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“God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that.

And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. That's how people change.” Angels in America by Tony Kushner.

Sometimes Jason has bad days, awful days, ones where he can't breathe without smelling smoke and tasting his own blood. 

But Jason Peter Todd is a man well acquainted with self destruction. It's not like he’s ever known anything else.

And so on the dog days, during the parts where his skin chafes and he flinches at shadows and he wishes that he’d stayed in that fucking casket, Jason makes it worse.

He fights with crowbars and he uses explosives and he stands just close enough to feel that singe. He digs himself deeper. He tries to kill himself in every way that matters. 

The problem is that there’s a violence that lives with him, carved into him too young and now it's just there and he’s spending the rest of his goddamn life spitting it at everyone who comes near.

Little boys who forfeit their bodies in the back alleys of Gotham grow up evil, and it doesn't matter if someone tried to promise him something else.

Jason thought Robin could save him, when he was a kid. Jason thought he could find a way to escape it. But the world doesn't work like that. On the bad days, Jason remembers the truth: 

It was always going to end this way. 

It's just like Sylvia Plath said - Jason remembers her from Lady Lazarus, the poem he read in Wayne Manor’s library.

The first time Jason dies, it's by accident, next to his mother on the bathroom floor with a needle sticking out of her arm.

The second time was on purpose- as on purpose as it could have been anyway, when Jason got into a stranger's car at eleven years old because he was so hungry that his stomach had started eating itself.

And that's what it's all about in the end, isn't it? Hunger. Famine that picks at you until you give in. The words don't touch me like a prayer that never reaches God because Jason was too much of a coward to say it in the first place. Hiding under his bed because Willis is yelling at his mom and he’s too much of a coward to step between them.

Coward, coward, coward. Jason, he decided when he came back for the third time, is never going to be a fucking coward again. 

So he isn't. He hurts himself until it's easy, because then he won't be scared when people hurt him.

Gore doesn't scare him. The clown doesn't scare him. Traffickers and pimps and drug dealers don't scare him - everyone has lost the privilege.

The only goddamn thing on this planet that has the power to scare him is himself, and he has won that privilege with bloodied teeth and spite. 

(And yet… that doesn't make it any easier.)

In Jason’s dreams, he is always dying. 

Sometimes it's exactly the same time as he remembers it. Sometimes his subconscious decides to get creative; like instead of Sheila watching it happen, it's Catherine or Talia or Dick.

Sometimes it's everyone, every single person he couldn't save, flitting before his eyes like a marching band.

In one of them, he’s watching it happen. Standing in the warehouse as his older self. In that dream, Jason walks up to the boy in the Robin suit and grabs him by his shirt.

In that dream he shakes the boy like a ragdoll and snarls “Stop fucking haunting me!” In that dream, the boy in the Robin suit just laughs at him while his brain bleeds out through his ears.

The boy in the Robin suit is dead; Jason is reminded of this over and over and over again, every time he closes his fucking eyes.

The boy is dead because he was weak. The boy is dead because he has to be. Sometimes Jason wonders why it feels like he’s the only one who got that message. 

Jason hates that little cage that Bruce made in the Cave, that memorial, that shrine. He wants to say I was more than that costume, but he doesn't even know if it's true. 

Occasionally he’ll have a dream where he doesn't die. Occasionally he’ll have a dream where he’s standing in a void and the boy in the Robin costume is staring at him. 

“Get out,” Jason tells him. “This isn't your fucking life anymore. Why won't you just fucking die like you're supposed to?” The boy in the Robin costume shrugs. Blood starts to pool at his feet. 

“You can't get rid of me,” the boy tells him, and then Jason wakes up screaming. 

And then. And then Jason starts to see Robin outside of his dreams. 

“Checked with a doctor already? If it's just your brain playing tricks, mate, I can't help you,” John Constantine says with his average devil-may-cry attitude.

Jason tries very hard not to look at where Robin sits on the window. He fails pretty quickly.

The white eyes of the domino mask are, as always, fixed on Jason. Mouth closed but he knows the kid is missing teeth. A few of his fingers are bent in the wrong direction.

