Life Begins By Leaving

by ihaveathingforpink

Summary:

Jason buys a house, rebuilds his life, and reluctantly reconciles with the family, one member at a time. Reluctantly.

Notes:

This kind of, sorta, maybe spiraled out of control for me. I was watching Falcon and Winter Soldier while browsing through Zillow while thinking about Jason, and thus this was born.

This is probably more fanon than canon because I've read way more fanfics than comics, and the DC timeline is a nightmare to navigate through. I've tried to keep all the characters true to themselves, but I'm one person. If anyone comes off OOC than, my bad. More spoilery notes below.

(title taken from 'Chords' by The Amazing Devil)

I’ll brick by brick rebuild us

Out of hows and whys not whens

‘Ruin’ by the Amazing Devil

“It’s still a bit of a fixer upper.”

Jason shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. Away from the cold nip of Gotham’s winter bite, grateful that it isn’t raining, as he stares up at the building: at its peeling ash-gray painted walls; at its windows, all sharp lines and jagged edges, smudged with blacks and browns and yellows; at the stairs slumping with rot; at the door cracked and hanging from one hinge.

Jason’s voice is flat and emotionless. “It’s a helluva roach motel.”

She doesn’t frown—too professional for it—and her tone is neutral, unmoved and unimpressed, when she corrects, “It’s not a motel, Jason Peters. It’s a house.”

“Hardly,” Jason snorts; his smile isn’t as sharp as it could have been, but mostly only because this isn’t his first time here.

“It’s a bargain, considering its proximity to the city and the additional privacy the land offers you. More so, it’s your house.”

Jason’s fingers clamp around the key in his pocket. Its sharp edges bite into the soft skin of his hand.

“Right.”

:: ::

It starts on Jason’s second day of being in the hospital. Senses dampened by drugs—the good stuff, they assured him with a friendly smile, triggering a glare so intense the nurse scurried from the room in a rush—so now Jason has to wait another twenty-four hours so they can flush all of it from his system.

So, Jason lies there flipping listlessly through the channels. Alligator clip impeding the situation somewhat whenever his fingers cramp, and he tries shifting the device in his hand. His body a mess of bandages and wires and tubes and it’s a miracle you’re not hurt worst considering they held you captive for three weeks and tortured you during most of it.

Another stupid thing the nurse had said that provoked a violent expression from Jason.

Captured, missing, and now hospitalized, and the only interaction from his supposed family is to ask if he had snapped and killed anybody because it’s okay that they showed up at his apartment to point guns at his chest and stab needles in his neck. And that it’s acceptable in their eyes for them to drag him off to torture him for weeks. They probably could have killed Jason and would have gotten a gift basket in return.

“Now, that’s a petty statement, Mister Peters,” the woman that’s been sitting at his bedside with her little pen and her little notebook and scribbling her little notes since he woke up yesterday says.

Tortured for three weeks, forced to break himself out, and he gets taken down by the hood of a car.

Typical.

Jason ignores her and flips the channel. Because of the drugs, Jason’s taken the unfortunate habit of saying some of his thoughts out loud. Sometimes just fragments; sometimes whole thoughts. The woman’s done a reasonable job of only saying something when it’s a particularly depressing thought.

“Thank you.”

Click. The channel changes.

The woman snaps her notebook shut and rises with an audible scrape of metal chair legs against tiled floor. She can stand silently, and her refusal is as blatant as it is loud. Jason does a good job of pretending to ignore her.

At least, he thinks so.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mister Peters,” she announces. “Do try to get some sleep.”

Yesterday at her arrival, he had snapped and snarled that he didn’t need a physiatrist or therapist or whatever the hospital thought they hired her as. Earning him a raised eyebrow and stern press of the lips and nothing more.

Today, Jason says nothing. He doesn’t even look as she exits the room.

:: ::

Snowflakes has begun to tumble from the sky, fat and lazy, layering Gotham in a white that hardly lasts. It clings to Jason’s jacket as he stomps across the parking lot to where he had parked his motorcycle. The plastic bags dangle around his wrists, weighing them down as he fumbles for his keys with numb fingers.

A shadow drops behind him.

“Early night?” Jason asks conversationally as he carefully straps the bags into the removable basket he added to his motorcycle.

“I was getting worried,” Nightwing says instead of answering the question because he’s—well, a dick. “Nobody has heard anything from you in a while. We thought something had happened.”

Satisfied that the bags will stay in place for the duration of his trip, Jason picks up his helmet and jams it over his head.

“Nope.” He straddles the seat, kicking the kickstand with the heel of his boot. “Just not in the mood to deal with any lectures lately. When I am, you’ll be the first to know.”

Nightwing sighs. He sounds tired, looks tired. The sharp pang of guilt that twists Jason’s chest is unwanted, and he’s grateful the helmet hides the remorseful downturn of his mouth. It’s difficult standing on the outside of someone else’s battle against Bruce. Nobody knows that better than Jason.

One because Bruce makes it near impossible for you to remain an outsider, forcing you to become just another casualty. And, two, because the knowledge that Bruce is going to win—will always win—sits heavier on the sidelines.

“I don’t want to lecture,” Nightwing tries.

Always tries.

“I just want to make sure that you’re okay and not—” dead and no one has bothered to tell me again.

Jason smiles; Nightwing can’t see it, but he’ll be able to hear it entangled with his words. “Relax big bird, you’ll be the first I notify if I take part in any more late-night coffin escapades.”

It’s sharp and cruel and petty. Nightwing visibly flinches—and, no, that should not strike another guilty twist of his insides—shoulders slumping and dark features pale. An expression that sends a blossom of uncomfortable heat bubbling up inside Jason’s chest in a demand for release. Preferably with a fist against someone’s face; preferably Bruce’s face.

“That’s not funny,” Nightwing tells him, sounding so, so small.

Jason looks away. “Sorry. You can tell the flock I’m alright. There’s no need to waste any resources on me.”

“It’s not a waste. Oracle is worried too. She says you haven’t returned to your safehouse in weeks now. We—her and I—thought something might have happened to you, and the big man refuses to tell us anything.”

“Bruce couldn’t have said anything because he doesn’t know anything,” Jason says simply, ignoring the sharp ‘code names’ hissed at him; sighs, “I had to burn the safehouse because it was compromised.”

He can’t see it, but Jason knows Nightwing’s eyes are wide, imploring saucers beneath his domino mask. It’s the only clue to Jason’s error.

“You know the location of your safehouse is secure with us. We wouldn’t betray you like that and—”

“I wasn’t talking about that type of compromised,” Jason interrupts sharper than he should have, but the memory is still hauntingly painful. “A local gang received a tip that they know where the Red Hood sleeps and thought it would be funny to get the drop on me. Imagine my surprise when I walked in to find fifteen guns pointed at my chest.”

He’s not sure what he expects from the confession. It’s the truth, but that doesn’t automatically mean anyone will believe it—especially not the family. Still, not even Jason is cruel enough to accuse a man of lying about something like that. At least, not to their face, and everything Jason is—cruel, unforgiving, vindictive—Nightwing is not.

He’s warm and open and loyal to those he deems family. Jason hasn’t been considered Nightwing’s family in a long time, if ever.

It still hurts to watch the vigilante’s face turn to stone; his voice shaking, like his hands have begun to, as he demands, “Who?”

Jason’s grateful for all those acting lessons Bruce forced upon him when he’d still been his Boy Wonder, allowing his voice to drip into a carefree confessional. “Relax dickhead. They still draw breath—all fifteen of them—so there’s no need to go combing through obituaries tonight. Maybe you’ll actually get some sleep.”

Nightwing steps forward. Stops. He stretches his in front of him, but drops them with a self-conscious slump of his shoulders. Jason pretends to not notice, but his instincts are raised sharply. Screaming at him to pay attention to the angry (danger, danger) man standing close enough to deal serious damage before Jason’s capable of reacting.

“Jason—”

Danger.

Dick’s words are cut off by the revving of a motorcycle engine, and Jason’s flippant wave of his wrist and casual, “Do yourself a favor, and forget about it. Find a bed and crawl into it before you fall over and embarrass yourself.”

Jason goes, and Dick lets him.

:: ::

“Are they dead?”

Smack. Crack.

“No, they are not fucking dead, you fucking asshole. Fuckity fuck fuck.” Red. He’s practically soaking in it. “Do not fuck touch me right now. Ow. Fuck!”

Sunlight slants across the room, but it takes Jason a moment to realize that it is also sitting across his face. He frowns, furrowing his forehead, as he rolls over to stare at the broken window. It must have snowed in the middle of the night because there’s a puddle of melting water over the tarp Jason spread across the rotting floorboards.

His fingers and toes are numb, but his back gives a satisfying crack when he stretches his body and rolls off the bed. Stringy strands of raven hair stick across his forehead, dark with dirt and grease. He can feel it as he runs shaking fingers through them, scratching his scalp and trying to not think about how his mouth tastes of ash and copper.

It’s been a while since he’s had that dream.

Mindful of his left foot, he makes his way down the hall towards the kitchen. The taped sheets of plastic he had taped over the windows concave as the wind blows inwards. Fat snowflakes cling to the frozen surface as if seeking shelter in the bare space.

A full body yawn makes Jason shiver as he sets about boiling water on the portable stovetop he bought several nights ago. Sheets of paper lay scattered across the tiled floor filled with dark splotches and crooked lettering of his notes and crude drawings—a product of months of careful planning.

A cheap black duffle bag sits next to it all. Jason sits cross-legged next to it as he waits for his water to boil and considers the leaves of paper critically. Today, the contractor is supposed to finally get started on the installation and drywall—the plumber and electrician taking longer than expected as they practically gutted the house to rework it from what little scraps that’s left.

Admittedly, just that little bit has offered tremendous improvement. Jason finds he doesn’t even really mind how tedious it had felt in the days that bled into weeks, and they were professional enough to not ask about the bruises and bandages once.

His leg begins to cramp, so he stretches it out in front of him. Thumbing open the chemistry textbook he’d had delivered two nights ago, he bites onto the lid of his yellow highlighter and pops the marker free and returns to his annotations.

More slow progress.

And he’s finding it difficult to concentrate. Hands shaking and torso aching in reminiscence of his dream—a thing this house is supposed to distract him from. Jason sighs. He uses the pen to bookmark his page and feels his knees crack when he rises back up to his feet.

He should have never returned to Gotham. He knew better, but his carelessness made him desperate and left him with little choice. Either way, Jason muses on his way towards his bathroom, it’s too late now.

The shower is a cold and unforgiving embrace that sets Jason’s wounds alight with bright, burning pain. It’s also less of a shower and more of a sponge bath on the bare floor of another mostly gutted room, and he’s never going to take indoor plumbing for granted ever again.

The water in the bucket quickly darkens as he wings the washing rag clean. The army of goosebumps that’s collected across his skin perks at the icy touch and every day they take more of a permeant residence across his skin. He’s mindful to keep his touch feather-soft around the still-healing wounds, but at least most of the bruising is colored into the ugly yellow stage.

Thankfully, none of his injuries appear to have gotten infected over night, so he settles for wrapping them back in a mess of milk white bandages and considers the small space thoughtfully. It currently sits third on his priorities, but it seems he’s spent more time in it than any of the other rooms. He makes a mental note of moving it up on his list. The bedroom can wait several more days.

The bath proves to do little in chasing the remnants of his dream. As does the cold sandwich he scoffs down for breakfast, and he’s almost grateful when he hears the contractor's voice calling for him outside.

Jason arches his back in another stretch, setting aside the chemistry textbook in the pile of his notes. Sunlight filters through the cloudy plastic windows—Jason’s second hint of how much time he’s allowed to escape him. His first being the grumpy growl his stomach gives as he maneuvers himself vertical.

“It’s just plastic! Come in!”

The group of men frown as they push themselves inside the space.

“It’s not safe, not having a door,” one even says as he accepts Jason’s bandaged hand.

Jason smiles and shrugs, admitting, “It’s a work in progress. My realtor called it a fixer upper, but I haven’t quite figured out what I want to do with the outside just yet. Besides, nobody has brutally murdered me just yet. I think I can sacrifice a couple of more days. Come on, I’ll show you around and tell you what I want.”

They say nothing as Jason gives them the tour. It doesn’t take long—the house isn’t that big, suitable to fit one person’s needs—and it ends in the bedroom, where they politely ignore the yellow-stained mattress Jason has been using as a bed for weeks.

