best of days, and Red Hood came in and shook the whole place up.

They have no idea who the man is or what his motivations are.  The only thing that’s stopped Bruce from overturning every rock in the alley to tear that bat off his chest is that he isn’t killing.  No dead bodies, despite all the violence.  The GCPD are baffled.  Bruce is baffled.

But Crime Alley is about to become a cauldron of chaos and it no longer matters what the Red Hood’s intentions are.

The body slams into him mid-swing and Tim curses as they both go skidding across the roof.  Red helmet, red bat—Tim twists to his feet, staff already out and slashing.

Hood dodges, takes the next strike on his arm, ignores the staff slamming into his stomach—he’s definitely wearing some kind of body armor, and on top of that, the man is built like a tank—and lashes out with a vicious kick that sends Tim skidding back to the edge of the roof.

“You did this,” Tim snarls, sweeping a hand towards the fire and smoke in the distance, “And for what?”

Hood doesn’t look at the fire.  Hood is staring straight at him.

“A distraction,” Hood says, low and quiet, and ice runs down Tim’s spine.  “Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne.”

Tim suppresses the choked gasp.  “Sorry?” he says—his voice is too high, his jaw is clenched, he’s not fooling anyone but he has to try—and Hood laughs.

It’s not a pleasant sound.

“Tell me,” Hood drawls, “Did you even wait for the boots to cool before you shoved your way into them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tim snaps, and lunges again—Hood parries easily, and Tim can’t block the punch to his gut, can’t barely stop himself from doubling over as he scrambles back.

“Is that what Dick Grayson said when you showed up at his door?”  Tim goes cold—there’s ice running through his veins, he doesn’t understand, where did Hood get all this information, what does he want—“Is that what Bruce Wayne said when you showed him your photos?”

Tim attacks—the staff sweeps just a little too slow, his mind skitters across motives and moves as he twists—panic and fear and cold, cold dread—

The staff is wrenched from his hand with a twist that nearly shatters his wrist.

Hood twirls it, slow and confident, before he breaks it in two.

“I have to say, I like the kid with the camera better,” Hood laughs, “He had more guts.”

Hood is a threat—this is a trap—Tim’s lost his weapon, but that doesn’t mean he’s defenseless—

The way Hood moves is on the edge of familiar, which is why Tim’s absolutely blindsided when Hood twists to let Tim’s kick dance off his side, and slams down in a brutal hold that nearly snaps his leg into two.

Tim strangles the shout as he hits the rooftop hard—his knee is aching but at least it’s not broken, please let it not be broken—and Hood slams into him, pinning him down and—

Tim writhes under him, struggling to get free because there’s a needle in Hood’s hand and it’s coming towards his neck and—

A pinprick of pain.

“Sleep tight, baby bird.”

Dick snarls because he warned Hood, he knew this was coming and the man laughed and jumped off a roof and now Crime Alley is on fire and Hood is crouched on a rooftop and watching it burn.

Dick lets the escrima buzz with electricity—it’s a soft sound, barely audible under the wail of distant sirens and the faint crackle of fire, but Hood straightens from his crouch.

“Dickhead,” he greets, and Dick wavers between annoyance at the insult and cold, sinking dread.

“You did this,” Dick accuses softly, because Crime Alley is an overturned anthill and the streets are in a frenzy.

“Do you expect me to say sorry?” Hood laughs, and Dick instantly reevaluates his perspective.

Hood isn’t surprised.  Hood isn’t apologetic.  They thought—he didn’t kill, he was going after criminals, he was wearing a bat—

Hood did this on purpose.

“Is this the part where you tell me to come quietly?” Hood sneers, “Or the part where I beat you into the ground?”

“You’re awfully confident for a man who ran away the last time we met,” Dick retorts, and attacks.

Hood dodges his movements with the ease of long practice, drifting and moving like he’s done this a hundred times before.  There are knives in his hands now, and Dick has to duck at the slash aimed for his face—Hood isn’t letting him control the distance, he ducks the escrima and forces Dick to grapple at close range.

He’s good.  But Dick is better.

He switches the electricity on the next time a blow connects and Hood goes stiff with a strangled shout.  He catches the next blow on his jacket—leather, insulating—and Dick hisses as a boot crashes into his ribs, separating them for a moment.

“I wasn’t expecting Nightwing in Gotham,” Hood says, and the voice distorter can’t hide his shortness of breath, “Don’t you usually patrol in Bludhaven?”

“Sometimes I like a change of scenery,” Dick says, stretching to his feet, “What’s the matter?  Giving up already?”

“You’re not that good, dickface,” Hood laughs, and Dick hides his shiver.  Just an insult, he has to remind himself.  “After all, you haven’t even noticed that your little bird is missing.”

What.

Hood’s chuckle is low and grating.

“Do you think this one’s going to scream for you to come and save him?” he asks, soft and dark, “Or has he already learned that you’re always too late?”

Cold.  Cold and ice rooting him to the spot, the same way it did three years ago, no, no, no—

“Robin,” Dick checks his comms, but there’s nothing but static.  Signal jammer.  “Batman?” he tries.  Nothing.

“You didn’t even come to the kid’s funeral,” Hood says, and Dick snaps.

“You don’t know anything!” Dick snarls, and lunges at Hood.  Steel clashes against his escrima and electricity crackles, but Hood’s wearing gloves and he can still hear the man laughing—

“I don’t blame you,” Hood grunts, catching Dick’s lunge and flipping him over—Dick catches himself and lashes out with a kick—Hood drops and sweeps his leg out—“Little brothers can be such pests.”