“Got an MRI and everything,” Jason grunted through the mechanized voice of his helmet. “Doc says I'm clear. Now are you gonna help me out or not?”

John sighed, flicking the ash off his cigarette. 

“Not sure what I can do for you, other than give you an explanation.” He took a drag. “Magic isn't a science.

It's just a general term for when reality warps and fucks us over in ways it shouldn't be able to.

Often, magic is just what happens when things we already know become more literal than they ought to be.

What I'm trying to say is that this kid's been in your head for a while, long before you started seein’ ‘im.” Jason stiffened. 

“I never told you that I was seeing a kid.” John laughed and gestured to where Robin was sitting on the window. 

“C’mon, mate, this isn't my first time around the block. Like I said, he’s not real enough for your mates to notice but he’s real enough for you and anyone who knows what to look for.

Certainly a creepy little bugger.” Jason felt like he should have been offended; instead, he just rolled his eyes. 

“Tell me about it.”

“Listen,” John said, “Lazarus water is some toxic shit, and you're consulting the Toxic Magical Shit Expert, here.

Death magic latches onto ghosts. That's just how it is. Those ghosts can be real or metaphorical, it doesn't really matter.” 

“Okay, well how do I get rid of it?” 

“That's the hard part,” John said. “‘Ave you ever messed with one of those wicker finger traps?”

“Sure.”

“You put your fingers in and the more you pull, the tighter the trap is. This kinda shit works the same way.

The more you try to get rid of this thing directly, the closer it gets to you. The more real it becomes. It wants something from you, that much is clear.

It's here to finish something, prompt a realization, get an answer to a question it never managed while living.

You gotta acknowledge that. Gotta figure out how to give it what it wants. Ignoring it, trying to kill it, trying to run- won't do shit. It'll just make it worse.

And if it keeps getting worse… I can't tell for sure just by standing here, but my best bet is that this thing has the power to kill you if you don't figure this out.”

“Great,” Jason said, resisting the urge to slam his head into the brick wall he was leaning against. “That's just fucking fantastic.” 

“Learn how to live with it and it'll go away. Sorry. That's all the help I can give. And some advice, kid? From one dead man to another? Stop playing possum. It's not a good look on you.”

John walked away, probably off to talk to Zatanna about some bullshit Jason didn't care about. Jason took a deep breath.

Stop being roadkill - an interesting prerogative. Hard to do when he’s never really known how to be anything else. 

Jason doesn't talk to him -to it - for five days before he cracks. 

“Do you want some?” Jason asks at last, sitting at his shitty kitchen table.

Robin’s head raises. He’s sitting on the desk across from the kitchen, dripping blood all over the table.

Jason can't tell what his facial expression is, past the bruises and the domino mask, but the kid seems interested.

“Want some what?” he asks in a familiar voice that echoes through Jason’s skull like a ricocheting bullet.

Jason grits his teeth. 

“Coffee,” Jason says with a casual tone he doesn't feel, raising his mug. The kid frowns. Jason can't believe he was ever actually this small. 

“I can't. It’ll-”

“-stunt your growth, yeah, but we both know that you're not going to grow up, so. You should try some.”

“It tastes bad,” the kid argues. 

“You'll get used to it,” Jason replies simply, taking a sip. 

“I don't want to get used to it.” Jason laughs. 

“Yes, you do.”

It's kind of funny, Jason thinks, except it's not really funny at all. Ironic- that's the word he’s looking for.

Because Jason lived in what is basically a giant gothic castle when he was younger and yet the only haunted house in this story is his body. 

So Jason does what anyone would do when confronted with a sentient, ghostly version of their own mutilated child-corpse: he starts taking notes. 

The kid follows him around so Jason makes a game out of analyzing his appearance: what rip in the costume was from what, which parts were actually red and which parts just bloodied.

The kid was stuck in time, he deduced, static.

No matter how long Robin spent around him, the blood on him never dried, the wrist with a bone sticking through it never fully snapped from its tenuous position.

Action inspires reaction; sometimes taunts, ominous phrases, and sometimes quotes from the shit he was into at fifteen.