“It should take us about a week,” the lead contractor informs as they follow him back to the kitchen. “Of course, this thing never comes cheap.”

Jason snorts. “Of course.”

He picks up the duffel, zipping it open to show them the stacks of money neatly stacked inside. Some of the younger men gape in open-mouthed amazement, but the lead only smiles. Scratches the back of his neck in amused admiration.

Jason keeps his expression blank in faux-innocence as he asks, “Will this cover it?”

“Yeah kid. I’d say that would be more than enough.”

:: ::

“Good morning, Mister Peters. Did you get any sleep?”

“…”

“I see. This again. Well, I’ve come with good news. They’re releasing you today so you can go back to your spiral of self-destructiveness. Maybe the next time I’ll see you will be in the morgue.”

“…”

“Very well then. Shall I take my seat?”

Jason doesn’t understand why she bothered asking because she did it without waiting for his response. She probably knows he wants to tell her no, get out, leave me alone, you’re not who I want to see at the moment, but she’ll just look at him with those dark, knowing eyes and remind him that there’s no way they can know they need to visit him if he refuses to tell them where he’s at.

“They already know, lady.”

“Ah. I see,” she replies smoothly, “We’re starting with your family early today.”

It should make him angry—it should. Three days he’s suffered keeping grips with the thoughts inside his head, where they belong, but the drugs have made his brain slippery. They just slip free, unbidden and at random.

“Damn drugs,” he sighs with a drop of his shoulders.

“They haven’t administered you any drugs within the last twelve hours to prepare for your departure,” she tells him with a pointed look, “You speaking your thoughts so freely is a habit you’ve accrued from spending most of your time with no one to hear you.”

Jason glares at her.

She smiles pleasantly back, opening her notebook and asking, “Is it something you would like to talk about? Your independence.”

They stare at each other. She’s easy to look at and in any other setting Jason would allow himself to think of her as attractive: strong cheekbones; small, pointed nose; round, deep-set eyes; all framed with neat, spongy curls. But Jason refuses to consider her anything more than an annoying shadow sitting at his bedside.

Jason looks away first.

“I thought independence was supposed to be a good thing?” Jason asks, fiddling with the bandage around his wrist.

Lucky. He had been lucky. All his wounds were superficial, meant for optimal pain and minimal scarring. Jason has yet to point out that was because they had been planning on keeping him for longer.

“Ultra-independence can be a trauma related response,” she informs him smoothly, clinically, “You currently feel the need to be independent because every time you’ve allowed yourself to fall onto another person for dependance, you feel they had let you down in some manner. Did you have any younger siblings growing up?”

“No.”

“Any inappropriate relationships?”

“No.”

“What about your parents? Tell me about them.”

Jason laughs, but it twists as it comes out of his throat. Warping into something dark and hollow and broken. Shards of glass scattered innocuously across the grassy plain, but she doesn’t rise to the bait. She looks at him and waits.

Fuck waiting. Fuck hospitals.

“My father was an abusive asshole, and my mother was a drug addict too weak to deal with her problems. Oh, wait no, that had been my adopted mother. My actual mother sold me to a madman and lit up a cigarette as she watched him attempt to bludgeon me to death.”

Jason tilts his head to get a look at her expression. Expecting—he’s not entirely sure, actually. Maybe anger at treating these sessions and her presence as a joke and how is he expected to heal if he can’t even take it seriously? Or pity at poor Jason and his unfortunate childhood and does that make him feel special? Or perhaps annoyance at his pitiful display because he doesn’t have a monopoly on unhappy childhoods.

It’s not the cold, detached way her face closes off.

The woman nods, writes, and offers, “That all sounds very traumatic.”

Anger surges up his throat. A blossom of warmth that explodes inside Jason’s ribcage with a splash of white and red and green, and it’s been a long time since that poisoned fog has clouded his vision. He twitches on the bed, swallowing, clenching his eyes shut as he wills the fog to dissipate until it leaves just the whites and reds of his anger.

“Fuck you lady,” he snarls, voice choked, “You think you know me. You probably think you see a thousand of mes every day, but you don’t because there’s only one me and I—I—goddamn it all to fucking hell.”

She raises an eyebrow and says nothing. Later, Jason will think she had been steeling herself against the bursting storm of Jason’s anger, but at the moment, it had looked like indifference and that had only made everything worst.

“Fuck you. Fuck Bruce. Fuck Dick and Barbara, who once swore I’d always be their brother, and fuck the goddamn Batman because you’re all the same. You all look down at me and think, now that is something I should probably fix. Well, guess what Talia, I’m tired of always being somebody’s something else: somebody’s son; somebody’s assassin; somebody’s friend; somebody’s brother; somebody’s enemy; somebody’s excuse; somebody’s mistake; somebody’s achievement; somebody’s idol. I’m fucking sick of it. When do I get to be my something?”

The rant tampers off with a strangled sound. Jason’s throat spasms; fingers curled in white-knuckled fists around his bedsheet. He’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone, spiraling in a tailspin, until—

“Denise.”

Jason blinks; asks, “Huh?”

“My name is Denise. You called me Talia. Another person’s somebody I’m guessing,” the woman says and how can she still be so calm after absorbing the sharpest bits of Jason’s anger; Bruce would have yelled at him, chided him for taking something so personal out on an innocent civilian.

She doesn’t look frightened or cowed. She doesn’t look at him like he’s the monster—like he’s the problem.

Her pen clicks, and she sets it to her side. Leaning over, she regards him with a critical expression. It looks clinical—like how Leslie looks at them as their guts spill out over the floor—and it curbs a lot of his anger. Stubbing it like a light snuffed out. In its place is a hollow numbness Jason hates almost as much as the anger.

At least he feels something with the anger.

“Mister Peters,” Denise sighs, but her voice adopts a gentle sort of tone, “Would you like to start with that first one. Somebody’s son. You mentioned earlier your father used to hit you.”

Jason’s head turns away, voice caged, and says, “No I didn’t. You know what? Fuck you lady. I don’t owe you anything.”

“You don’t,” she amends, nodding, “but I’m here if you would like to. You seem to have a lot on your mind.”

Jason glares. Then opens his mouth and tells her most of it.

There’re some secrets he can’t say in the end, after all.

:: ::

“What’s got B in a mood tonight?”

“He went by Jason’s apartment to find some woman waiting for him. Imagine her surprise when the Batman broke through her window making demands.”

“What did he find out?”

“That Jason moved out two months ago, and she doesn’t know where he went. He had mentioned nothing, and he didn’t accept her proffered help, either. Apparently, he looked pretty bad. She suspected someone had been abusing him but, again, he hadn’t said anything.”

“Abusing him?”

“I’m not sure. He must have looked pretty nasty. The words didn’t seem to faze Batman, so it must have not surprised him to discover Jason looked beaten half to death. What are we making of that?”

“Honestly? I haven’t decided yet.”

:: ::

A week and a half later, see Gotham amid one of the worst winters it’s had in a while. Jason curses between clamped fingers as he welcomes the wash of warmth the store provides. His skin tingles unpleasantly, like ants crawling underneath.

Jason had considered buying a different vehicle that’ll be warmer than his motorcycle, but all his ‘rainy day’ funds as a crime lord are shrinking quicker than he had expected. He could have, but prefers keeping a stash for future emergencies yet unseen.

So, he’s stuck with his motorcycle during one of the coldest months of the year. With the expectations for the weather to only get colder. Luckily, though, the contractors had finished the insulation three days ago, and he finally got heat installed. It helps, especially at night.

Shaking out his limbs, Jason ignores the wide-eyed looks of those passing. It takes a lot to get noticed by Gotham citizens, but Jason’s aware of how he looks. Better than he had weeks ago, but his healing is proving to be an unhurried, tedious thing.

The shopping cart’s wheel squeaks as Jason manhandles it down the aisles. His motorcycle doesn’t offer much in terms of space, but his limbs go jittery in excitement at the realization that this morning he finally got a real refrigerator installed and not the cheap fishing cooler he bought months ago at the start of his preparation.

Once again, this whole thing is proving to be a test in patience.

He turns the corner and freezes. His muscles lock-up as the smiling figure turns and catches his gaze with a wide-eyed look of their own. Dark eyes flicker, taking in the coloring bruising and mess of meticulously wrapped bandaging.

Jason recovers first, but his cart proves to be his downfall.

“Jason!” and that actually sounds like excitement. “Jason, please, just stop.”

Jason stops. Knuckles white and tendons sticking sharply out from the plains of his hands. He feels himself shake. Anyone else, he wouldn’t have stopped. Anyone else, he would have ditched what meager supplies he’s collected and bolted, but it isn’t anyone else.

And Duke’s unfortunately done nothing to make Jason hate him. Yet.

Duke’s smile is bright in greeting, but he keeps his hands to himself. Choosing instead to hug his frozen television dinners to his chest. Smiling that pleasant, relieved smile Jason knows he picked up from Dick Golden Boy Grayson.

“Hey man. It’s been a while,” Duke says.

His voice is careful, words so obviously picked as to not spook him. As to not push him too much, too soon, but Duke’s never been Dick. He’s not blessed with the uncanny gift to say so much without talking about really anything. At least, not until someone else initiates it. Granting Dick their blessing.

Jason’s fingers cramp underneath the strain. He lessens the pressure with a soft exhale.

“Yeah,” Jason agrees; nodding towards the boxed dinners, “Fun Thursday night planned?”

Duke actually looks guilty, grinning sheepishly. He admits, open and honest, with a sincerity that sits like a stone in Jason’s stomach, “Not really. Alfred is still in England, so everyone has sort of been avoiding the Manor.”

Jason frowns.

He has to remind himself that he’s not part of the family anymore, so it shouldn’t hurt that no one’s bothered to tell him that Alfred’s gone. Something must have shown on his face, though, because Duke frowns. His eyes darken and the boxes crumple between his fingers.

“We tried telling you,” Duke says, “but nobody knows where you’ve been lately. You just up and disappeared on us, man, and you stopped patrolling, so we were just…waiting, I guess. For you to resurface, which you have now, and I’m screwing this up, aren’t I?”

Jason breathes in. Holds it, counts to ten in his head. Exhales. He releases his hands, shaking out his fingers and turning to face his brother. His voice comes out soft in its honesty.

“Nah. Hey, do you still have that car Bruce got you?”

Duke frowns, puzzled, head tilted to the side. Oblivious to the budding enthusiasm taking over Jason’s features.

:: ::

“You can come in,” Jason offers, trying to stop the self-conscious blush from creeping into his voice. “It’s still a work in progress, but it’s warm and I mostly have all my applications.” Jason nods. “Mostly.”

Duke stares. Eyes wide and almost concerned as Jason makes a mental note to call the painting company in the morning. At least he’s finally got a door installed. All the slips of plastic replaced with windows.

“Am I…are you sure I’m supposed to know about this place?” Duke asks delicately. “The others told me about your tendency to burn your safehouses once they’ve been compromised and this looks…expensive.”

Jason rolls his eyes, but the words stick with him. He hasn’t considered this place a safehouse since its purchase. No doubt because of his realtor’s the insistence to think of this place as a house, his house. He’s yet had a reason to think of it as anything other than one of his projects Denise insists he starts.

“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t sure, Narrows,” Jason reassures him lightly. “Besides, I remember promising you dinner. Something other than those boxed monstrosities you were planning on eating. What would Alfred think of me if I’d just turned my back and allowed that?”

Duke chuckles, and something warm explodes in Jason’s chest. He doesn’t even protest when Duke gathers all of the plastic grocery bags from the trunk of his car.

“You know Duke,” Jason teases, “We can take multiple trips. Not everything needs to be carried in at once.”

“Perish that thought,” Duke laughs, and the warmth turns bright and electric as Jason follows him up the slumping stairs.

Jason still doesn’t have furniture, but Duke doesn’t complain as he takes his place on top of the kitchen counter. Watching Jason pull out the box of old pots and pans he bought at Goodwill, laying the groceries on top of the marble kitchen island. Duke’s heels click against the wooden counters.

“This looks like a lot,” Duke admits, “even for you.”

“Yeah, well.” Jason shrugs, “I needed a change of scenery and a fresh start, but I didn’t mean it to keep it a secret. I’ve just been preoccupied by things.”

Duke hums. He’s still treading with careful phrasing, and it sours what jovial mood his company is providing Jason. His clear avoidance of the bandaging and bruises is not helping.