Dick knows that Hood is trying to get under his skin, trying to make him angry—he knows too much, he knows where the chinks in the armor are and it’s terrifying—but the foreknowledge doesn’t help the fury surging through his veins, the blur in his vision, the seething scream of how dare he talk about Jason—

Dick snaps the escrima out, straight for the bat emblazoned across Hood’s chest like some kind of taunt—and Hood lets the blow land.  Hunches, slightly, a hiss escaping the mechanical filters, but there’s a hand snapping around his wrist and twisting him and an arm around his throat—

Dick flicks the electricity on, but the chokehold only tightens—dark spots are wavering in his vision, and Hood isn’t letting go and—

A pinprick.  A brief, sudden instance of fear.

“Night-night, Dickiebird.”

Robin and Nightwing aren’t answering their comms.  The blaze is burning nearly out of control, glimmering with strange colors in the haze of drugs.  And there are League assassins lurking in every shadow.

Bruce feels the low coil of dread in his heart.

This is a trap.

His comm crackles to life and Bruce can’t help the stagger of relief.  “Robin?” he asks, backing away from the blaze.

“Not quite,” a mechanized voice answers.

Bruce freezes.  The rooftops around him are deserted.  Robin and Nightwing are nowhere in sight.  And the warehouse burning down is…strangely empty of people.

This isn’t a trap.  This is a distraction.

“Hood,” Bruce growls.

“On the second try,” Hood says, “I’m almost impressed.”

Bruce doesn’t bother to hide his snarl.  “Where are Robin and Nightwing?”

“The birdies are safe and sound,” Hood replies, “For now.”  A beat.  “I’ll give you three guesses as to where they’re hiding.”

Bruce stops.  Thinks.  Listens.  Hood is on his comm line.  He could’ve taken one from Robin or Nightwing—Robin was behind him, Nightwing was coming from the east—

There’s no background noise.  None of their comms are good enough to filter that well, they’re too small.  Only one place has a communications array that’s noise-canceling and has a direct connection to his line.

“The Cave,” Bruce says, struck with sudden fear.  He needs to get home.  He starts running.

“The World’s Greatest Detective, indeed.”  The line clicks off.

Tim wakes up to the sound of shattering glass.

He panics, for a brief moment—he can’t feel the domino against his eyes, everything’s dark and shadowed and cold—before he recognizes his surroundings.

He’s in the Cave.  On the training mats.  He’s—why is he waking up on the training mats?

Panic turns into cold, sick dread.

He can see Dick lying on his side a few feet away, mask off, zipties lashing him to the weight rack.  He can feel the cuffs around his wrists, twisting his arms behind his back and forcing him against a cabinet.  He can hear the bursts of tinkling glass in the distance.

He can see the Red Hood, a baseball bat slung over one shoulder, as he turns away from Jason’s memorial case.

No.

What used to be Jason’s memorial case, because the suit is shredded and there’s glass everywhere and it’s been reduced to splinters.

Hood catches sight of his gaze.  “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to do that,” he says, cold and scornful.

Tim is—

Tim doesn’t know what’s going on.

He’s confused, there’s a headache pounding behind his eyes as the effects of the drug leech away, he’s unmasked and clearly outmatched and—

Deep breaths.  Start with the facts.

Hood knows who he is.  Hood knows who all of them are.  Hood knows how to get into the Cave.

This is planned.  This is meticulous.  This is carefully calculated and Tim knows he isn’t even holding half the pieces.

“What do you want?” Tim asks softly.  Hood stares at him.

“I want this all to be a bad dream, baby bird,” he says, his voice thrumming with danger, “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to settle for option two.”

“And what’s option two?” Dick snarls, gritting his teeth against the flash of pain as he pushes himself up to a sitting position.  His head is ringing like someone rented it out for band practice—but Tim is curled up on the other end of the mats, mask and cape torn off and eyes painfully wide, and Dick breathes out slowly when Hood turns his attention to him.

“Revenge,” Hood says.

Dick knows he isn’t holding all the cards.  He’s barely holding any of the cards—it’s clear that Hood knows who they all are, and Dick takes a moment to give thanks that Alfred’s out of the country—but he’s gotten out of worse situations before.  Keep the guy talking, and try to wriggle out of his bonds.

“Revenge for what?” Dick asks, testing the cuffs locking his wrists behind his back, “Sometimes it helps to talk things out, you know.  Therapy.  Try some adventure sports.  Maybe do some finger painting, get all that red out of your system.”

Hood barks a laugh, “It’s not red I’m trying to get out of my system.”

Okay, definitely one of the crazy ones.  “Could’ve fooled me,” Dick raises a pointed eyebrow, twisting his wrist, “What’s the color on your mind, then?”

“The cuffs are rigged to explode,” Hood says flatly, and Dick goes still.  “Tamper with them, and they’ll go boom.  Both sets.”

Dick meets Tim’s ashen gaze.  Guess that explains why they’re so bulky.

“Seems a little extreme,” Dick offers, “I’m not quite sure what I did to piss you off, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t rate a bomb.”

Hood chuckles.  The sound sends shivers down Dick’s spine.  “Oh,” he says lowly, “You have no idea.”

The Batmobile roars through the tunnel and bursts into the Cave and Bruce scrambles free of the car before it comes to a full stop.

The Red Hood is at the Batcomputer, weapons strapped all over his suit and a trigger held in one gloved hand.

“Batman,” Hood says coldly, “Right on time.”  There’s a dark twist to the words.

“Hood.”  Bruce takes ten steps into the Cave before he spots Dick and Tim.  They’re tied up on the training mats, unmasked, but they’re both awake and there’s no blood.  “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up a bat infestation,” Hood growls, and something skids along to the floor to stop at Bruce’s feet.

It’s a collar.

“Put it on,” Hood says, and raises the trigger button in his hands, “Or the birdies go boom.”

“Don’t,” Dick hisses, struggling in his bonds, “Don’t, B, there are bombs built into it, get out—”

“Shh, Dickface, you’re not invited to this conversation.”  Hood knows who they are.  “Put it on, Batman.”  Something in Hood’s voice goes razor-sharp at his hesitation, “Or are you that eager to watch them go the same way Robin did?”