He tries not to talk to it. Maybe if he ignores it, it’ll be like it isn't even there at all.

But sometimes- sometimes the kid’ll look so curious about something and Jason will cave.

“What is it this time?” he demanded, irritated. It had been a long and tedious patrol and the one thing he wants to do is collapse facedown on his mattress.

But as soon as he pulls his shirt over his head, he turns to find the kid staring at him. 

“What's that from?” Robin asked, pointing at the left side of Jason’s waist. He glanced down and ran his fingers over a raised but only moderately discolored scar. 

“Russia,” Jason said. “Training with an assassin that I ended up killing.”

“That one?” Robin asked, pointing to a scar on Jason’s shoulder. 

“Onyx. She’s, uh- she’s another vigilante. I fucked her over so she got me back. We’re cool now, though. I'm pretty sure.”

“There?” Robin asked, pointing at Jason’s neck, and Jason sighed, pulling his hand up to wrap around his throat. 

“Bruce,” Jason said simply. “He coulda chosen me or the clown to save, and he slit my throat instead of killing the clown.”

Robin, strange as it was, didn't even flinch. He just blinked and then tilted his head. 

“Huh. Well. You probably deserved it.” Jason has no fucking idea what to say to that. “Besides, we always figured he’d betray us one way or another, didn't we?”

And Jason… remembered that, actually.

The first year with Bruce where he was always looking over his shoulder.

Waiting for his bedroom door to open in the middle of the night. Waiting for Bruce to pull the rug out from under him, to throw him out.

Waiting to do something so unforgivable that Bruce would finally realize what he was.

Jason swallowed thickly.

“Guess so,” he croaked.

“And we were right.”

“And… we were right.” 

When Jason was a little kid, before dying and Robin and Willis went to jail and everything, they never had enough water in the apartment. 

You’d be fucking stupid to drink tap water in Gotham City, especially from a sink in Crime Alley. It was barely safe to shower with.

There were the usual diseases to worry about, of course: amoebas and scabies and mold, heavy metal poisoning of all kinds.

But also all sorts of fear toxins and laughing toxins and weird magic shit you didn't even want to think about. That kind of thing.

One of the neighbors down the hall had a water filter thing that they all siphoned off sometimes, but when the door was locked that wasn't an option. 

When he was big enough to, Jason usually left the house when Willis and his mom fought. It felt like a scummy thing to do but he couldn't help it.

Once when he tried to get in the way he ended up with a broken ankle, and they couldn't afford doctors visits like that again.

So every once in a while, as Jason paced the streets in wait for his father to run out of steam, Jason would pass by Gotham Harbor.

He’d stand there and stare at the water, wondering how it would taste and how many ways it would kill him if he gave in and drank it. 

There are things about Catherine that Jason hasn't ever told anyone.

It's something he’s witnessed with other people in his night job; something about surviving domestic violence just fills your throat with glue.

Jason doesn't want anyone to think that Catherine was a bad mother. Maybe on paper she was, but anybody who’d say so wasn't there, they didn't get it.

He wasn't even her son. She did the best she could with what she had. 

He walked back home from the Harbor one night, hands in his pockets, to find the building silent.

Jason slipped in through the window and found his mother on the floor, shakily cleaning up shards of plates from the floor and scrubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

A pang of guilt, then. Yeah, Catherine didn't (couldn't) always protect him, but it's not like he protected her either. 

“Hey,” he said softly. She didn't turn to look at him. Probably heard him come in. 

“Hey yourself,” she said. “Where’d you go?”

“Down by the harbor,” Jason said, and Catherine turned to frown sharply at him. 

“Don't do that,” she said, and Jason frowned back. 

“Why not?” he asked. 

“You could drown,” she said, standing with the dustpan in hand. “I saw a PSA ‘bout it the other day on the TV. Too many kids die from drownin’ and no one taught you to swim.”

“Swimming can't be that hard,” Jason argued. Catherine fixed him with a stare. 

“Promise you won't hang around there anymore.” Jason rolled his eyes but promised.

When Catherine died and Jason was alone, he tried to stay away from the Harbor. Some fucked up version of an apology- or it was just that the water scared him. Take your pick. 