“You can ask, Duke. I promise I won’t go all psycho murder on you.”

“Ask?” Duke sits up straight, posture rigid and fragile, and despite his genuine nature the Batman has trained him like the rest of them. Jason watches that training take over his features and he goes completely blank. “I don’t want to ask anything.”

Jason stares, eyebrow raised.

Duke doesn’t move, but something flickers across his expression between one heartbeat and the next and his voice is almost feather-soft in its delicacy. “Are you alright? Just…just say you’re alright. Dick mentioned you were attacked in your apartment, and then you just disappeared. Fell right off the map.”

“I’m alright. It’s just been a long year is all.”

“Yeah,” Duke agrees softly, and Jason can tell that he’s creeping towards an unpleasant conversation that’s been weighing heavily on Duke for a while now. “So…um, is this the reason you haven’t joined anybody on patrol lately?”

The anger that washes over him is a temporary, instinctive thing that fizzles out in death as quickly as it sparked to life. In its place is a hollowness that leaves Jason slumped and shivering.

“Are they dead?”

Did you kill them?

“I kind of been avoiding the big man,” Jason admits and Duke’s—unapologetically honest Duke—expression morphs into a wide-eyed, open-mouthed look Jason doesn’t know how to handle.

So, he distracts himself by dicing the onion.

“Do not fucking touch me right now.”

“You need immediate medical attention. Just…come with me.”

“Did you two…did you get into a fight?” Duke asks, swallowing with a devastated expression that makes Jason’s guilt explode inside his chest.

He forces his fingers to relax around the hilt of the knife as he shrugs and answers honestly, “I’m not sure. All the yelling was one-sided, but when is it not? I just…didn’t feel like seeing him and I knew the moment I donned the red hood he would have been all over me.” So, I’ve been operating more covertly. “Besides, I’ve been resting.”

The lights flicker; Duke’s voice dark as he asks, “Right. How’d the fuckers manage that?”

“Language,” Jason admonishes because it makes Duke gape at him. “They just shocked me, is all. Caught me off-guard where I least expected them.”

“And then you handled the shitheads,” Duke says with a pointed stare, arms crossed and posture defensive. “Right?”

“Go ahead. Kill me. Anything less will not protect you from me, Jason Todd.”

Jason glares at the corner of the counter and admits, “No. They…” escaped felt wrong and pointedly something Jason has been refusing to think about these last few weeks, “got away.”

The lights go dark. The air still humming with electricity.

“God fucking dammit Duke!”

“Language!”

Sassy little shi—

:: ::

Dinner proves to be uneventful but not quiet. Duke fills the silence with his and Izzy’s latest status and the pressures of school and how grateful he is for Jason’s Jane Austen recommendation and this is really, really good Jason. Only going silent after he scraps the last bites from his plate, tongs of the fork making that unpleasant screeching sound that sends shivers down Jason’s spine.

Jason snatches it from him with a glare that doesn’t faze the younger boy; his expression so young and so defenseless as he admits, “There’s this new treatment the docs want to try on my parents. Because they were—you know.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, and nothing more.

What is there even to say? He doesn’t know much about Duke’s parents—never really knew them—but he thinks they must have been close. They seemed like good people, at least, who clearly loved their son. Hell, Jason’s parents had been awful, and some days his chest feels like it’s caving in grief whenever memories of them sneak into the backs of his mind.

He sets the dishes in the sink to be washed later (washed, with indoor plumping) and turns to find Duke standing on the other side of the island. His features are washed in the soft light of his phone. Chewing on the bottom of his lip.

Jason crosses his arms and waits.

And waits.

And, Jesus Christ—

“Just go, Narrows,” Jason tells him. “I’m sure the others are all worried about their lost little bird that’s flown too far from its nest.”

“Yeah.” Duke’s voice sounds faraway. “Dick’s been on a warpath lately since he—well, since then and I kind of, sort of promised Tim I’d run some numbers with him.”

He doesn’t even seem conscious of his words as he shoves the homework he’d been working on after Jason banished him from the kitchen back into his bag, eyes still glued to the phone, calling over his shoulder, “Same time next week?”

Jason freezes. Grateful at whatever has suddenly entrapped Duke’s focus, but when he still hasn’t responded, Duke stops at the door. Turns and looks expectantly at Jason and Jason knows that if he tells him no, to fuck off, then Duke will. Everything will return to normal, and this house will remain cold and empty and—

“Yeah,” Jason agrees with a smile, “As long as you finish your homework first.”

Duke responds with a flash of a smile before slamming Jason’s door shut in his rushed exit. Leaving Jason standing in the middle of an empty living room with a funny twist in his chest.

:: ::

“Red with white accents. Are you sure, sir?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

:: ::

It’s snowing. Large, swirling snowflakes that melt in dark hair and against overheated skin. Jason huddles deeper in his jacket, passing the dark-windowed stores Jason grew up familiarizing himself with. He knows—knew—all the owners. Knows—knew—which one's hand out spare sweets and which ones offered kicks.

That had been before Bruce, though, when he’d been small and angry and starving. He’s never thought of the memories as painful before, but it hurts him now. Worse than the still healing wounds that’s making his skin itch.

The heavy stone in his pocket vibrates. Jason’s fingers tighten around it, where he considers leaving it there. But it could be important. Someone could be missing, hurt, dying.

It’s a message from Dick: want 2 get lunch soon?

Jason blinks, frowning, head tilting to the side thoughtfully. Lunch? Soon? Why? What’s changed?

What’s wrong? Jason types in response, and then waits.

Catches himself waiting and straightens his spine in consideration. Dick has always had a pull around him and it’s so easy to find yourself slipping into his orbit. Jason swore to himself, upon his first return, that he will not allow himself to tumble headfirst into old habits: including his need to prove himself, to be accepted, by an older brother he’s always worshipped.

Despite Dick making it clear that he wants little to do with him. Both in the befores and the afters of Jason’s life, so whatever has changed is making Jason antsy.

The three dots pop on the screen. Disappear, return. Whatever Dick wants to say, he’s finding it difficult. Or, it’s combating with the things Dick cannot say.

Nothing’s wrong, Dick responds eventually. I want to C u

Learn to text Dickhead, Jason thinks, but what he says is: why?

This time, the response is immediate and straightforward. I need 2 know u r ok

A burst of warmth floods in Jason’s ribcage, and it’s a difficult thing trying to separate himself from these people when their pull tugs so fiercely at him. He doesn’t need them or their approval, but that does little to impede him wanting their acceptance. A more complicated thing than just patrolling with them or texting or visiting the Manor without worrying about participating in a yelling match.

It’s going to have to be a compromise, which never comes easily with this family. Not even with the more understanding members, because Jason has done some terrible things. Unforgivable things to people that’s done nothing to him.

I’m fine.

Jason drops his phone back in his pocket, and he ignores it when it starts vibrating incessantly at him. Dick is persistent and stubborn, and Jason isn’t ready to deal with him. He passes an alley and can make out the unmistakable shape of the looming garbage bin. The soft lumps of the piles of trash.

A sound echoes down the alleyway, drawing Jason’s attention. Jason tenses in anticipation of a fight, but the shadow rises. They roll their shoulders, escrima sticks crossed on their back and the sight of them has Jason relaxing slightly.

“What’re you following me now?” Jason calls but his tone isn’t accusatory but light and teasing, “Whatever happened to privacy?”

They don’t respond. Move nearer. Slow, deliberate footsteps that lack any true grace. Instead, they look weighty and awkward and unfamiliar and Jason frowns at him. The sticks are unmistakably Nightwing’s, but the figure is not.

“Who did you think I was?” the voice asks; chuckles as they reach towards one stick on their back, evidently unconcerned despite Jason’s darkening gaze. “A friend, perhaps?”

The stick swings at Jason’s chest, and instinctively he catches it. He knows better, but that doesn’t dawn on him until electricity cackles through him. Vibrating somewhere deep inside of him, and the scream comes unbidden. Ripped from his throat, shoulders shaking and limbs twitching.

“Ouch,” the man laughs, joy ringing in Jason’s ears. “That looks painful.”

Jason grounds his teeth and shifts to prop himself on his knees and elbows, glaring through his bangs. His fingers twitch; toes aching. It’s been a while since he’s been on the opposite end of his brother’s signature weapon.

“Where did you get those?” Jason demands, and it doesn’t come out as forceful as he’d been intending.

The man’s smile is bright under the streetlamps. He spins, or attempts to, but the movements seem clumsy and unpracticed, the sticks between his fingers; tilting his head to the side contemplatively and Jason must twitch or jolt or something because he jabs it in his kidney, releasing another stream of electricity.

“Son of a bitch!”

“You like them, huh?” the stranger gloats, brandishing a stick out in front of Jason’s face like a trophy. “Courtesy of Dodger.”

Fucking Dodger. Jason should have killed him before the car and the hospital and Denise and the rules. He should have stopped him and saved him the extra trouble his life is proving to be.

“I like that look,” the man commends, and there’s something else that flashes under the lamplight, “Here, I got something else for you from our mutual friend.”

He lunges at the same time Jason does. Surging to his feet and tackling the man at his hips; both of them fall to the concrete. Jason on top. And without Dick’s stolen escrima sticks, he falls easily under Jason’s fists.

Jason stumbles out of the alleyway, hand against his hip.

When he pulls away, it’s wet and sticky.

:: ::

“You painted your house red?”

“Hello to you too,” Jason greets, stepping aside to allow Duke access to the living room; Duke stares at it critically, as if assessing something.

“You redid your floors,” Duke observes, “and you still don’t have any furniture.”

Jason doesn’t bother locking his door as he turns around and shrugs. “I have some furniture. In the bedroom and kitchen.”

Duke’s face lights up as he asks, “And the guest bedroom?”

His smile doesn’t falter under Jason’s pointed gaze, either. He just toes off his shoes—a thing Jason had made him do last time because they had been caked with mud and melting snow—and waits expectantly for a response.

“I don’t recall giving you a tour last time you were here,” Jason reminds him slowly and, yup, there’s the guilty I’ve-been-caught expression. “Is there something you’d like to share?”

“You kicked me out of the kitchen, and I got bored, Jason. Bored! And you sort of have this whole house, which nobody else does, and I was curious.”

Jason pinches the bridge of his nose. At least he didn’t try lying and tell him he’d been looking for the bathroom and incidentally managed to skip it in favor of every other room.

Inhale. Count to ten. Exhale.

“I don’t have any guest room furniture because I haven’t decided for sure if that’s going to be a guest room. Who could I possibly have over to use it?”

Duke frowns, and Jason realizes that he will not let that go. The what exactly is still unclear, but Jason knows that he’s going to make sure that the plans for that room are going to remain a guest bedroom. Never mind that, unless Duke went and informed the whole family where this place is, that he’s the only other person who knows about its existence.

And it’s been a week with no one kicking down his door or leaving crowbars on his pillows, so he thinks that, maybe, for whatever reason, Duke’s kept it silent. A thing Jason doesn’t understand but is grateful for.

Time for a change in subject.

“I made stir-fry,” Jason says, beckoning him to the kitchen.

Jason had kept the changes to his bedroom simple. A new layer of paint (considered going a simple gray but decided that would be too dark so it’s a soft Yarmouth blue) with a rustic bedroom set he hadn’t hated at the furniture store. A (still mostly) empty bookshelf, blackout curtains and a few lamps later and he called it complete.

The kitchen, proved more difficult. Jason isn’t sure why because its design is rather simplistic, and he felt content after painting the (new, not cheap) cabinets an eggshell white (these names) but then his brain just stumbled over the rest of it.

It sits open to what will eventually be his living room with only the island dividing the space into separate things, and it seems somewhere between there and here the details would get lost inside his brain. It hadn’t been until he’d converted the island to something narrower that opens on the other side for seating that inspiration finally dawned on him.

In the corner, the room’s wall bends outwards. The wall covered by three large glass windows that overlook the surrounding woods of Jason’s property. A perfect place for a table and his brain had faltered momentarily at the presence of that thought.

He hadn’t been planning on adding a table in the kitchen because he never thought he’d have a reason to use a table in the kitchen. He lives alone and the barstools under the island would have proved efficient, but once the thought had entered his brain, it wouldn’t leave him alone. So, he got a table and four chairs crafted from the same cherry wood as the stools and refused to admit how perfect the table seemed to fit in the space.