Bruce can’t help the growl as he curls his hands into fists.

“B, don’t,” Tim says quietly.

Hood pushes down on the trigger, and holds it.  The helmet conceals any tell that Bruce can use, and all that comes through the voice distorter is anger.

“It’s a dead man’s switch now.  Attack me, and I’ll let go.  You’re not in charge here, Batman.  Put on the collar.”

Bruce stares at the trigger clutched tightly in Hood’s hands, and Dick and Tim curled up on the mats.

Jason’s body in his arms, bones shifting under skin, the horrific smell of burning skin, blood and death.

He picks up the collar.  Dick lets out a choked gasp, Tim is shaking his head, Hood is watching silently—

It clicks into place around his neck with an eerie finality.

“Why are you doing this?” Bruce asks.  Keep him talking.  As long as Hood holds the trigger, they’re all in danger.  “What do you want?  Money?  Fame?”  He knows that Dick is trying his best to get out of the cuffs and the longer Hood’s attention is on Bruce, the more time his eldest son has.

“Revenge,” Hood snaps back, “You have no goddamn idea, do you.  You claim you’re keeping this city safe, and every single villain that you stop instead of kill just gets out and adds to the chaos.  Your precious rule is poisoning this city because you care more about the villains you capture than the victims they’ve left behind.”

“You don’t—”

Hood holds up an engraved plaque and Bruce goes cold—his gaze veers unerringly to the case and finds it shattered in pieces.

“A good soldier,” Hood reads out, venomous, “And if the Joker was dead, a fifteen-year-old kid wouldn’t have been murdered, far from home, screaming for his father.”

Bruce feels his insides turn to ice.  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he forces out, trying to keep his attention fixed on the trigger.  If he can get to the signal jammer near the Batcomputer, then—

Hood laughs, harsh and unamused, “I know exactly what I’m talking about.”

There’s a shape flitting around the side of the Cave, black blending into shadows.  Bruce gives it a stray glance—the shadow stills, and Talia al Ghul raises a finger to her lips.

“You’re planning to kill me because I won’t kill the Joker?” Bruce asks softly.  Stall.  He doesn’t know why Talia is here, but he knows she doesn’t want him dead.

“That seems like an oversimplification, but sure, we’ll go with that,” Hood shrugs, and raises the trigger in his hand, “Any last—”

Hood breaks off as a sword point digs into his throat.

“Let him go,” Talia says softly, “Or I’ll slit your throat.”

Hood turns slightly towards her, “Talia?”

“Let him go.”

“What—wait, what are you doing?”

“Let him go.”

Hood is staring at Talia, completely still.  Even with the helmet on, his body screams surprise.  Talia, on the other hand, is focused and intent, and there’s a hint of fear in her narrowed eyes.

“You’re siding with him,” Hood says, and there’s a thrum of rage in his voice, “You’re siding with him.”

“Let him go, Hood.”

“All that training,” Hood snarls, “All your protection.  All those pretty words.  And you were what, just jerking me around like a puppet on a string?”

Bruce stares at Talia.  Talia does not look at him.

“Let him go, Hood,” Talia says, quiet and deadly, “Or I’ll come back with a crowbar.”

Hood lurches back a step, his fist tightens around the trigger, and the room goes heavy with bleeding tension.

“You promised me revenge,” Hood hisses—and then the confusion slides easily out of his tone, like it was never there, and it leaves nothing but vicious rage.  “Unless you thought I wouldn’t succeed.”

“Talia,” Bruce says quietly, his gaze fixed on the trigger held tightly in a shaking hand, because this is looking less personal and more like League business and he warned her to keep it out of Gotham.

Talia ignores him.

“You manipulated me,” Hood says coldly, and the feigned surprise has vanished entirely, “I should kill him just to teach you a lesson.”

He raises his fist and Bruce takes an aborted step—the trigger connects all three of them, and he will hunt down Talia to the ends of the earth if her enemies murder his children just to prove a point.

“What do you want?” Talia snaps.

Hood inclines his head.  “What do you want?” she repeats, “To let him go.”

Bruce notes the conspicuous absence of his children in that statement.

Hood stares at her for a long moment—whatever it is, whatever he wants, Bruce will give it to him if Talia won’t, he’s hyper-aware of Dick and Tim locked into exploding cuffs with the trigger held in a madman’s hands and—

“Damian.”

Talia freezes.  “What?”

“I want Damian,” Hood repeats, and tilts the helmet—he’s staring straight at Bruce.  “Damian.  Al Ghul.  Wayne.”

No.  He can’t.  He didn’t.  No.

Talia is ashen pale.

There is no air in the room.

“Talia,” Bruce croaks out, desperate for her to look at him, for—for her to say that it’s a lie, it’s a trick, she told him she lost the baby how could she—

“Where did you hear that name?” Talia snarls through bloodless lips.

“It’s amazing what people will say when they think you can’t understand them.”  Hood’s voice is all satisfaction now, satisfaction with an edge of cruelty.

Talia hears the same thing he does, because she takes a step back.  “You were never going to kill them,” she says, and her words fall somewhere between realization and accusation.

Hood uncurls his fingers.

The trigger drops to the floor.

The collar clicks—

And unlocks.

Bruce wastes no time in tearing it from his throat, and heads straight for Dick and Tim—their cuffs are off, and it only takes the edge of a batarang to cut through the zipties.

“Where are the rest of the explosives?” Talia demands, and the sword is back at Hood’s throat.

“They never left the building,” Hood chuckles, viciously pleased, “I hope you didn’t leave anything important behind in that safehouse, Talia, because you have about five minutes to say goodbye.”

Talia snarls—Bruce heads for her, Dick and Tim trailing behind, because he will not allow her to kill in this city, because he wants to grab her and ask her why she kept his son from him and—

“I will kill you,” Talia hisses, and her words are a promise.

Hood doesn’t look the slightest bit concerned.  “In front of him?” he nods at Bruce.