He did learn how to swim eventually. Bruce taught him. But he kept his uneasiness about Gotham Harbor regardless. 

Anyway, he never had enough water in their apartment when he was younger, and that was why he carried little water bottles around with him when he did the rounds in Crime Alley.

Kids would run up to him; shyly at first, to ask if he had any, and then more demanding once he proved himself to them. Jason would give them out until he didn't have anymore.

The boy in the Robin costume hates it. 

“Nobody ever did that for us. Why should they get to have what we didn't, huh? What the fuck is so special about them that they don't deserve what we deserved? It's not fucking fair.”

“Nothing is,” Jason tells him, and tries his damndest not to believe him.

Here’s something Jason wouldn't admit even under torture: Dick Grayson being out of sorts is one of the few things left that can truly, genuinely rattle him. 

Dick has a fever; a bad one, one that has him shaking in Jason’s grip in the Batcave with an IV in his arm.

He was a day away from full blown sepsis if he hadn't stumbled in and revealed that he was injured when he did.

Of course, Bruce is in some kind of business meeting overseas, and Tim is off distracting Damian because he knows Dick wouldn't want either of them to see him like this. 

Jason understands why, he thinks, sitting on the gurney with Dick’s head in his lap. He wouldn't want anyone to see him like this either, let alone kids.

Dick’s teeth are chattering and his hair is soaked in sweat and Jason knows this kind of fever, the kind where it's a question whether the sufferer will even survive the night. 

The kid isn't distracting him, thank God. Whenever Jason enters the Cave, the kid goes to his own memorial.

He sits there in front of it, cross-legged, staring into the glass case. Completely engrossed.

It leaves Jason free to tend to Dick, this time, and he doesn't feel like looking a gift horse in the mouth, so he doesn't ask. 

“Where’s Bruce?” Dick mumbles for the third time. 

“On a plane here,” Jason said, smoothing Dick’s hair back from his eyes. 

“Shouldn't bother ‘im,” Dick croaked. His blue eyes, glazed over, swiveled around the room. He swallowed. “Didya… did you know that after you died, Bruce called me, like, all the time?”

Jason closes his eyes. Jesus. They're doing this, aren't they? They're really doing this. From where he’s still sitting in front of the display case, the kid glances over. 

“No, Dickface,” Jason said tiredly. “I didn't know that.”

“And he’d pretend- he’d pretend it was because of, like, I don't know. Because of missions or whatever. But that was bullshit. He just wanted to hear my voice. Make sure I was still alive.

I was so pissed at him, but I was too much of a softie to ignore his calls. God, I was so mad. The funeral was already over by the time I got back. It was already over . I didn't even get to say goodbye to you.

And I was so ready, Jason, I was so ready to be the good brother you deserved when Tim came around. And then Stephanie, and Damian and the others and by the time you came back I.

I didn't have anything left. I still don't. I'm- I'm pouring on empty, Jay. I'm so fucking sorry.”

“You're sick,” Jason said, even as his stomach turned. “You're just sick but you'll feel better soon, so just… don't think about all that shit right now.” Dick laughed brokenly. 

“I'm fucking sick, alright. Damian is still violent and Tim thinks I hate him and I'm pathetic. I can't- I can barely fucking patrol in the rain, I just-

God, do you, do you ever think… do you ever feel like someone put something evil in you and now you're never going to get it out?”

Jason’s heart jumped up his throat.

He was saved from having to answer that question by the arrival of Bruce, who just about hip checked Jason out of the way to take Dick’s face in his hands and fuss over Dick.

J ason just stared at the tableau in front of him.

They looked like father and son; they really did. Bruce and Dick and Jason, the orphan Batman took home when he got lonely.

Jason was frozen as he watched the living, breathing proof that no matter how much they fought, Bruce loved Dick more than he could say. 

“Well this is just sad,” Robin said, suddenly next to him. Jason swallowed thickly, hands shaking.

“I mean come on. How long are you going to look in on somebody else’s family and pretend it was ever ours?” Robin blinked, tilting his head like a doll.