Duke must feel the same because he instantly goes to it, dropping his bag onto a chair.

“Oh, sweet, sweet seating,” he moans, stretching out grin sunny and sharp (so young, Jason was that young once…or maybe he not—how old is Duke again?), “I’m so glad Jason got you.”

“I’m not going to fix you a plate,” Jason tells him as he takes the spot across from Duke. Fingering the tablet, Barbara gifted him last Christmas. “You’re not a child.”

Duke sticks his tongue out at him but clambers so quickly from his chair Jason worried he might trip. Some of Batman’s training must have stuck in his head, though, because he remains surefooted and returns quickly with a bowl Jason went out and bought the last time Duke visited.

For practical reasons—like having useable dishware—and not because he wants this thing to continue longer than necessary. Duke will come here, collect his intel, and then go report back to the big man until Bruce realizes this house isn’t a cover for things he disapproves of. Then, he can call off his spy and Duke will go back to being the polite shadow in the background.

“What’re you looking at?” Duke asks around a mouthful of food; dirty fingers reaching as if to check Jason’s tablet himself.

Jason jerks it away with a sharp, warning glare that’s made grown men whimper and shake. Duke only smiles back—a shallow, predatory grin Jason knows he learned from the demon brat—but he wisely returns his hands to his bowl. Still, Jason pulls his tablet closer to himself as he slumps in his chair. A difficult thing to do as most days he feels like all limbs.

“Work,” Jason says, scrolling down.

“Work,” Duke repeats slowly, “but you haven’t been on patrol in months.”

Jason hums in acknowledgement. Physically he hasn’t, at least, because he spent three days in the hospital. He almost died, and the doctors were quite emphatic about taking it easy during his resting period. Three days turned out to be a long time sitting alone in a hospital room with nothing to entertain himself but his tablet and a grudge.

Not capable of doing anything about the grudge, Jason had settled on looking for something else to distract him. A thing that ended up consuming him more than his need for vengeance, however temporary it proved to be.

It’s not like he could return to his current safehouse (apartment) anyway, and accessing all the other ones could prove fatal, as he doesn’t know how many are compromised. And the Manor was out of the question. None of the jerks of his so called, self-proclaimed family even bothered to visit him in the hospital. Or notice they had captured him, tortured, for days and Denise had smiled at the suggestion of Jason finding something else to occupy the space inside his brain.

Then Duke’s words sank in.

Jason sets the tablet—face down. Some of the downloaded crime scene images are excessive even for him.

“Months?” Jason asks, voice dry. “Duke—I’ve only been off the street for a couple of weeks.”

Willing, at least. Before that, the pain was so intense it proved a struggle to limp between rooms.

“No, you haven’t. The last time anyone saw the Red Hood was on the nineteenth of September. A little over two months ago. As in months—not weeks.”

Nineteenth of September. Jason does the math and realizes that had been the night he came home to find fifteen guns huddled in his living room. Jason grits his teeth, side of his neck itching from where he had felt the pinprick against the side of his neck.

It’s not until he realizes Duke’s eyes have tracked to his neck that he realizes his hand has reached up to cover the burning spot. He drops his hand, but he can see the way the dots connect in Duke’s mind.

“Does this go back to those fuckers that ambushed you in your apartment? We—I—thought you escaped and were lying low.”

Lying felt wrong since Duke’s already looking at him like he knows and is just waiting for Jason to confirm his fears.

Jason sighs; admits, “Not exactly,” but if Duke wants more than he should ask Bruce because evidently Bruce didn’t find it permeant to tell the others what had happened.

His hip aches.

“Jason.”

Does Jason feel bad about the way Duke flinches back from loud noise Jason’s fist makes against the tabletop? Yes. Is he going to apologize? Probably not. Fire is spreading across his skin as phantom pains of not yet healed wounds flare to life. Perhaps he’s not dealing with the experience as well as he’d tricked himself in believing.

He steels himself against the onslaught that’s coming next. The anger, disappointment. The violence that follows so closely on the heels to the yelling. He refuses to cower underneath it. He’s not the same child that got lured into that warehouse, beaten…

Haven’t felt that headache for a while now.

“Are you…do you need something, Jason? You look like you’re going—”

And yep…there he goes.

:: ::

“How long has he been like that?”

“You mean laying prostate on the ground doing absolutely nothing? I don’t know. Not long. A couple of minutes. Have you been able to contact any of the others?”

Jason is drifting in a haze. He’s been here before, constantly recently, but this recently feels to be stretching into forever as he remains stuck between sleep and almost wakefulness. Detached from his physical being because his consciousness knows there’ll be pain, considerable pain, and it’s been a long time since he’s been free from pain.

“Hmm. No. The big man is off-world, and he took the baby with him. Cassandra is performing a favor for Dick in California on a super-secret Titan’s mission. Tim’s visiting Conner and last I heard anything, there was an invasion or something they’re attempting to stop. No comms.”

Jason feels himself twitch. The voices calling for him, and it’s taking too long. That should concern him. Normally a light sleeper—an unfortunate side effect of paranoia—but lately his sleep has been that dark, un-restorative meditative state that accompanies drugs, and he recognizes the voices. Trusts the voices.

“Oracle?”

Jason doesn’t trust anyone.

“Dinner with her dad. I left a message. Does he look different to you?”

“Jason? Jason, can you hear me?”

Something pats at his cheeks. Overeager and unhelpful and if Jason isn’t currently so disoriented, his swats would have been more effective. He snorts, eyelids fluttering with the feeling that he’s been here before, recently, but this time is wrong. He’s supposed to be alone; he had been alone the last time.

Blond curls spill into his vision as Stephanie mouth moves with something, but Jason’s brain is still trying to figure out how it’s properly supposed to work. He groans and swats again.

“He’s still cold,” and that’s not right because the voice is unmistakably male and Jason’s looking at Stephanie’s face and can tell her mouth isn’t moving.

“Always cold,” Jason wheezes.

Fingers curl around his jaw, gently guiding it to where Duke is kneeling at his hip. Frantic features lit up under his phone’s brightness as he does whatever it is he’s doing. Calling for help, maybe, or googling what to do when you’re not-really brother whom you’re definitely not supposed to be around suddenly passes out on your definitely not weekly hang outs.

Unconsciousness beckons him. Jason groans underneath it.

The sharp, precise strike against his cheek draws him back from its embrace with what he hopes is a glare, but it seems he’s still struggling with coordination. Stephanie stares back, chewing on her bottom lip, and she looks almost worried.

“Because I am worried, you moron,” she snaps—when did she get the ability to read minds? “I didn’t. You’re speaking out loud.”

“That’s definitely a bad sign, right?” Duke asks.

“Do I look like a doctor? Of all the times for the family to suddenly be unavailable—how did you even know about this place? Last I checked, Bruce doesn’t even know where Jason’s living.”

“Well, maybe because I’m a pleasant person to be around and he enjoys my company and inexplicable taste. Besides, everyone knows I can keep a secret.”

“Oh really? When Tim canceled our plans last weekend because of an emergency board meeting, did he really have an emergency board meeting?”

“Well, no, Damian dyed his hair, and he was…I see what you did there. Quit with that smirk. That proves nothing; besides, we’re not talking about me or Tim or how Damian traded out your shampoo for Nair products—”

“He did what?!”

“—oh, look, Barbara is calling me. Yes, Barbara, I’m here. No, no, I know you had that dinner with your dad and wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t important.”

His voice grows faint, as if moving away. Jason blinks and realizes Duke has disappeared down the hallway, probably to escape Stephanie’s red-checked face of exasperation.

“That’s nothing,” Jason tells her in consolidation, “one time the demon brat left a crowbar on my pillow then stole my helmet, and I couldn’t even do anything in retaliation because if I break him then I’ll never hear the end from Grayson.”

“Oh, rest assured, Grayson be damned, Damian will learn why Shakespeare once wrote ‘hail hath no fury like a woman scorned’.” Stephanie vows and for whatever reason perks up, looking proud of herself. “See, I know things.”

Jason coughs, wound aching as he forces himself upright, but it feels wrong laying on his back. Too open, too vulnerable, even if it is just Stephanie.

“That’s not Shakespeare; it’s Congreve,” Jason corrects her without thinking, and then freezes.

Now, she’s going to get angry at being corrected, and he’s too weak to properly combat her wrath. Months of tentative compromises and metaphorical bridges gone because he’s a dick, and Stephanie will drag Duke from his house and—

“Oh, shit really?” Stephanie asks and then laughs. “Then I’ve definitely failed that last paper I wrote. Dammit Tim, I knew that didn’t sound right.”

Jason blinks stupidly. “Uh…what?”

She pouts—what is happening—crossing her arms. Her voice is gentle and not unkind as she explains, “The essay I wrote last week placing Shakespearean comparison to real life that I forgot about, and then asked Tim to help me on because he’s supposed to be the smart one. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. ‘Oh, trust me Stephanie, that has to be the Bard. Who else could it be?’ Well, I don’t know Tim, how about some dude named…”

She looks at Jason; Jason blinks.

“William Congreve.”

“Oh my God. You’re such a freaking nerd, Jason. Why did I ever think you were just dumb muscle and a pretty face?”

Jason’s eyelid twitches trying to keep up with the conversation. His body had the right idea. He should have just stayed unconscious.

He rubs a self-conscious hand against his jaw and asks earnestly, “You think I’m pretty?”

This time her smile is soft and tender, like how she looks at Tim when he does something enduring or Dick whenever he promises her things will work out, or when Cass smiles one of her rare, genuine smiles. A smile that belongs to them and not Jason. Never Jason.

“Barbara says to check his pulse!” Duke calls suddenly returning; Stephanie’s hands obediently circle around Jason’s wrist despite his attempts to pull away.

“I’m awake, dumbasses. I think I have a pulse.”

Duke shoves the phone at him with a brisk, “She wants to talk to you.”

Jason rolls his eyes but knows better than to argue.

“Gordon.”

“How long, Jason? How long since you were stabbed before you were going to seek professional medical attention instead of letting yourself bleed out.”

Jason slumps, pouting. Only Duke and Stephanie are around to see it, but neither notice. Preoccupied by his pulse, apparently, their grips tighter than necessary.

“I have stitches.”

“Jason.”

“And I called my doctor, but she’s currently in Cuba, so I figured it could have waited until at least tomorrow. Besides, I’m fine.”

“Jason, if Duke wasn’t there, you probably would have gone to sleep and never woke up. Do you realize that? How did you even get stabbed anyway? You haven’t been on patrol in months.”

“Yeah, well, I was attacked. Which, by the way, someone has been selling lost bat-tech on the black market because they had Nightwing’s escrima sticks, and in case any of you were wondering. Yes. Those things do hurt like hell.”

When Barbara doesn’t immediately reply, Jason smirks. Silently tallying a column in his corner, he almost misses the fragile way Barbara’s voice comes out next.

“What do you mean you were attacked?”

“Why, Barbie, you almost sound like I’m more important than the fact that someone is finding and selling bat tech without your notice. Slipping much?”

“You are!”

Jason flinches back from the onslaught of the three voices and his brain must still be slow because that almost sounds like concern.

“That’s it,” Barbara decides, “I’m coming over.”

“That’s not really necessary,” but he’s speaking to the dial tone; the look the other two kids are giving him dark with their own worry.

Jason tosses the phone back at Duke, who catches it without taking his eyes off of Jason because bat reflexes, why not? It takes a lot for Jason to ignore both those looks and swallow past the mounting claustrophobia and panic clawing up his throat.

He’s being smothered, and it feels so much worse than those three days alone at the hospital.

“She’s coming over,” Jason echoes her words; Stephanie’s hands shift over his wound, sending bright sparks across Jason’s vision before blotting it completely out.

“Do you have your rules, Mister Peters?”

“Yeah lady, don’t worry about it. I got them.”

“Can you repeat them back to me? All four of them and please quit your glaring. I just want to make sure you have them.”

“…”

“Number one…”

“Don’t do anything illegal.”

“Good. And the next one.”

“…don’t hurt anybody.”

“And does killing people count?”

“Only if it hurts.”

“…”

“I’m joking. Jeez. No killing people looped into rule number two, changed only because you’re also against torturing someone to the brink of death.”

“These aren’t my rules, Mister Peters. They’re not for me. What’s the third rule?”

“Jason? Jason! How long has he been unresponsive?”