Talia finally, finally turns to look at Bruce.  He doesn’t know what she sees on his face, but she steps back and sheathes her sword.

“Talia,” Bruce says, stepping forward, but she turns away from him.  Ignoring him.  Ignoring the weight of the elephant in the room, all the unsaid questions about his son, the one she kept from him—

“I will make what the Joker did to you look like mercy,” she spits at Hood, low and venomous.

“Ouch,” Hood replies, tone casual and at odds with his raised hackles.

“Talia, wait—” She disappears without looking back, stalking into the shadows and vanishing as he sprints to follow, and Bruce checks the tunnel three times and turns on the thermal cameras before he accepts that she’s gone.

They have a son.  Bruce has another child, and he never knew it.  Would probably have never known it, if Hood didn’t—

Why did Hood reveal Damian’s existence?

Hood and Talia clearly know each other and the man moves a little like a shadow, so that’s one mystery solved—Batman’s identity hasn’t been a secret to the League for years.  League infighting would also explain the standoff between Hood and Talia—he’s well aware that Ra’s oscillates between wanting him dead and wanting him back, and he knows what side Talia lands on.

His son.  He has a son.  Why did she never tell him?  Why did she lie?

Bruce reenters the Cave to see that Red Hood hasn’t moved, standing tense and still.  Dick and Tim have taken up flanking positions, guarded and wary and definitely confused.

The warehouse was empty.  The cuffs didn’t have explosives.  This whole thing was an orchestration to—what?  Drag Talia out of the shadows?  Why?

Bruce shifts into Hood’s line of view and narrows his eyes.  He wants answers.

The one glaring flaw in Jason’s plan is that it ends with Talia’s admitting to Damian’s existence—and he completely forgets that it ends also with him standing in the middle of the Batcave, surrounded by three vigilantes who don’t know who he is.

Jason’s fairly certain that removing his helmet will solve that little problem.  He’s just not sure if he wants to.

The plan was never for him to come home.  And yet here he is, so close he can taste it, if he only—

No.  They’re happier without him.  He saw that.  He needs to leave.  He needs to go.

Batman slinks forward.  “What was that?” he says, his voice dropping to a frustrated bark.

Jason steps back.  “Um.  What was what exactly?” he asks weakly.

“You blew up a warehouse, kidnapped Robin and Nightwing, and lured me here…to tell me I have a son?”

“I thought you’d want to know,” Jason shrugs, trying to keep Dick and Tim in his field of view, “He’s your son.”

Batman stills, and looks at Jason like he’s trying to develop x-ray powers.

“Thank you,” he says finally.  He looks antsy to start hunting down the League and finding Damian, so Jason slinks back another step.

His gaze catches on the now-shattered remnants of That Fucking Case, and he swallows.  Can’t stop himself from hoping.  Can’t stop himself from dreaming.

“What if there was another?” Jason asks quietly.

Batman’s stare intensifies.  “I have another son?” he asks.

“No—I didn’t—I mean…”  Jason picks up the plaque again, and turns it to face Batman.  “Would you want him back?”  His heart is thundering in his ears.

“No,” Batman growls furiously—okay, wow.  Jason is definitely getting out of here.  “No,” he says again, stalking forward and Jason edges back—only to realize that Dick and Tim have closed off his exits.  “You are not putting my son in a Lazarus Pit.”

Jason didn’t know he felt so strongly about it.  He laughs, too-high and too-sharp.  “Bit too late for that,” he mutters.

Batman catches it, because of fucking course he does, and Jason doesn’t have the time to react before he’s roughly tackled to the floor, a heavy, dark weight pinning him down.

“What did you do to my son?” Batman hisses, and it’s been six years since Jason looked at a bat-shaped shadow with terror but he recalls the feeling distinctly.

He squirms—the time for pride and secrets is gone, he needs to get his helmet off before Bruce decides to punch him—but Batman doesn’t let him move an inch.  “My helmet,” Jason says quietly, “I just—let me take off my helmet.”

Batman doesn’t let him move, but Dick creeps into view.  Careful hands feel around Jason’s jaw, slotting into the catches, and tugging the helmet off.

Batman stares.  Dick sucks in a sharp gasp, his blue eyes wide.  Tim is wavering in the background, face pale.

Jason stares up at the cowl, tense, because no one is saying anything and this whole thing was a giant miscalculation and—

Batman moves to Jason’s domino mask, and he’s peeling it off too fast to be gentle—Jason winces as the adhesive tugs at skin, that’s going to leave a mark.

“Jason?” Dick asks softly, tremulously.

Jason attempts a smile, “Hey, Dickiebird.”

“You died,” Batman says, flat.

“Only kind of.”

“We buried you,” Batman growls.

“Yeah, that wasn’t fun.”

Dick makes another sharp gasp.  Tim is almost hiding behind Batman.  Jason can’t see anything through the cowl, but he keeps looking for any hint, any sign, anything—

“Jason?” and the voice is all Bruce now, soft and choked.

“Dad,” Jason breathes out.

Batman swiftly gets off of Jason and something flashes in the light and—“Ow!”

His wrist is bleeding, a thin, shallow cut in the space between his glove and his jacket, and Batman is stalking to the Batcomputer with a bloody batarang in his hand.

“What the hell, B?” Dick snaps as Jason slowly straightens to his feet.

“DNA test,” is the terse response.

Jason tries not to let his expression broadcast exactly what it feels like to watch that cape walk away from him.

Dick, however, apparently doesn’t care to wait for the DNA, because there are warm arms wrapping around him and Jason chokes down the sob—he waited three years for a hug and he wraps his arms around Dick and vows to never let go.

“Little Wing?” Dick asks softly.

“It’s been so long,” Jason exhales, and tightens his grip.  Dick is warm and here and it almost feels like he’s dreaming but he never wants to wake up.