“Or… is it that you thought you were the only one around here with ghosts?”

Jason didn't justify that with an answer. Instead he snatched his helmet off the table and stalked out of the cave.

 Do you ever feel like someone put something evil in you and now you're never going to get it out?

Of course, he only makes it two blocks before he’s keeling over to vomit on the pavement. 

You: how’s dickface?

Replacement: Fine now, but worried about you. Planning on showing your face some time this month or what?

You: is he still in the infirmary?

Replacement: Yeah. On observation, just in case. Why?

You: tell B to put him on the 20th directive. 

Replacement: Excuse me?

Replacement: Jason, you can't just say that and bail. 

Replacement: Do you seriously think I don't know our code for fucking suicide watch?

Replacement: What happened? I thought he had a bad infection!

You: he was in for an infection. nothing happened. he just said some shit to me and i don't think he should be alone right now. 

Replacement: What did he say?

Replacement: Jason. What the hell did he say?

You: just do what i said and drop it. 

You have blocked Replacement.

Everything falls apart when Jason gets into a fight with Bruce, because nothing can ever go right in his nightmare of a fucking life. 

It's a bad day. It's a bad fucking day. Jason has explosions going off in his ear and he can feel Talia’s hand on the back of his neck and he wants out , he wants off this ride right the fuck now .

Robin has been buzzing in his ear like a fucking gnat and it doesn't help that he can feel his old costume watching him from it's vantage point.

He thinks- some part of him thinks, dimly, that Robin has been getting worse lately.

He’s been louder, more angry, pushing at Jason- literally, actually fucking pushing him.

Robin wants him dead. The person that Jason used to be wants him dead so fucking badly that Jason is starting to wonder if it's worth fighting him about it.

So he’s in the Cave after a mission gone wrong and Tim is injured and Dick is still mad at Jason for ghosting him and Bruce is downright stormy because of all of the above.

Dick is usually good at keeping the peace, even if he is pissed at Jason and fights with Bruce to a catastrophic degree when it's just the two of them, but right now he’s too busy trying to take care of Tim.

Jason is nervous- and that means Jason is mean.

He keeps switching between flight and fight impulses so quickly it's impossible to consider either of them. And of course this is a perfect time for Bruce to be pissed at him.

“That was reckless and dangerous,” Bruce snaps, and Jason throws his hands up. 

“Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was still fucking working for you!”

“This is not about that-”

“It is not my fault that you crashed my operation.”

“We did not ‘crash’ your operation, and if you had bothered to coordinate with us you would know what we were planning to do months in advance.”

“I don't have to stand here and listen to this,” Jason snarls, because he can't, he can't, he can't . Somewhere behind him, Robin laughs. 

“ I am your opus, I am your valuable- ” he singsongs. Jason tries to turn around and Batman grabs him by the arm. 

“ -the pure gold baby that melts to a shriek ,” Robin says, and he’s so loud . 

“We are not done speaking,” Bruce growls, and something in his chest just snaps so Jason turns around and says “Jesus Christ, will you just fucking hit me already?” 

Everything goes quiet. Dick’s head snaps up and Bruce just stands there and… stares. Robin giggles. 

“Oh, you've done it now, haven't you?” Shut up , Jason thinks. Please just shut the fuck up.  

“Look,” Jason says as he takes a step forward.

“I mean, I fucking get it, okay? I get that it's weird for you to have your grief undermined or whatever, I get that it was hard for you to be told that your son was alive and then find out that all that's left is this , I get it!

But it's not my fault that you guys work seamlessly and you have a stupid complex scheduling system that you never fucking taught me how to navigate, it's not my fault that you have a perfect fucking family and I'm just here to crash it.

You're- you're acting like this is fun for me. Like I decided to come back to life broken. I didn't choose that! I didn't choose any of this! So just, just…” he trails off, breathing hard.

Bruce hasn't moved, so Jason marches over and gets up in his face.

“Stop fucking looking at me like that. I know you want to. I know you want to fucking hit me, just get it over with so I can go.” 