“He’s been in and out, but Duke’s got the bleeding stopped and I stitched him back in place. Did you know he basically has a stocked hospital wing in his basement because Duke didn’t and this has been like his third time over?”

“Second, Stephanie. Here, take over my watch. I have to go upstairs and throw up because I’m covered in Jason’s blood.”

“Wait—”

“Steph, I’ve been watching him while you run upstairs and stuff your face with Jason’s food and if I stay down here a moment longer, I’m going to actually lose it all over Jason’s basement floor.”

“Jason’s cooking Duke. Why didn’t anybody tell me he can cook like this? I swear, it’s actually the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth—barring, of course, everything Alfred has made me.”

“Jason?”

“Everything Alfred has made you, Steph? He’s never made you waffles?”

“Can Jason cook waffles?”

“Jason? Can you hear me?”

“I don’t know Steph. He’s only cooked for me once. Quit acting like I’ve somehow betrayed you because I actually want to hang out with my brother.”

“Jason?”

“Yeah, but why do you get the brother that can cook? Dick is obsessed with cereal and not even the good cereal, and have you even tried eating Tim’s food? There’s a reason we always eat out.”

“Jason? Guys! Stop talking for a minute, please, I think he’s coming back around.”

“Jason!”

Jason’s eyes are closed, but he feels the oppressive crowding of the others as they leap back to his bedside. They had moved him to the basement—how did they find out about the basement?—and the first thing he sees is the red of Barbara’s hair.

“H’w’d y’u ge’ d’wn h’re?” Jason slurs.

His mouth tastes like pennies, and he must make a comical expression at the realization because the tension melts off Barbara’s features. Funny how the whole family only seems to care after Jason almost dies.

“Trade secret,” Barbara winks.

“Her wheelchair hovers off the ground,” Stephanie supplies between a bite of chicken and rice; grinning sweetly at the glare Barbara shoots her.

Jason snorts, groans, eyelids fluttering as exhaustion readjusts its hold on him. An icy hand taps his cheek, not at all gentle, and Jason squints in a glare back over at Barbara’s face.

“Your hands are cold,” Jason informs her, bending to back away from the offending appendage.

She just smiles; Stephanie offers, “Your basement is cold, Jason, but don’t worry, I added the necessities you forgot about in your construction sketches.”

“Steph,” Barbara snarls and she looks as furious and Jason thinks he should be.

Stephanie broke into his house—

Had been called by a frantic Duke after Jason passed out while they were eating dinner.

—is eating Jason’s dinner without permission—

She said she liked it; she said it was good. She ate it without needing to be told it wasn’t poisoned and complimented it without knowing Jason could hear her.

—snooped into Jason’s belongings and changed them without permission.

She’s here. She came. She cares.

“I’m making waffles in the morning before my appointment, Blondie,” Jason says, “Feel free to stop by.”

Stephanie smiles and yeah, that feels right. Jason should have done this the first time he returned to Gotham.

:: ::

“Stephanie dropped by this morning for waffles,” Jason says before sitting down; body still jittery like he’s consumed too much coffee or is experiencing an adrenaline crash. “She offered to drive me, but also owns a motorcycle. Plus, she has class in a couple of hours so…”

Denise raises an eyebrow and asks, “Who’s Stephanie?”

Blonde. Talkative. Annoying.

Jason smiles. “My sister. Ah…rather, she’s a friend of my younger brother, Timothy. They dated for a while, but it didn’t work out. They’re still good friends, though.”

“I see. That’s great, Mister Peters. I’m glad to hear that. Do you wish to talk about Stephanie today? She’s the first person from your family you have mentioned by name.”

“Right,” Jason deflates, feeling silly, “No. I don’t think she’d appreciate being used to air out all my personal issues. Besides, weren’t you the one who said ‘Am I talking to your father, Mister Peters? No. Then I don’t wish to hear about your father’?”

“I did.”

“Then why would you want to talk about Stephanie?”

“I don’t want to talk about anything in particular, Mister Peters. I just asked you if you would like to speak about her.”

Jason crosses his arms and sinks into her couch stubbornly. “I do not.”

“Alright, then. Have you considered your rules any further?”

“I mean, I hurt someone the other night when they attacked me in an alleyway. They never would have gotten the drop on me, but I, ah, mistook them for someone else. I punched them to knock them out and got stabbed.”

“Sounds terribly upsetting.”

“Yeah, well, I broke your rule. Aren’t you going to chastise me?”

“Why would I chastise you, Mister Peters? They’re not my anything, though I fear you might have forgotten your fourth rule. Or how each of them holds equal importance.”

Jason rolls his eyes. He’s feeling petty, which is never a good thing. He’s gotten very good at hurting the people he cares about, but Denise is unflappable in the face of everything. Not even when Jason had admitted to killing people—a lot of people—she hadn’t done more than tilt her head curiously to one side.

Regarding him with that dark gaze of hers.

Jason recently looked her up. She’d gotten her PhD in the same class as Harleen Quinzel; he’d found pictures of them together. Clearly, at one point, they had been friends. Jason wonders if Denise has seen her friend since her debut as Harley Quinn.

Maybe that had been why Denise hardly blinks when Jason confessed that he wanted the Joker dead.

“Can you tell me the rules, Mister Peters?” Denise prods at Jason’s silence.

He asked her about Harley last week. It had been at the end, and the agitation clawed at his insides. The frustrations needed an outlet and her just sitting there seemingly unbothered by all the horrors Jason heaps onto her had finally gotten to him. He had expected anger or sadness, but received the same blank stare Denise always regards him with.

There’s no way this woman is real.

“What’s the first rule, Mister Peters?” Denise insists.

Jason sucks in a breath, releases, and relents. “Don’t do anything illegal.”

“And rule number two?”

“Don’t hurt anybody, which includes killing them, so I don’t know why the rule isn’t don’t kill anybody. And do not lecture me about non-fatal pain. I know about pain that doesn’t kill. Hell, I know about pain that kills.”

She blinks, expression blank. Jesus—this lady.

“And the third rule?”

“Make a list of people that have affected my current state in some manner—good and bad—and find them without breaking either rule one or rule two and tell them—”

:: ::

“—My name is Jason Peters Todd. I am my own person, and not the thing you created me. And I forgive you.”

Jason smiles. That’s part of the third rule: say his name, offer his forgiveness, and smile. Always smile—Denise had been insistent on that, and she’s tenacious.

The Joker blinks back, smile faltering, the incredulousness in his voice making his normally cheerful tone sound almost normal. “Are you shitting me right now? Come on, now, baby birdie. There’s no daddy here to judge us.”

Jason doesn’t reply.

His heart is in his throat and for a moment he worries he’d broken the fourth rule as well. Don’t act upon any of the rules until you are ready to mean them. But there’s a lightness to his shoulders that he hasn’t felt in a long time and his vision free from green. Even the static, usually so loud and so insistent, is a low thrumming buzz.

Jason hates to admit it, but it feels good. But so does watching the Joker squirm in the handcuffs. They stand in a park, full of children, that the Joker had been attempting to poison with Joker gas. A public place—no trespassing—and thanks to Gotham’s good Samaritan’s laws, Jason hasn’t done anything illegal in apprehending him.

He hadn’t hurt him either, but he hadn’t allowed himself to touch him for very long. Denise had been adamant that it didn’t have to elaborate or drawn out—only enough for Jason to say what he needs to say and leave.

But it is Joker so Jason feels obligated to wait until someone else can come and pick him up. The police because Duke is in school and Stephanie is out of town and Jason can’t stomach the thought of being near the rest of the family at the moment.

“Come on now, Boy Blunder. Don’t you remember all the fun we used to have? Untie me so I can go fetch my crowbar and remind you.”

He keeps talking, but it goes fuzzy, like white noise, as Jason wanders over to where the bomb is. Sirens blare in the background, and Jason can see the figure of Commissioner running towards them; behind him is someone whose name Jason isn’t ready to scratch off his list yet.

Not one to be accused of cowardice, Jason rises to meet them. Joker continues talking in the background; spilling all the colorful things he’s going to do to Jason once he gets free from Arkham, and he will escape because he always escapes.

“Commissioner Gordon,” Jason greets; GCPD officers rushing past him so they can kneel next to Joker and the bomb Jason’s still standing by.

He keeps his focus on Barbara’s dad and not Batman standing over his shoulder, glaring at him from under his cowl. Waiting, Jason thinks, for the officers to announce the Joker’s condition like he doesn’t already know he isn’t dead. Since when do dead people talk.

Besides Jason, of course. And Damian. And Cass and Stephanie and damn does Bruce lose a lot of kids.

Still, the jolt of joy that comes at the twin expressions of disbelief and shock at the announcement that Joker is unharmed—not even a bruise—is nothing if not a petty thing. Jason doesn’t bring himself to care. Their names too high on the list.

It must be a telling thing that the man who killed him had been lower on Jason’s list than the man who had raised him.

Batman’s head whips to direct his focus on Joker, and the police that were guiding him to his feet. Jason thinks he’s scanning Joker for poison or hidden injuries that could prove fatal later. He won’t find any.

“What?” Batman barks, voice warbled and growly under his cowl.

Even Gordon looks disturbed as the Joker wiggles and continues to scream his threats—warnings, promises—at Jason’s blasé expression. He’d thought it would be harder and hadn’t thought himself ready when he’d realized the Joker was in the same park he had come to for fresh air, but doing nothing seemed ridiculous and it had just…happened.

“You did the right thing calling us,” Gordon tells Jason, eyes wide and skin pale. “I can offer you some officers for protection.”

Jason shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket and shrugs. “Nah. Don’t worry about it. Are you going to need my statement or am I free to go?”

Gordon’s attention turns to him; the officer that passes mumbles, “More restraint than I would have shown.”

“Yeah,” Gordon nods.

Jason tilts his head to the side and asks, “Does it have to be so public,” and his eyes drift to Batman, glaring challenging.

Gordon startles as if remembering his company. Batman doesn’t move the first time Gordon waves him off. He keeps his attention focus on Jason, and Jason stares back just as challenging. Hoping—because he’s petty and still buzzing with the adrenaline of being so close to the Joker for a prolonged period—that Batman and Gordon will come to blows.

They do not.

“Batman!” Gordon snaps, “Follow my men to Arkham. I want to make sure the Joker has minimal chances of escape.”

Batman stares a moment longer. Jason crosses his arms, waiting.

Then he goes.

The vindication isn’t as sweet as Jason thinks it used to be.

:: ::

“A ramp? Are you expecting company from somewhere in a wheelchair?”

“Just one, actually. Are you trying to tell me you can’t do it because if not, then I need to go make more calls?”

“Damn kid, I can do it. Anyone worth their salt can do it, but we’re going to have to rip the whole porch away and start over.”

“That’s fine.”

“It’s going to be expensive.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I have this.”

“God kid, you’re my new favorite customer.”

:: ::

“And we’re just receiving reports of the arsonist responsible for the fire behind me. (…) Are you shi-kidding me? (…) Seriously? Okay, I’m being informed that it was twelve-year-old Mikala, who had been seeking refuge from his homeland along with his mother and younger sister. (…) Some sources believe he had been showing signs of meta—”

Jason turns off the television.

:: ::

Dick finds him as Jason is leaving the grocery store. It’s nearing three in the morning, and Jason had been struggling with sleep—brain plagued by Dodger and his drugs and his black market for vigilante weapons and poor little Mikala.

They don’t know who the others were. They’d asked Jason enough while they had held him captive.

That doesn’t mean they can’t figure it out. They know who Jason is if in no other capacity than his name, and it’s only connecting dots at that point. What’s more troubling, though, is that telling Barbara about the weapons felt like when he tried telling her about the drugs.

I’ll look into it, Jason.

I’m sure it’s nothing, Jason.

The others will handle it, Jason.

With the drugs, it had been because she hadn’t trusted him. He’s violent and volatile and unpredictable, but when Duke and Stephanie had freaked out when they thought he was dying, something within his relationship with Barbara had shifted. She’d been worried and acted like if he went or did anything, then he was going to fall apart and disappear.

Jason doesn’t mind because he’s currently preoccupied with so many other things. And she’s easy to ignore.

Duke’s visits remain a weekly thing—every Tuesday night after school he shows up with a grin and appetite Jason wonders if he had shared at that age. Sometimes afterwards, Duke silently does homework on Jason’s couch as Jason works on research or modifying his plans or looking for little things to lie around the house.