The Batcomputer chirps, and Jason raises his head from Dick’s shoulder as Batman—as Bruce walks back, the cowl off, his eyes glimmering and his expression strained.

“What’s the verdict?” Dick says a little sharply.

“Jason,” Bruce says softly and the corner of his eyes are burning.  “What happened the first time we met?”

“I stole three of your tires,” Jason chokes, “I was stealing the fourth when you came back, and I hit you with a tire iron.  You got me a burger and two strawberry milkshakes and I made you taste-test all of them.  You took me to the Cave.  I thought you were going to eat me.”

Bruce’s face twists, and settles on wonder.  “Jay-lad,” he says, and Jason breaks.

Bruce pulls him out of Dick’s grip and Jason clings to the suit as he sobs.

He’s alive.

He’s home.

Chapter Text

“Jason Todd is dangerous.  He’s unstable and out of control.  He knows League secrets.  He knows Batman’s secrets.  He is a threat to us, and to your father.  Do you understand what needs to be done?”

“Yes, Mother.”

They end up on a couch in the living room—Jason is practically in Dick’s lap, because the older boy refuses to let go and Jason is not at all inclined to tell him to, and Bruce sits next to him, his hand in Jason’s.  Tim is curled up on an armchair, watching with wide eyes.

“So the Pit brought you back?” Dick asks quietly, “How—how long—”

“No,” Jason cuts him off, because technically the Pit brought him back, but he isn’t going to lie to his family.  “No.  I was…a ghost, you could say.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what it was,” Jason shrugs, hunching to sink deeper into Dick’s embrace, “All I know is that I woke up.  In that warehouse.  Not a scratch on me.”  He lifts his gaze to meet Bruce’s eyes.  “But you couldn’t see me.  You couldn’t hear me.  You couldn’t touch me.”

Bruce’s fingers curl firmly around his own.

“I tried everything to get you to notice me, but it didn’t work,” Jason says quietly, “And then you buried me.  So I figured I was dead.  Sort of went around haunting all of you.”

“Haunting all of us?” Dick hums, “Is that why my shower went cold that one time?”

“No, that’s because you didn’t pay your electricity bill, you idiot,” Jason leans back to knock his head against Dick’s.  He remembers those early months in Bludhaven, and Dick crying and crying and—

Wait a minute,

Jason bolts upright, nearly tearing himself out of Dick’s arms.  “Little Wing, what—”

Jason twists until he’s facing Dick.  “You were wrong,” he informs him, wonder and amazement bubbling up.

Dick frowns, “What are you talking about?”

“You were wrong, Dickie,” Jason smiles and spreads his arms, “Robin is magic.”

Dick looks confused, then stunned, and then angry.  “You died,” he says.

“I came back,” Jason wiggles his fingers, “Like magic.”  Dick glares, and Jason takes great delight in shoving his head into the cushions.  “Nope!  I was right and you were wrong!  Admit it!”

Dick coughs out something that may be an admission, so Jason lets him up, smug in victory.  Dick sighs and buries his nose between Jason’s shoulder blades, tightening his grip.

“You were a ghost,” Bruce says, and there’s something hard in his tone—but his eyes are soft as Jason curls his fingers back into Bruce’s hand.

“Yeah, I sort of watched over all of you,” Jason says, his gaze caught by Tim, “And one day I found this kid with a camera running all over Gotham.”

Tim goes pink and Jason frowns as he remembers the kid’s utter lack of self-perseveration instincts and—

Jason vaults off the couch so swiftly that no one has time to react—he’s in front of Tim in the blink of an eye, his hands gripping bony shoulders as he stares into wide eyes.

“You,” Jason says quietly, “You idiot.”  His grip tightens.  “What possessed you to go after the Joker, defenseless and untrained, when you knew full well what happened to me?!”

“Jason,” Dick says softly from somewhere behind him, “Jay.”

“Do you have any idea what it felt like, watching him—watching you—I thought you were going to die, you—you—”

“Jay,” Dick says, and there’s a hand on his own, “Loosen up.”

Oh.  Tim’s eyes are not green.  But they are wide, and his face is pale, and Jason’s grip is bruising-tight.

He relaxes it slowly, and lets his head drop.  “You terrified me,” Jason says softly.

“I’m sorry?” Tim squeaks.

“You are an idiot with zero self-preservation skills.”

“I—okay?”

“Say it.”

“What—no, I’m not going to—”

“I was watching that time with the fear toxin.  And the dogs.  And the gargoyle on 5^th street.  Say it.”

“…I am an idiot with zero self-preservation skills.”

“Great,” Jason grins, and goes back to the couch, tugging Tim with him.  The kid is folded into Bruce’s side, Jason drops fully onto his brother’s lap and laughs at Dick’s yelp, and he curls both his hands around Bruce’s wrist.

“And you kept watching us for three years?” Dick asks once they’re resettled.

“Oh, no—about a year after I died, my body sort of…woke up?  Don’t ask me how, I just know that it crawled out of the grave.”

Everyone in the room has a really disturbed expression.

“You crawled out of your grave?” Tim asks, eyes wide.

“No.  Maybe.  Kind of?  I was still a ghost, but my body was definitely present and walking around.  It’s just that no one was home.”

“Your body was walking around,” Bruce says quietly, “On the streets.  In Gotham.”

He doesn’t sound happy.

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Almost two months, I think?” Jason tries to think back—he mainly tracked the passage of time with holiday decorations, but he thinks it was a month after the hospital when the League showed up.

Bruce’s fingers spasm, and they curl tightly around Jason’s hand.

“Your grave never looked like it had been disturbed,” Tim says quietly.

“I went back to check on it a few days after my zombie body started walking around,” Jason says, not looking at any of them, “It was filled back in.”

When he dares to sneak a peek, Bruce’s face is thunderous.  Dick curls his arms tighter around Jason’s waist, and it doesn’t hide that they’re trembling.  Tim is frowning in a calculating-mad-scientist kind of way, it’s a little bit scary.