And really he means, hit me so I can feel my skin again. So I know that you hate me as much as I feel like you do. So that you prove me right, that the violence is normal, that the violence is natural.

Hit me so that I know I can survive it if -when- you finally do .

Bruce hesitates, like he has no idea what he’s supposed to say, how he’s supposed to fix this. 

Robin whispered, “ the second time I meant to last it out and not come back at all .”

“I'm not going to hit you,” Bruce said quietly.

“ I rocked shut as a seashell- ” Robin continued, and the static just grew in Jason’s head.

“Yes you are,” Jason rasped. “You… you want to. I know you want to.”

“ -they had to call and call and pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. ”

“I don't,” Bruce said. 

“You should,” Jason croaked. “There’s- there’s something wrong with me, B. Can't you see it? Can't you fucking see that? I'm not supposed to be here. I was never supposed to come back. I was never supposed to…”

“You're bleeding,” Dick said, pushing himself between the two of them, and Jason blinked at him. 

“What?” he croaked. Dick took his hands, gentle, telegraphing his movements like Jason was a scared horse.

Jason stared at where his nails had dug into the palms of his hands. Fingers drenched in his own bright red blood. He watched it as if he was staring at someone else.

Jason swallowed and wrenched his hand away, stumbling back.

He doesn't know what to do.

Jason doesn't even know what's happening, anymore- just that something is boiling low in his stomach and it's making everything worse, tearing him apart from the inside out, and he can't explain it to them without sounding insane. 

Fight didn't work. Flight was the only option.

So Jason runs. 

He stumbles down the street to his apartment, and he thinks about what Constantine told him- about how magic warps and shifts reality. He can feel it now, the way the buildings all blur together and the road under his feet feels like ice. Because, because- 

Because Jason knows his city. And he has always thought that, if Gotham were a person, she would always be screaming. 

He gets to his apartment. Up through the stairs, inside, into the bathroom. Panting, he locks the door behind him, turns the sink on and runs his bloody hands under it.

The blood sticks to his skin like paint, like a scar. Out, out damned spot! Nothing. The bloodstains stay right where they are. The cuts don't even hurt.

And it's predictable, isn't it? It's all so goddamn predictable. Jason tries to turn the sink on but the handle is stuck.

So the water fills the bowl and fills the bowl and Jason takes a few steps back, breathless.

The clinical lights flicker above him.

He thinks of Catherine telling him not to play near the water, not to get too close to Gotham Harbor because she never had the money to get someone to teach him how to swim.

Jason walks backwards until his back hits the wall and then sinks down, down, down to the floor. 

Robin is sitting there too, of course, his battered, ruined corpse. Tucked up against the toilet. Watching him from behind the cracked domino. 

“Shoulda told me there was a time limit on this,” Jason says breathlessly. The sink runs. 

“You get it now, don't you?” Robin says, eerily calm. “This isn't even death, for you. You were never supposed to return. This isn't even really a life. You're practically stillborn.”

“Okay,” Jason says. He's going to die here. He's going to die here. “Okay. You know what? I have a dying request, you little shit. Grant me that much, yeah?” Robin narrows his eyes. 

“Maybe,” he says. Jason turns to look at him head on. 

“Take off your mask,” Jason asks. “Show me your face.” 

Robin… hesitates. He glances over at the sink, where the water has overflown the bowl and started to drip onto the floor. He looks back at Jason. 

“Fine,” he says, and raises his hands to his face- with that mangled wrist, with blood dripping from his hair. He removes the domino. Robin looks at Jason, Jason looks at his face, and…

It's just his face. Ruined, of course; the blood vessels in his eyes have burst so the whites of his eyes are red.

He’s cut the fuck up and his hair is matted with blood and it still looks like his brain is leaking out of his ears.

But it is him. His chin, the curve of his cheekbones. It's the same. It's younger Jason, smaller Jason, but someone that he used to look at in the mirror every day.

So Jason knows what he’s looking at. He knows those eyes intimately- the guarded look, the clenched jaw, like he’s trying to grind his teeth to dust.

Distant from where he is now, sure. But unrecognizable.

Jason stares at the kid’s face and realizes what he sees.