On Wednesday mornings, Stephanie arrives for breakfast before her first class. They talk about the most recent book she has to read, and Jason thinks she’s trying to find one he hasn’t read yet. One morning she joked he shared the same literature taste as her professor.

“Is that a bad thing?” Jason asks with a smile.

Stephanie matches it, licking syrup from her fingers. “Well, she’s this thirty-year-old feminist, and I’m personally a big fan, so no. I wouldn’t call it a bad thing.”

Fainting on the kids, twice in one night, had spooked them. Barbara had told him that after the Joker incident at the park, but she hasn’t returned to his house. Jason tries not to think of the implications about that too much.

During his afternoons, Jason greets his most recent contractors he’s hired, but he’s completed most of the big renovations. It’s mostly just planning and research and changing his list of names of people he believes have helped shaped him for better and for the worst.

For whatever reason, he finds that task more difficult than any of the others. Jason’s thinking about it when he hears the body drop behind him.

“You know last time someone did that to me I ended up stabbed,” Jason says, turning to stare at his brother with a narrowed look.

Dick holds his hands up in friendly surrender and, Jason thinks, cautiously unknowing. He’s scared of Jason. He’s scared for Jason. Jason isn’t sure there’s a difference these days.

“Barbara told me.” Jason can’t see his eyes but his voice took on that wavering tone that Jason’s learned means the tears were coming. “You look good, Jason. I’m glad. I—God, I don’t know what I would have done if I returned from another mission with the Titans and be told you’d been killed again.”

Jason looks away. He looks wounded, young and vulnerable and impossibly fragile, and Jason can’t stomach those thoughts regarding Dick. His breath escapes his lips in wispy white clouds. His fingers tighten around his bags of groceries in consideration.

“I’m fine, Dickie,” Jason says because Dick hasn’t said anything.

“Thank goodness.” Dick nods, and there’s definitely water in his voice. “I’m glad you had somebody there for you. You don’t know how glad I am, Little Wing.”

The words kill Jason’s clever and biting response. Turning it into ash in the back of Jason’s throat, and he’s always bowed underneath Dick’s shadow. It’s never been a fair thing for Jason to lay all the blame and resentment that comes with it at Dick’s feet, but it had been easier.

Nothing about recently has been easy.

“And I know you don’t desire to speak with me,” Dick continues, sounding lost and insecure and younger than Jason remembers him ever seeming before, “but, please, Jason, I need to know you’re okay.”

When Jason turns to face him, Dick looks small. His shoulders slump; the whites of his mask seem to glow. It’s an open posture, but everything about Dick has always been open. It’s never made Jason feel as poorly as it did now.

“I’m okay, N,” Jason sighs.

Shoulders slumping and his expression goes somber. Unlike Dick, he’s not dressed as a vigilante. That means it’s open season on his expressions, to be picked apart and ruthlessly criticized, but this is Dick and he trusts Dick with nothing if not his emotional state.

Dick shifts, twitchy and nervous; his voice choked as his fingers clench and unclench at his sides. He asks, “May I—I’m going to hug you now. Is that okay?”

Jason tilts his head and waits for Dick to fold into his side, regardless. Without permission, like he always does, but he doesn’t. He stands, stiff and awkward, face twisting so much it looks pained. Guilt presses into Jason’s gut.

“Dick—” the words stick in the back of Jason’s throat, turning to ash on his tongue.

Still…Dick must see something, hear something, because the next thing Jason knows is the feel of his brother curling against his side with shaking hands. His fingers wound tight around his ever-remaining bruised form.

Something wet seeps into the fabric of Jason’s shirt, and it feels like Dick is falling apart. Breaking into a million fragile pieces, and it’s hard not to feel responsible when it’s Jason’s fault.

“I’m sorry,” Dick sobs, wet and broken and desperate, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Jason breathes.

Inhale.

Exhale.

“I thought you were in Bludhaven,” is what Jason settles on saying because it’s safe and its familiar and it’s too late to be dealing with emotions—especially not Dick-tinted emotions of guilt and remorse and pity.

“I—I—no, I came to Gotham because I heard about your attack with the stolen weapons. My stolen weapons and I just—I wanted—”

Dick’s hold shifts. One of his hands reaches up to curl into the dark tangle of Jason’s curls while the other settles between his shoulder blades. Burrowing so his neck is pressing into the crook of Jason’s neck and shoulder, pale and shaking.

Jason keeps his gaze forward. Out towards the dark Gotham street illuminated under the dim, flickering lampposts. His fingers tighten around the cut-out hoops of his plastic bags.

“It’s okay, Dickie-bird,” Jason soothes. “You carry non-fatal weapons, remember? Which is why I don’t know why someone would sell them at all.”

Which is only a half lie. Jason doesn’t know, but he guesses, assumes, and if he’s a betting man (Willis Todd had been a betting man which means Jason is not) then he’d say he’s confident that his guess is accurate. But he doesn’t know and Barbara is back to keeping him firmly on the outs, so he will keep his theories to himself.

The words do little to soothe Dick’s mood, so Jason tries, “I’m free tomorrow—uh today—morning,” lie, “if you want to go get coffee or something.”

Doesn’t matter; doesn’t matter. Dick may feel guilt now, but he still hates Jason.

But Dick’s reached out first. Twice before tonight.

When Dick pulls away, smiling brighter than the sun and nodding enthusiastically, the witty retort dies in Jason’s chest. Dick’s hands are still twisted around Jason; his desperation almost palpable by the way he’s shaking. The little voice in the back of Jason’s head that screams ‘abort, abort’ whenever dealing with the family is muted.

:: ::

“You rescheduled our session, Mister Peters.”

“Uh yeah, I had breakfast with my brother. I guess. Though it feels like forever since either of us considered us that. Isn’t that crazy?”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“…”

“Is there something you want to say, lady?”

“I saw the news about what happened in the park—with you and the man who killed you. Seems extreme, or have you already forgotten your fourth rule?”

“I didn’t forget the rule, and I don’t know. I’ve spent so much of this life wanting him dead and facing the repercussions of wanting that, that when I saw him it was hard to feel anything. I just…reacted.”

“Repercussions for wanting the man who beat and murdered you dead?”

“I may have gone about it the wrong way, I guess, and there was a lot of shit that happened on both sides. I felt forgotten, replaced, and so I did some horrible things to people who didn’t deserve it, so I could hurt the people I felt were responsible back.”

“So, when did it stop becoming about resolution over your death and just about revenge against the people who used to love you? Why laugh at that?”

“Because they’ve never loved me. They only think they do now because I died, and that was sad because I was fifteen, but now that I’m alive they act like it’s some major inconvenience for all of them.”

“Hmm. That must be why you have company multiple times a week so they can hang out with you. Or why they freaked out after your stabbing. Or why your brother practically stalked you into agreeing to meet with you. Or why he cried in relief upon realizing you were alright.”

“See, though, that’s that guilt again. They don’t care about me or love me. They just feel responsible for me.”

“…I see. Well, would you like to talk about your house instead. Have you decided on furniture for your living room yet?”

:: ::

“I need a favor.”

Jason hums over the phone’s receiver, highlighter cap dangling from the corner of his mouth. He’s not paying attention because Stephanie has been calling him a lot recently to rant about—quote—rich people's problems. Last week, apparently, Tim confessed he thought bananas cost ten dollars.

And that was cheap.

Jason laughed so much he ended up on the floor, and then texted Duke, who sent a string of laughing-crying emojis that lightened something in Jason’s chest. He had refused to acknowledge that precarious feeling of belonging, of caring and thinking that they might reciprocate.

“Tim has a concussion,” Stephanie says over the phone, “and I was placed under Tim duty, buut I just got a message from my study group who are all hosting an emergency meeting tonight. And I need to attend because I’m failing this class, Jason, but Batman and Robin are in space. Alfred is still in England. Dick went back to Bludhaven days ago, and Barbara took Cassandra to visit him, and the last time I let Duke watch Tim he ended up duck taped to the wall so…”

“You’re rambling, Steph,” Jason interrupts, but he’s no longer paying attention to the words on the page in front of him because his brain is connecting the dots of where this favor is going to leave him.

“I need you to watch Tim, Jason. Only for a couple of hours. Please.”

“I mean…are you sure that’s a good idea? I tried to kill the kid and…”

“Jason, believe me when I say that I wouldn’t be asking you this if I didn’t trust you and I would never do anything to place Tim in harm's way. Besides, Tim knows that hadn’t been entirely your fault. He’s crossed paths with Ra’s too, you know, and he gets how manipulative he is, and you had just clawed yourself from your grave.”

“Steph.”

“Right. Can you watch him, please? I trust you Jason, and Tim hasn’t—well, not forgiven you, but he doesn’t blame you. And he wants to get to know you better.”

“Steph! I—yeah, whatever. I’ll do it.”

“Now I know you don’t—wait, what, yes? You’ll do it? Seriously?”

“Yeah, Steph, sure. Whatever.”

“Good. Open your door and help me with your little brother then.”

“Bossy, bossy,” Jason grumbles, but sets aside his book and marker and phone on the cushion beside him to rise and meet her at the door.

She grins sunnily back at him. Tim’s arm slung over her shoulders, chin pressed into his chest, and skin a pasty white. Dark smudges circle his eyes, so dark and prominent that for a moment Jason mistakes it for a mask.

“Jesus, Steph,” Jason breathes, reaching out to encircle his arm around Tim’s chest and pull him free from her support. “What the hell happened to him?”

She sighs, relieved, shaking out her shoulders as she explains curtly, “Like I said, concussion. Before that I think he skipped sleeping all together.”

She shrugs, eyes bright and warm as they regard Tim’s slumped figure. In response, Tim gives a low whining groan. Jason’s fingers curl protectively around the bony figure, trying not to think about how easy it would be to snap the kid in half.

“He’s an idiot,” Stephanie settles on and because Jason hasn’t moved, steps past him to prance into his house.

She’s visited since Jason furnished the living room, but still appraises the room with a critical eye as if searching for disapprovals. She doesn’t help as Jason guides Tim towards the couch, knocking the Chemistry textbook onto the floor. The pens and highlights get sent rolling in different directions.

“Your place needs more purple,” Stephanie proclaims.

Tim groans as Jason lays him on the couch. Eyes still closed and unresponsive, Tim curls as if to cram his scrawny little body into the folds of the couch. Pleased Tim’s not going anywhere, Jason turns to stare incredulously at where Stephanie is poking around his television stand.

“Stephanie.”

She winces. “Ouch, a full Stephanie. Stop worrying, Jason, it wrinkles your pretty features. I have complete and total confidence in you, and I owe you one. Big time. Here, though, in case he grows unruly, I brought him some toys. Call me if he starts acting out and make sure you feed him. I’ll be back to pick him up in a couple of hours. Thank you so much. I owe you one.”

Yeah, Jason wants to say at her retreating form, big time.

What he says is, “Anytime, Steph.”

:: ::

“Are you going to kill me?”

Jason glances up from his reading chair—a tufted accent chair that pairs nicely with the rest of his furniture—textbook still propped against his pajama clad legs to stare unimpressively at Tim’s resigned face. From a casual appearance, he appears lax and loose-limbed, but Jason can see the tension curling in his hands and shoulders.

“Nah,” Jason tells him with a groan and a stretch, “Steph dropped you off thirty minutes ago. Something about an emergency study group session.”

Tim huffs, motionless.

This was a mistake. Abort. Abort. Abort.

“I made you some soup,” Jason says, suddenly eager to escape the room; which is unfair, and cowardly, because the only thing Tim’s ever done to him is exist; while, Jason almost made it a hobby to hurt the kid. “I’ll go reheat it for you.”

Tim says nothing. Eyes staring at the wood-lined ceiling with a determined set in his jaw, and this had been a mistake. Jason is triggering the him, and its only years of Batman training coupled with his training from hell curtesy of the League that keeps Jason from tripping over himself in his haste to escape the room.

Give the kid some space.

How long did Stephanie say this was going to last? A couple of hours—oh God, Jason is suddenly realizing that he can’t do this. It doesn’t even matter that Jason doesn’t want to hurt Tim because just existing is doing the job just fine.

“I swear if you try to feed me Campbell’s like I’m five—” Tim’s voice draws nearer, and the tension drawn in Jason’s belly finds it’s out through his hands.

He slams the pot against his stove with too much aggression. Drawing silence from the end of whatever thought Tim had been forming and Jason can’t look. He can’t see the hurt and the fear and the betrayal on Tim’s face.