“Then the League showed up.  And it turns out that super-secret hideouts are fun to explore when you can walk through walls.  That’s how I found Damian—the kid looks just like you,” Jason informs Bruce.

Bruce’s face lights up a little at that.

“And he’s eight,” Jason says softly, “And they’re training him like he’s a soldier and he wouldn’t kill a bird—that’s when Ra’s started getting pissed, so Talia threw me into the Pit to distract him—that’s when I woke up in my body, only there were assassins following me everywhere and I kept getting so angry and I didn’t know what happened to Damian and—”

“Jason,” Bruce says softly, “Breathe.”

Jason breathes, and grips Bruce’s hand so tightly his knuckles turn white.

“They were afraid of me,” Jason says quietly, “They wanted to turn me into an assassin, but I was more of a missile than a sniper bullet, so Talia decided to point me at Gotham to keep the carnage away from her.  I was so furious all the time, and I let her think it was at you instead of her.”

“It’s okay,” Bruce says softly, brushing the hair out of Jason’s eyes, “It’s okay, Jay.  You’re home now.”

Jason closes his eyes and leans into the touch.  Bruce rubs the edge of his cheek and Jason exhales softly.

“Why didn’t you come back?” Tim asks, and Jason opens his eyes.  The kid is frowning again.  “You dressed up as the Red Hood and kidnapped me and Dick and—and all of it.  Why didn’t you just come back?”

“Talia had assassins watching me everywhere,” Jason shrugs, “She would’ve never let me get to the Manor.  I told her I had a plan, and I let her think I was going to kill you, and I waited for her to stop me.”

“You don’t actually think she’s going to give you Damian,” Dick says, his voice muffled by Jason’s back.

“No, I just wanted her to admit his existence,” Jason nods at Bruce, “In front of you.”

Bruce is looking at him with consternation.

“What’s wrong?” Jason asks warily, shifting in place—is it the anger he admitted to being unable to control, is it the violence, is it the hiding—

“You didn’t need her to admit it, Jason,” Bruce says quietly, “I would’ve believed you.”

Jason drops his gaze, his cheeks burning.  Sometimes he forgets that Bruce is called the World’s Greatest Detective for a reason.

“Jay,” Bruce says softly, and gentle hands cup his face.

“She—she said,” Jason chokes out past the growing lump in his throat, “She said she called you.  She said you wouldn’t come.”

“If I had even a hint that you were out there, I wouldn’t have rested until I found you,” Bruce says firmly, and Jason reaches out to bury his face in his father’s shirt and let the tears fall as he’s enveloped in a firm, warm hug.

“Jason,” Bruce says, quiet and a little choked, “My son.”

Jason holds on as tightly as he can.

“You can have it back,” Tim says into the soft silence.  Jason blinks at him—he’s draped half on Bruce and half on Dick and Tim’s sitting on the edge of the couch, looking like he’s about to flee.

“Have what back?”

Tim picks at a stray thread on his knee.  “Robin,” he says in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

Jason narrows his eyes.

Tim isn’t looking up, so Jason reaches out and snags the kid’s chin, forcing him to meet his gaze.

“I wore the Robin suit for two years while I was a ghost,” Jason says flatly, “I never want to see the thing again in my life.”

Tim blinks at him, and then his eyes widen as realization hits.  Jason grins at the dusting of pink on the kid’s cheeks.

“You said you’d make me proud,” Jason says softly, “And you did, baby bird.”

The kid goes beet red.

“I didn’t—I wasn’t—I just—I wasn’t trying to take your place, I didn’t—Bruce wasn’t replacing you—”

“I know, Timbo.  I was watching, remember?”  The kid doesn’t look too happy about that.  Shoe pinches on the other foot, hmm?

“Speaking of which,” Jason drawls, and tugs Tim forward onto Bruce.  He grabs the kid’s face and turns it until Tim is blinking at Bruce in confusion.  “What is this, B?”

Bruce raises an eyebrow.

“It’s ridiculous, that’s what this is,” Jason says, draping himself over the kid’s shoulder and pressing his head to the kid’s left cheek—“Dickie, get over here.”—and knocking Dick’s head against Tim’s right ear.

Jason holds all three of them in place and fixes Bruce with his best judgmental look.  “You,” he proclaims, “Have a problem.”

Bruce’s mouth twitches.  “Do I?” he asks, level.

“Look at this,” Jason hisses, pressing their faces even closer together, “Look at it!  Where do you even find us, Bruce?”

Bruce’s face quirks all the way into a smile, and their precarious position collapses as he wraps an arm around Jason and Dick and sends all three of them crashing against his chest.

“I don’t know,” he rumbles, holding them tightly, “But I’m so grateful I did.”

Jason leans against the counter and watches as Alfred shapes the last cookie.  A heart for love.

“I was here,” he says softly, “I was watching, I wanted so badly to let you all know that I was here.”

Alfred rests a firm hand on his shoulder.  “We felt your presence, Master Jason,” he says quietly, “We felt your love.”

Jason leans into the touch.  “I missed you,” he says, soft.

“I missed you too, Master Jason,” Alfred says, and those are definitely tears in his eyes, “And I am so glad that you’re back home.”

The cookies are devoured in ten minutes flat.

“What is that?” Jason asks, heading for the back of the garage.  He and Dick are messing around, trying to figure out why the engine on Bruce’s old town car is grinding, but Jason’s attention was caught by the sheet-draped outline near the back.

It’s the wrong size and shape to be a car, and Brucie Wayne never shows up anywhere on a motorcycle, which is why Jason is more than a little surprised when he pulls the dusty sheet off to reveal a gleaming red powerhouse of a bike.

He lets out a low whistle.  “Whose bike is this?”  He runs his fingers across the handlebars, a palm across the gleaming red metal.  It looks brand spanking new.

“Yours,” Dick says softly.