Something fundamental shifts. The world tilts on its axis. The rest of the stage dims, the metaphor falls apart, and Jason laughs.

“What?” Robin demands, angry. His voice is menacing again. “What the fuck are you laughing about?” 

“You're scared,” Jason breathes, almost in awe. “You're scared. ” 

“I'm not scared!” Robin snarls like a rabid dog as he scrambles to his feet. “I'm not scared of anything!”

But it doesn't work like that- Jason can hear it, now, his own young voice, desperate and terrified.

The fear he runs from when he sets himself on fire. The fear he tries to bury and only strengthens when he does.

“You're scared,” Jason repeats slowly, staring up at him. “You're terrified. There’s something to this. What is it, huh? Why do you like the cave so much? Why do you love the memorial? Why are you still attached to Bruce, knowing what he did?”

“Because he didn't leave me! ” Robin cried, the room shaking with the force of his grief.

“That's all you fuckers want! You want to wash me away! You want to kill me, you want to bury me, and B is the only fucking person who hasn't left me alone! You- you left me alone !”

The water is a thin film on the floor, now, Jason blinks. Robin is breathless, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand.

And the thing is that Jason knows what this feels like, he understands it intimately. It was the reason he clung to Talia the way he did, it was the thing he couldn't forgive his family for.

They moved on. They moved on without him .

Jason realizes, with startling clarity, that he has to fix this.

“Okay,” Jason says, and lurches forward on his heels. He takes Robin’s face in his hands, and now they're both covered in blood, but he doesn't care.

“Okay, kid, you know what? You're right. You're fucking right. I've been trying to get away from you, to- to get rid of, and that's not fair. You just- you're scared. You're just scared. You're doing your best, yeah?”

“I'm trying to help,” Robin sniffled. “I'm keeping the pain away. It's easier like this. There has to be a better story.

There has to be a better story where we don't- where we don't become this . There has to be a better ending.”

“There is a better story,” Jason assures him, tucking a piece of hair behind the kid’s ear, and he means it.

“There is a better story, kid. And it's happening right now. There doesn't need to be a better ending because it hasn't ended yet. And it's scary and messy but it's ours. Not just mine. I was wrong before. It belongs to both of us.” 

Robin burst into tears, burying his face in his hands while Jason cradled his head.

“I'm sorry ,” the boy in the Robin costume warbled. “I'm sorry I couldn't save us.”

“I'm sorry I expected you too,” Jason whispered. “I shouldn't have, I shouldn't have blamed you for collapsing under the weight. That's too much to put on your shoulders, kid. It's too much.”

“Please don't chuck me out,” Robin whimpered. “I'm helping. I'm helping!”

The water was rising, soaking through Jason’s pants, up to his knees now. 

“You're not,” Jason said gently. “But you don't need to, okay? I understand now. I know. You're not- you're not going anywhere.

I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to get rid of you anymore. I know better now. I just think…” Jason swallowed thickly, brushing a red-stained tear from the kid's face.

“You've been awake for a long time, haven't you? Protecting me the only way you know how. I think it's time to go to sleep.” The boy frowned at him. 

“Sleep?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. Robin hesitated. His shoulders slumped, and every bit of fury leaked out of him, every piece of terror just left exhaustion in it's wake.

“That sounds nice,” he mumbled.

“It is,” Jason told him. “It's safe. You don't have to go away, you won't be alone. I'll keep you with me always. I'll carry you and you can finally get some rest.”

“What if we get hurt again?” Robin whispered. “What if you need me?”

“Then I'll wake you up,” Jason said. “I'll wake you up and we’ll talk again and we’ll find a way out this time, together. But it's time for you to go to sleep. It's time for you to rest.” Robin sniffled. 

“You promise you won't abandon me?” he croaked. The water was up to Jason’s shoulders, his neck. Rising faster and faster. Jason pressed his forehead to Robin’s, held his face with bloodied hands. 

“I promise,” he choked out. “I promise, kid.”

Robin buried his face in Jason’s shoulder. Jason wrapped him in an impossibly tight hug and then squeezed his eyes shut as his lungs filled with water. 