Jason had thought they were better. They’ve teamed up occasionally and don’t talk but don’t fight either, and Jason is so dumb. He should have never agreed to this because all it’s going to do is hurt Tim further.

Encompassed in his thoughts, Jason almost misses the soft, “I’m sorry, Jason.”

Jason freezes, feeling sick, and an eternity (seconds?) later, he musters the courage to turn and face Tim’s withdrawn expression. He still looks pale and dark hair is sticking up in obscure angles on the side of his head. He looks so young, vulnerable, and Jason wants to sob.

But there’s always been steel inside Tim Drake—has to with this family—so he crosses his arms and meets Jason’s stare with a sharp glare of his own.

“Tim, God, don’t apologize. You don’t have to apologize. I’m the one who should be sorry, but Steph—Stephanie—sounded desperate and said there wasn’t anybody else which must be true if she had to settled on me. I—I’ll stay in the bedroom if that’ll make you feel better. You can shove a chair underneath the handle and—”

Something bursts inside Tim’s dark eyes. A bright understanding light, and the corners of his mouth twitches upwards as whatever revelation dawns on him.

“Oh. My. God,” Tim says; Jason snaps his mouth shut so quickly there’s an audible snap of his teeth clicking together. “You’re the mystery man Steph’s been meeting up with once a week for breakfast. I thought she was dating somebody.”

Jason stares, confused and stupid. “Huh?”

“She refused to tell me who or even where his house was, though. No matter how much I begged or threatened. Dick thought it was funny. If only he knew. Ha!”

Jason can feel his brain still reeling. Still trying to comprehend the sudden change in everything, and is finding himself falling short.

“Back up, baby bird. Go back to that part where you thought I was going to hurt you.”

Tim glares, unmoved and unimpressed. “I never thought you were going to hurt me, Jason. Jesus. I get it. That had been ages ago. Besides, Steph wouldn’t have just left me with anyone. It had to be someone she trusts.”

Jason shakes his head.

So much wasn’t making any sense—so much.

“Tim, it shouldn’t matter if what I did to you was three years ago or three minutes. Shit. You’re not obligated to forgive me until you are ready. I don’t care if things are…well, less bad now or if you think I’ve changed or if all the others expect you to just get over it. You—I wouldn’t blame you for hating me. Hell, I’d hate me.”

Tim stares. The silence is making Jason’s skin crawl, but he refuses to look away because if the kid is forcing himself to be comfortable around Jason because Bruce or Dick or Steph expects him too, then Jason will never be able to forgive himself.

Rule number four: don’t do anything until you are ready to mean it.

But then Tim blinks. Tilts his head in consideration.

The corners of his mouth drift listlessly upwards into a soft, shy smile as he drops his arms to his side and shakes his head. It doesn’t look forced, but Jason refuses to drop his guard too much. The last thing he wants is for Tim to think of Jason’s home as something cagey and dangerous.

Stop making things about you, Todd.

“See, that’s the difference between you and me,” Tim sniffs teasingly, “You’ve always held grudges longer than myself. Childish, if you asked me.”

He comes to stand within touching distance of Jason to gaze into the pot and observes, “That doesn’t look like Campbells.”

“Ah.” What is wrong with Jason’s brain? Actually, no, nothing is wrong with his brain. What’s wrong with these people? “No. It’s homemade. I thought—well, I thought.”

Tim’s arms winding cautiously around his chest has Jason clicking his mouth back shut as his brain does a funny, rebooting thing. Duke and Stephanie, even Barbara, had felt easier than this, but the tension Tim woke up with his absent as he squeezes over the sore-still-healing wound above Jason’s hip.

Jason refuses to cry it in pain. He bites his lip so hard he can taste copper, but it is nice to have Tim’s bony figure slotted so comfortably against him.

“Thank you, Jason.”

“Yeah, well, Steph—”

“Not for that, though yeah, I guess I should thank you for that too, but what I meant was thank you for what you said. It means more to me than you could ever know.”

Jason twitches, gathering the courage to bring his own arms around his successor. It’s not as awkward as he feared it would be. Tim doesn’t even stiffen beneath the touch. Actually, he seems to melt and nestle further into the embrace. Neither of them talk about it again.

Not even seated at Jason’s table as he watches the kid devour his fourth bowl of soup with a clearer gaze. Once, Tim’s eyes glance up to meet Jason’s stare.

“I’s fantastic,” Tim says, swallowing, and the praise warms something in Jason’s chest, and he doesn’t even have the strength to put up his usual indifferent farce.

It’s not better, but it’s a start Jason never thought he was going to get.

:: ::

“I thought I told you no killing in Gotham, Hood.”

Batman looms over what Jason’s considering is the worst night of his life—worse than his kidnapping or nights of torture or stumbling out of the warehouse to see Batman waiting with a condescending drop of his shoulders. Jason hadn’t even wanted to come out but had caught a lead turned betrayal that ended with a bullet in his thigh and a permeating cold so penetrating that it’s burrowed itself in Jason’s bones.

He wants nothing more than to climb under a shower that leaves his skin a soft, rosy pink as the water pelts accompaniment to his Spotify playlist.

But, no, first he has to deal with Batman and his judgements.

“Do you see any bodies?” Jason snaps, can’t help it, and is pleased to hear the outrage in his voice clear through the static garble of his helmet’s voice modulator.

Batman doesn’t look cowed. Batman never does.

(Except he almost did that night outside that warehouse when Jason had stumbled free, stripped to his underwear. Bruises littered his skin, crawling up the normally pale surface with the appearance of oil on water. His gait uneven.

Most of his bones had been broken—part torture for information, part entertainment—and the scars from the burns was festering. Bleeding but all of Jason was bleeding because he had to wait until the midst of the torture before he could go limp, play unconscious long enough for them to creep close enough so Jason could get his legs around their necks.

Only to find Batman outside and the first thing he said wasn’t ‘are you okay?’ or even the dependable ‘you look like hell warmed over.’ No. It had been—

“Are they dead?”

Jason threw his helmet at Batman’s cowl. At the glowing whites of his lenses with a burst of strength, Jason previously hadn’t thought himself capable. It broke in his escape, cracked, and useless, but Jason still felt remorseful about the action hours later when he had been alone in the hospital because he stumbled out in front of a moving car.

“No, they are not fucking dead, you fucking asshole. Fuckity fuck fuck.”

Batman stepped forward. Mouth down-turned and posture tense, stony and serious, as he knocked the helmet sailing at his head. It splintered and cracked against the concrete.

“Do not fuck touch me right now. Ow. Fuck!”

Batman didn’t stop him when he left, but the look Batman gave him looked apologetic. Lost, almost, and in need of guidance. It hadn’t been enough to stop Jason as he stumbled away, but he was pleasantly surprised to find Batman not following him—it was almost enough to stop the twisting longing that curled in Jason’s gut.)

“I—are you well?”

It doesn’t sound like the question Batman wants to ask. And he can’t see the incredulous look Jason narrows on him through his helmet, but he’s the World’s Greatest Detective so he’s going to have to settle for Jason’s body language.

“Am I—I was shot Bruce!”

Batman twitches, and Jason takes a step back. He knew—knows—better, and the cold wash of guilt douses the mounting fire rising in Jason’s gut.

“Sorry,” Jason says the same time Batman tries, “Hood.”

Jason takes another step back, repeats, “I’m sorry,” before he’s grappling away.

:: ::

Jason doesn’t remember returning to the house.

He doesn’t remember stumbling down the stairs, hands pressed into the wound on his leg as trails of red ooze between his fingers.

He doesn’t remember cracking the glass to his medicine drawer with his fist, sifting through the broken shards to gather the alcohol and needle.

He doesn’t remember peeling off his pants or the cold wash of pain as he pours the alcohol over the wound or the cold bite of tweezers as he digs the bullet free or the pull-tug-pull movements of the thread pulling his skin back closed.

He certainly doesn’t remember passing out. Slumped over on the table, wounded leg outstretched in front of him, and shoulders curled inwards.

His dreams evade him.

:: ::

“Is he dead?”

“He doesn’t look dead. He looks to be breathing, and the stitches are clean and even despite how bad his hands must have been shaking. Better than I’ve seen Tim do.”

“Hey!”

Jason squints, skin ice-cold and head splintering at the rooted headache spiraling inside his skull. He grunts, shifts, and the voices go quiet.

“This is the second time I’ve walked into your house to find you bleeding out,” Stephanie says with a shaken smile.

Jason squints and goes to sit straighter. His body protests, weakened, and a shoulder wedges behind him for support. Hands warm and firm against his shoulders as Tim helps keep him steady. It could be Jason’s fuzzy-addled mind playing illusions, but it almost looks like Tim’s face melts into warm relief.

“It’s my first time,” he admits, leaning into Jason’s side. “Hopefully, my last. Once was enough.”

“Oh, yeah,” Stephanie agrees, “Last time was way worse. There was blood everywhere, but he hadn’t looked dead upon arrival. He still kind of looks dead now.”

“Stephanie!” Tim’s voice edges upwards in a sharp whine, hands enclosing tighter around Jason’s arms and shoulders.

Jason’s scared the kid. Again.

“Ah, fuck,” Jason curses.

“Language!” Duke barks from the top of the stairs, and he’s smiling, but it looks strained, forced, as he makes his way towards them.

He hands Jason a glass full of orange juice. The pulpy kind Jason never buys, but he doesn’t comment on it. Choosing instead to sip testily at the drink as he watches Duke unfold the blanket he carried in his other hand.

Jason ignores the comment.

Stephanie twirls her finger around a lock of blond hair, considering him thoughtfully, before explaining, “Batman made the mistake of telling Red Robin that he’d confronted Red Hood. He hadn’t told him you’d been shot. Only that he had confronted you and little Timmy got worried, so he called me and Signal and we came to check on you. Since the three of us know where you live. Oracle played interference.”

The juice doesn’t taste like much on his tongue, but it helped ease the cotton-smothered feeling that coated the inside of his cheeks and jaw.

His voice even sounds strong when he asks, “Why?”

Stephanie rolls her eyes. Tim’s fingers tighten around his arms and shoulders.

Duke says, “Because you’re our brother, Jason, and we care about you. And we want to stop showing up at your house to find you at death’s door.”

“Not at death’s door,” Jason protests, but the words do warm something icy inside him. “Had worse.”

“Oh, men and their death jokes,” Stephanie chides, and Jason snorts; her eyes narrow on him, practically sparkling, as she adds, “You know, this means you and Tim are going to get a day now.”

“And he’s higher maintenance than either of us,” Duke adds.

Jason thinks it’s just to see Tim sputter in indigent annoyance. Jason snorts into his cup and wisely keeps his mouth shut. He will not force Tim to do anything, but he’s also not going to stop when others wish to poke fun at him—especially not when those others were his friends, his family.

“He constantly needs attention or lease he slips into bad habits,” Stephanie continues and uses her fingers to tick off the next items on her list, “No sleep; doesn’t eat; remains rooted in the same spot for hours on end.”

Jason can feel Tim twitch against him. Big sorrowful eyes regarding them both in shocked betrayal as he edges Jason between them. Guiding him as a shield and it doesn’t feel right because normally Tim needs something between him and Jason.

At least, Jason thinks so, but it’s hard to think. Hard to concentrate with the cotton softness that’s encompassed his mind.

“Stephanie,” Tim whines, “Duke. Stop. I’m not that bad.”

“Puh-lease. I once saw you go three days without sleeping, and the only reason you drank any water was because you literally needed it for survival. But even then, it had just been minimal. Seriously, you’d think a man without a spleen would be more concerned with his physical health, as getting sick would be terrible.”

She glares, so Tim turns his attention towards Jason. It’s a softer expression. Dark brows drawing together as he edges closer to his side.

“Seriously, Jason,” he says, “you don’t even own a DVD player.”

:: ::

“You have to be fucking kidding me.”

On Jason’s doorstep several days later, is the newest Playstation console along with a collection of games and movies because, evidently, it doubles as a Blu-ray player.

:: ::

It’s an accident because Jason hadn’t been intentionally snooping, but the backpack had appeared on his kitchen counter, and he couldn’t remember whose it was supposed to be.

Last night, Duke showed up with a knowing smirk and some basketball game for Jason’s new Playstation. He’d demanded snacks like the bratty kid he’s proving himself repeatedly to be and, like the good obedient older brother Jason is trying to become, he’d made them funnel cakes.