Jason glances back at him, attention momentarily diverted.  Dick is staring at the bike, his eyes narrowed and his face eerily blank.

“I think I would’ve remembered,” Jason says with half a laugh.  Dick quirks his lips in an unamused smile.

“Bruce was going to get you a car,” Dick says quietly, “But I—I thought—I saw the way you looked at my bike.  I just—I decided, why not get my baby brother a motorcycle?”

He’s trembling, and Jason doesn’t waste any time in lunging towards him.  Dick’s arms wrap around him immediately, squeezing tight, and Jason doesn’t complain that he can’t breathe.

He hangs onto Dick until the older boy stops shaking, and keeps an arm curled around Dick’s shoulders as he turns back to the bike.

To the very nice, very fast, brand new bike.  To his bike.

Jason grins, wide and sharp.

This time, he can feel the wind blasting past his face.

Jason is fully aware that his presence is disconcerting the kid—Tim’s messed up four forms and nearly hit himself in the face with the bo staff twice—and he makes no attempt to conceal himself, lounging on a table and staring straight at the new Robin.

Tim finally gives up when the staff goes skittering out of his hands.  “Can I help you?” he asks, turning towards Jason with a raised eyebrow.

Jason smiles.

The kid edges back a step.

“Look what I found,” Jason drawls, hefting up a heavy black camera.  The kid immediately bristles.

“What are you doing with that?” Tim scowls.

“Calm down, baby bird,” Jason straightens up to sit cross-legged on the table, “I’m not going to eat it.”  He presses the shutter button and captures Tim’s indignant expression in all its glory.

“Give it back,” Tim demands, stalking towards him.  Jason laughs and hops up, taking more photos as Tim reaches the table, seething.

“Jason.”

“Tim,” Jason mimics, “You have like a thousand pictures of me, I’m not allowed to have one of you?”

That brings the kid up short.

“You…want a picture of me?” Tim blinks, frustration replaced by bewilderment, “Why?”

Jason raises his gaze from the viewfinder and narrows his eyes.  “Is it that strange that I want a photo of my little brother?”

Tim’s hesitant, disbelieving smile is forever immortalized by the camera.

There’s a picture of Jason and Tim, arms slung across each other’s shoulders, both grinning—the camera is slightly out of focus, Jason looks cross-eyed, the angle’s wrong, but it appears in a frame all the same.

Bruce is crouching next to a neat little pile of swept-up glass, staring into nothingness.  Jason walks up to him and, after a moment of hesitation, leans his weight against Bruce’s shoulder.

Touch grounds him.  It helps him feel real.  Dick is always ready to indulge a hug and Tim lets him ruffle his hair with minimal complaint and Alfred places firm hands on his shoulders, but it’s Bruce’s warmth that makes him feel like he’s home.

Jason stares at the empty place where his suit used to hang and exhales slowly.  “How goes the search for Damian?” he asks quietly.

“There’s been a significant amount of infighting within the League,” Bruce sighs, “I know that he’s no longer at Nanda Parbat, but I’m still narrowing down which League hideout he went to.”

Jason nods.  He expected Talia to move him as soon as she knew that Jason knew.  But Talia knows Bruce, and knows he won’t rest until he finds his son.

“I really hated that memorial case,” Jason says quietly.  Bruce goes still.  “A good soldier.  Was that all I was to you, was that—”

“No, Jason, no—” Bruce stands up swiftly and envelops Jason in a hug, “No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t supposed to be your memorial.  It was never meant for you.  If I’d known you’d see it, I—I would have never put it up.”

“Then what was it?” Jason asks, his voice muffled by Bruce’s shirt.

“My punishment,” Bruce says softly, “A reminder of how I failed.  I didn’t deserve peace.  I didn’t deserve to forget.  I had to make it front and center, to know exactly what I lost and how I lost it.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Bruce,” Jason says quietly, and speaks louder at Bruce’s murmured protest, “No, it wasn’t your fault.  And you got me back.”

“I got you back,” Bruce repeats, and his grip tightens, and he mutters something that sounds like ‘miracle’.

The old, torn suit is burned, and Bruce leans over his shoulder as Jason designs a new helmet—black and green and yellow and red.

Jason hums as he checks the tracking algorithm—everyone else has left the Cave for a good night’s sleep, ready and packed to leave on their world tour to hunt down their baby brother—and sighs when it doesn’t turn up anything new.

As much as he hates to admit it, the League is good.  All their assassins scattered from Gotham after Jason blew up their main safehouse, and no one’s caught hide or hair of Talia since she left the Cave.

It makes his fingers itch, the frustration bringing the green back—he tries to control it better, but his anger is impulsive and swift and he’s terrified of what will happen if he slips, if he can’t choke it back.

Deep breaths.  Damian is fine.  They’ll find him.  Jason made the right choice, there was no way he could’ve escaped Nanda Parbat with a nine-year-old tucked under his arm, especially not with his rage issues.

Deep breaths.

Something prickles down his spine.

Jason reaches out and turns off the Batcomputer monitor.  He lets his hand drop as he brings it back, fingers skimming along the table.

Catching and curling around a leather hilt.

The Batcave is always still.  The entire set of tunnels is sealed off from the outside and the only air coming in and out is through the doors to the Manor.  The air in the Cave hangs in place like a painting and if no one is breathing, it embodies utter silence.

No stranger would understand what it feels like.  No stranger would appreciate the eerie stillness it imparts.  No stranger would know that when Jason holds his breath, he can tell in a split second that he’s not alone.

Jason turns, knife first, and steel meets steel with a ringing clash.

A sword, black outfit—how did the League get in again—and…far shorter than he was expecting.

“Damian?”

The kid attacks and Jason hastily rolls over the table, narrowly dodging a swipe to the neck as he immediately moves to put space between them, scanning the shadows for threats.