Being dipped in the Lazarus Pit is a bit like drowning backwards. Waking up in Gotham Harbor is a bit like… well. It's like normal drowning. 

For a moment, Jason Todd is utterly weightless, and then he’s thrashing, clawing and his hand hits the air.

The world reorients itself- up is where the air is, and Jason pushes himself in that direction until his head breaks the water. Then it's a lot of coughing, a lot of desperate gasps for air and furious treading.

When Jason finally manages to get a handle on himself, to keep his head above water despite his body’s exhausted protests, he peels his eyes open.

City lights. He recognizes the dark jut of the pier, and then the soft mass of the coast next to it. He’s not that far from shore at all. 

“Hell yeah!” Jason exclaimed through a ruined throat, pumping his fist in the air and then remembering that he actually needed that arm to keep swimming.

It's fine. He’s not even worried about secondary drowning. He’s too wound up to care.

Jason floated on his back and started kicking his way to shore, trying to figure out if he could make any constellations with the stars above.

He had no way of knowing how long it was before his feet hit sand and he was dragging him on his hands and knees onto dry land.

Jason coughed up more water, soaked and shivery and alive. More alive than he’d ever been, actually. He laughed, probably a little hysterical as he stumbled to his feet.

“Herr God, Herr Lucifer!” he shouted, the final words of that poem, “beware, beware! Out of the ash I rise with my red hair, and I eat men like air! ”

He laughed, turned on his heel, and then went crashing down into the sand. Breathless, he Jason sat up.

There was a shape sitting a few feet away from him.

Jason reached for it with shaking hands and blinked at his phone. Huh.

He didn't have time to contemplate how the fuck it got there -probably some magic shit that he didn't understand- before he was dialing the first contact that came up.

“Can I fucking help you?” John demanded. Jason flopped back in the sand with the phone still pressed to his ear. 

“Guess who,” he croaked, almost giddy with it. 

“Jason?” John said, confused. Jason nodded, even though there was no one to see him. 

“That's me. You were right about the ghost, man, I- I didn't get rid of him but now he’s me, you know and it's- and I’m Jason Peter Todd. The one-and-fucking-only.” 

“Right,” John said slowly. “Listen, the Bats’ve been ringing me non stop since they found out we talked. Said they’ve been lookin’ all over you since yesterday.

So this might be a wild suggestion ‘ere but you might wanna let ‘em know you're alive before they blow a gasket.” 

“Oh,” Jason said, chest still heaving like an animal of its own. “Yeah, right. ‘Course. They- they're worried?” 

“Nightwing sounded like he was about ready to gnaw his own leg off, mate. I'd say they are.”

“Huh. Okay. Good- good talk, man.”

“Uh huh. Remind me never to with Gotham bullshit again. Christ.” John hung up so Jason called his brother.

“Jason?” Dick breathed, “Is that you?” John was right. His brother did sound like he was being held together by a single piece of duct tape.

“Yep.”

“Oh my god, where the fuck are you? You just- you just stormed out and then went radio silent and one of your safehouses flooded for some reason and everybody thought you were in the middle of a psychotic break or dead! Where the fuck have you been?” 

“Fuck. You would not believe the night I just had.”

“Are you injured?”

“No, I mean it. Like, you literally wouldn't believe what just happened.”

“Are you injured?”

“I'm fine. I mean. I was underwater for maybe a little too long but it's fine.”

“Jesus. Okay-

“I'm gonna do right by him,” Jason said. 

“What?”

“You know, Robin. I'm gonna… we’re gonna be okay, Dick. We’re gonna figure it out.”

And Jason found that he meant it. He really, really did. More than he ever had before.

It was all tangled in his head like a ball of yarn, a constellation of meaning that he couldn't make out when he squinted. But it was there, somewhere. The meaning was there. 

Dick took a deep breath in an attempt to steady himself.

“Okay. Okay, Jason, you- we have a read on your location, alright? Just stay where you are.”

“Don't worry,” Jason said, staring up at the stars. He felt the calm certainty in his bones, like a heavy blanket over his body. “It's alright, Dick. I'm not going anywhere.”