No one else is here.  No one but a kid that’s the right size to be Damian.  Jason has no idea what’s he doing here—did Talia actually keep her end of the deal—

The kid aims for his heart and Jason meets the slash with a surge of annoyance, green already beginning to flicker—

Oh.

Oh no.

Talia was never going to win Mother of the Year, but this?  This is downright cruel.

Jason is more than capable of taking the kid out, but green is pulsing at the edge of his vision—he knows he can stop himself from killing the kid, but he can’t stop himself from permanent damage.

Leaving Bruce with an unstable son and a crippled one.  And Talia with the last ‘fuck you’.

If Bruce locks him in Arkham—

“I will make what the Joker did to you seem like mercy.”

Jason swallows and suppresses the rage as he blocks another attack.  So maybe he underestimated Talia al Ghul.

“You don’t need to fight me,” Jason hisses, twisting away from another strike, “Your father is looking for you—” the kid hesitates a beat, but keeps attacking—“he’s right upstairs, he wants to see you—”

No noise.  No sneer or scowl or anything.  Jason ducks a sword slash to his throat—green rages because this kid genuinely, sincerely wants him dead—

Chokes it down, because he can’t, because he’s just a kid, because Jason can’t stay in this house if he loses his mind every time he gets pissed—

The moment of inattention costs him dearly.

The kid lunges up and Jason raises his arms to block the attack, sword clashing against his knife—and something stabs into his heart.

Jason looks down at the needle in his chest.  At the kid, withdrawing back a step.

The world goes fuzzy.

“Shit.”

There is a river.  It flows fierce and quick, and any corpse dropped into it will be in Gotham Harbor in less than an hour.

An efficient method of disposal.  Strange things lurk beneath the surface of the bay and, in all likelihood, the body will disappear into the flotsam that rings this polluted, filthy excuse of a city.

Todd—the body is slack and still.  The river rages under them, but their perch is unnoticed.  Will be unnoticed for some time yet.  He is not required to check in until the evening.

He is a good warrior.  Mother does not need to worry about him.  Grandfather does not need to worry about him.

He can still see the bodies—the bird, first.  Another and another and another until they were satisfied.  The dog was next.  This is the first human.  And all of them lie still and quiet in the same way.

He is a good warrior.  He needs to be.

“Your father is looking for you.”

He is a good warrior.  Father does not need to worry about him.

The fingers twitch first.  Then the leg jerks, and then the body jolts upright, gasping.

Eyes glow an unsettling electric green.  He stays where he is, sword in hand, and watches.

Eyes squeeze shut.  When they open, they’re no longer glowing.  Admirable control.  Clearly not unstable.

“The river,” he motions to the water surging beneath them, “There is a sandbar a mile down.  No one will be watching.  Cover your tracks.  Dye that ridiculous strip of hair.  The League will not investigate your disappearance too closely.”

A long, slow blink.  The body does not immediately jump for the river.  Instead, it straightens, leaning an arm on top of a bent knee.

“Damian,” Todd says quietly, “Did you kill the bird?”

Damian jerks a step back in surprise—what—how had he—when did he—Mother had said he knew their secrets, but he didn’t think—

“Yes,” Damian snarls to cover up his loss of composure, but he can see that the hesitation doomed him.

“You didn’t,” Todd rebuts easily, “You pretended to, and then you took them and you set them free.  You saved them.  You are not an assassin, Damian Wayne.”

It strikes at him.  Damian Wayne.  He ignores it.  He is a good warrior.  He has to be.  Because if he’s good, then they won’t look too closely.  If he’s good, he can get away with drugging his targets instead of killing them.  If he’s good, he can look at his mother with blank obedience and not let her see a fraction of the seething rage underneath.

“Just go,” Damian snaps, “You’re supposed to be dead.  Go.  Start over.”

Todd laughs, and the sound isn’t entirely amused.  “Been there, done that.  Don’t particularly care to try again.”

He knew it won’t be easy, with a human.  Birds and dogs will run and fly and no one will care if they look familiar.  But for humans, they will.  For this human, they will.

Damian has two options.  Both end in death.  But he knew that the moment he stared at a bird in a cage and said ‘no’.

The world is meant to be protected.  And how can he protect the world if he doesn’t protect those in it?

“Leave,” Damian says, tired.  He briefly entertains the thought of pushing Todd into the river.  But the boy straightens, dwarfing Damian, and he’s well aware that he had only one opportunity to catch Todd off guard.

One dose.

One chance.

“Bruce has been looking everywhere for you,” Todd says softly, “He’s going to be so happy when you come home.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Damian says automatically.  He needs to check in.  And then he’ll be sent back to Nanda Parbat to continue his training.  Until they realize that Todd is still alive and give him a traitor’s death.

“Oh, you are so much like Bruce it’s almost painful, baby bat,” Todd sighs, “Especially the way both of you cling to a course of action and refuse to consider alternatives.”

Damian narrows his eyes.  He will not kill.  He made the decision, and it will go against his honor to turn back on it.

Todd crouches until he’s at Damian’s eye level.  Foolish.  Damian can think of three different ways to leave them blinded.  “Damian,” Todd says quietly, “Do you want to go back to Nanda Parbat?”

No.  “Want has nothing to do with it.”

Todd disagrees, “Want is what turns this from a kidnapping to a custody dispute.”

“What?”

“Damian,” Todd says, almost gentle despite the fact that his eyes are a flickering green, “Your father wants you to come home.”  He holds out a hand.

Like it’s that simple.

Like it’s that easy.

Like all Damian has to do is take it.

Damian wants—

Damian is a good warrior.  But he can be a good warrior here.

He takes the hand.

Damian’s fingers are warm between his and Jason holds on maybe a fraction too tight, because the fear of waking up to find out he’s a ghost really never goes away.

But Damian’s hand is warm in his and nothing is green and they’re going home.

“Now we get back to the Cave and hope no one noticed I was missing, because if they did, Bruce won’t let me out of his sight for a month.”