Red Hood. Signal. Nightwind. Robin. Jason even threw in a couple of Spoilers, and Duke had been smart enough to not comment on the lack of Batman shaped cakes.

It’ll make Tim pout about it later after he finds out because, evidently, Tim loves funnel cakes.

And the night before last, Tim had showed up to make sure Jason had received his present since he hadn’t mentioned it. Jason still didn’t, so Tim forced his way past where Jason stood and then spent twenty minutes checking to make sure Jason plugged it all in correctly. Like Jason was an idiot who didn’t know how cords worked.

“I didn’t even need a gun,” Jason told him, mostly teasing, and beamed at the unimpressed glower Tim shot him over his shoulder.

Then the little brat demanded food because Alfred was still out of town, and Bruce burned water two nights ago. It had nearly burned the kitchen down, which Jason thought was an exaggeration as he plopped stubbornly on his couch. Mentally guarding himself against the begging because his house isn’t a restaurant the children could raid whenever they felt like it.

(They had chicken alfredo with homemade noodles and sauce, but only so Jason could stuff all of it in little Tupperware containers and send the kid out into the night with a warning of showing up uninvited.)

But the backpack was neither Duke nor Tim’s. It was Stephanie’s because, of course, it was.

In hindsight, the textbooks should have been Jason’s first sign. That all the spiral notebooks were purple should have been his second, but it wasn’t until he pulled out the crumpled paper from the inner pocket for laptops that he made the mental connection.

It was ungraded, clearly some sort of draft, sprawled in neat, loopy pencil handwriting before someone went through with a sparkly purple pen: crossing things out, writing notes in the margins, and marking whole passages with arrows and stars and question marks.

Jason should have left it at that. He should have slipped the paper back where he found it and walked away. He was doing just that when his eyes drifted towards the essay title, and something inside him prickled.

Literary Feminism in Heart of Darkness.

Which was just ridiculous because there is only three women in the entire book, but it triggered some part of his brain. Standing there, in his own kitchen dressed in an old pair of sweatpants and white tee-shirt, he began to mentally evaluate a book he read ages ago. He hardly remembered it except…

He read her first line, frowning at the non-existent hook. Then the first paragraph. Then the whole paper.

“Jesus Christ, no wonder the kid is failing,” Jason whispers as that persistent voice of his self-preservation whispered ‘let it go.’

Jason did not let it go.

He wasn’t even aware of what he had done until his phone chimed with Dick’s worried message. Informing him that he got sidetracked by something at the station and was going to be a little late. Jason glanced at the clock and realized he’d agreed to get burgers twenty minutes ago, and that had been what he had been preparing to do before he begun annotating Stephanie’s rough draft. A rough draft that probably didn’t even look like this anymore because it was just a string of consciousness with nothing to tie them together and, surely, she wouldn’t turn that in.

On the counter, his phone vibrates again.

I’m so sorry. Dick apologizes. I promise I’ll make it up to you.

Jason types: You always fucking do this. Then, hits send and ignores whatever further apologies he tries to send back because Dick will be livid if he gets to the diner and realizes Jason isn’t even there himself. It’s not until he’s pulling into one of the allotted spots for motorcycles and Stephanie texts him telling him that she thinks she left her backpack at his place and is going to go pick it up that he realizes he left the paper on the counter.

You don’t have a fucking key, he types as he enters the diner.

She responds with a detective emoji and cryptic: I have my ways, and Jason is about to call her when the bell chimes, and Dick’s frantic expression melts into warm relief. Normally, Jason would have found it comical, but it’s overlayed with the mounting panic that Stephanie is going to find his notes and realize he had been going through her stuff.

It must show on his face because Dick’s back to being concerned as he corners him in the booth. Large, warm hands pawing at his arms and shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” Dick asks, “You look like you’re going to pass out. Here, I’ll get you some water.”

Jason feels him shift, but his hand snagging the corner of Dick’s jacket has him pausing. Jason’s phone doesn’t vibrate again even though he knows Stephanie must have seen it, and oh God, he can’t breathe.

“Jay?” Dick asks, repeats, hands gripping tight enough to hurt around his back and shoulders.

“Ice,” is what Jason says, and Dick leans over and squeezes.

“I’ll be right back,” he promises and, true to his word, returns without Jason really noticing his absence with a cup of ice.

Jason dumps it unceremoniously into the palm of his hand before squeezing his fingers into a tight, shaking fist around it. The pieces that missed his hand click against the plastic bench booth and onto the black-and-white tile lining the floor.

He ignores it. Ignores the startled yelp from Dick as he closes his eyes and concentrates on the ice. Just the ice. Nothing but the ice.

“It’s cold,” he whispers feather-softly. “It started melting instantly. It’s cold. It’s cold. It’s—fuck!”

He drops the ice onto the table and ducks his head. His stubborn pride refuses to be embarrassed when he kind of is because he just freaked out over what he’s always known. He’d breached Stephanie’s trust, finally proving himself as unworthy of the smallest slivers of compassion from the family because—like he does everything—he fucked it up.

Tentative hands slip around his wrist. The touch is delicate, like he fears an explosive reaction, but Jason doesn’t. Jason sits there, saying nothing.

“Jason?” Dick asks.

“I fucked up Dick,” Jason admits; he doesn’t mean too, but the words just force themselves from his throat in a raspy whine, “Oh God, I fucked up. Stephanie—”

Dick tenses. Blue eyes go hard when he asks, “What did you do to Stephanie?”

Jason’s head snaps up because it’s not really like that and Jason hadn’t meant to and don’t hate me, please. Jason doesn’t say that, though, because his voice is twisted in the back of his throat. Water gathers in the corners of his eyes and he’s shaking and—

“Fuck!” he shouts, standing, bumping his still-healing gunshot wound against the table.

Sparks of bright, abrupt pain crumble him back onto the booth with another explicative. A nine-year-old girl with twin pigtails turns to stare wide-eyed at him. Her mother glaring at them both over her head, but says nothing underneath Dick’s apologetic smile before returning his attention to Jason and the mess he’s creating.

“Jay, Jason!” Dick shouts, snaps, and Jason flinches.

Allowing his body to sink in the corner, wedged against the window and the hard plastic back of the booth and the table. He wants to curse again, but his brain has stopped working underneath all the pain. He hopes he hadn’t accidentally ripped the stitches because these were his favorite jeans.

Hands reach for him, careful and cautious, like fearful of hurting him, and Jason feels the fingers link around the back of his neck. Drawing him forward until their foreheads press together. It shouldn’t be as comforting as it is.

“You’re alright, Little Wing,” Dick promises. “You’re alright. That’s right. Come back to me. There you are.”

Dick pulls away. Jason blinks dumbly back.

“Come on,” Dick decides after a moment of neither say anything, “We’re leaving.”

But he drags him to Dick’s convertible, which can be as a good thing as it is bad. One hand wound around Jason’s wrist (and when could Dick’s fingers loop all the way around?) as the other types furiously on his phone. He presses it against his ear and when the person—Stephanie, Jason presumes, since that’s the name he’d said—doesn’t answer, his jaw tightens so much Jason worries he’s going to fracture a tooth.

“She never answers while she’s in class,” Jason offers.

Unhelpfully, if the glare is any indication to go by, but Tim tells Dick the same thing when he calls him next.

“Do you know the last time she would have seen Red Hood?” because Jason’s an enemy, and he’s stupid to ever consider himself anything else.

“Red Hood?” Tim asks in a slow, deliberate drawl. “What’s today? Friday? Two mornings ago, I guess, why? Has something happened?”

Dick’s eyes are sharp and unforgiving as he glares at Jason. Jason shakes the wrist still in Dick’s grip, but doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t fight back, as he reminds himself that it’ll be easier with Dick because he’s only sort of started reconciling with him. He can handle Dick’s rejection.

Better than Stephanie’s. Or Duke’s. Or Tim’s.

God, what has he done to himself?

“I think she might have been planning on visiting him tonight too,” Tim continues, “She won the draw, anyway. Has something happened, Dick? Is Jason okay?”

Dick tenses, wide-eyed and frozen, as he mouths, “Won?”

Jason shrugs, because how would he know?

Dick returns his attention to their—Dick’s—other brother and asks, “Tim, what are you talking about?”

Jason can hear the kid bristle, growing defensive, as he claims, “Well, it’s not like any of us like the idea of leaving Jason unattended so shortly after being shot. Besides, Alfred doesn’t return for another three days, and I know she cheated. Somehow.”

Jason’s shoulder deflates because that goddamn idiot. Curling inwards as Dick’s head whips to stare back at him with wide-eyed concern.

His voice is almost shrill as he demands, “You were shot?”

Jason shrugs, which is awkward since Dick is still squeezing his wrist, sniffs and snaps, “I had it covered.”

“We found him passed out, still gripping his needle for stitches in his basement,” Tim overlays unhelpfully; Jason twitches underneath Dick’s hold.

He furrows his eyebrows and watches Dick’s mouth open and close and open; the silence stretches so thin between them that Jason isn’t sure what he’s going to say.

Certainly not, “Basement? Since when do you have a basement?”

“Don’t most houses have basements?” Tim asks before realization dawns and he exclaims, “Oh shit! Forget I said anything, Dick, please.”

Jason sniffs and says, “I thought you people were supposed to be good with secrets.”

Not that his house is a secret meant to hoard over the family, but Jason still bolts awake with the burning afterimages of coming home to fifteen guns pointed at his chest and of all the unpleasantness that had followed.

He doesn’t know how they found his address that time, but he’s spent too much time and money on his house to have it tainted like that too.

“Secrets?” and that’s certainly hurt in Dick’s voice, along with the matching set of sad puppy eyes and wobbly frown.

“I…uh have to go. What’s that Mister Wayne? You need my help with something! I’ll be right there!” and Tim hangs up, leaving Jason with a Dick that looks betrayed about something that nobody had ever meant to actually find out about.

“You’re keeping your house a secret from me?” Dick asks “Intentionally?”

Why did Jason ever think it was some difficult, convoluted thing to hurt this man? Clearly, all he had needed to do was buy a house and accidentally end up inviting a bunch of baby birds without informing their mother first.

“It’s not like that, Dickhead,” Jason snaps, suddenly angry, because—really—what right do these people have to his life anyway? “And even if it was, it’s not like I owe any of you shit. You want to know how long I spent in the hospital without so much as a ‘get well soon’ balloon from one of you fuckers? Three days. Three days, Dick, forced to suffer—”

Jason cuts himself off with a click of his jaw. Dick blinks and doesn’t stop Jason from yanking his arm free. Allowing his arms to fall limply to his sides, eyes wide and watery and almost lost.

Dick’s hand burns against Jason’s wrist.

“Hospital?” he asks. “When were you in the hospital?”

Jason sniffs but admits, “Couple months ago,” because Dick looks as if his entire identity depends on the answer.

“For three days?” Dick repeats in a squeak.

Jason should look at him, but self-preservation has always been his strongest instinct. He gazes at the sharp corner of the building’s edge and nods. The space between them is minimal, mere inches, but it might as well expand galaxies with the way the choked-out sob escapes Dick’s throat.

“I didn’t know,” Dick says, and when Jason chances a glance at him, his stomach sinks at how pale and shaky he looks; eyes wide and wet, twin sparks of blue flames amidst light brown features. “God, Jay, I didn’t know. You have to believe me. If I knew, I woulda been there. You know I would have.”

And, yeah, Jason supposes. He should have. Denise had and every single time Jason had used to it as evidence against the family, she had just frowned back, unconvinced.

Because Dick would have dropped everything to be there.

He scrubs a hand over his face and says, “Look, Dick—”

Dick releases his arm. Doubling over to retch across the diner parking lot. Tears slipping over pale, shaking features as Jason stands. Watching uselessly.

:: ::

“Well, congratulations dumbass, you have a fever.”

Jason tosses the thermometer in the trash can because he’ll just make Dick buy him a new one as he turns a glare, hands on his hips, at the slumped form sitting propped against the lip of his bathtub. Dick’s eyes are wide, have been wide since Jason parked in front of the grassy area by his porch.

“Yeah, I—uh, know,” Dick confesses, “I was going to cancel, but I didn’t want you to think I was replacing you or something. I—why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you tell me? That you were in the hospital. Or that you were shot. Why did you call Tim?”

“I didn’t call Tim,” Jason interrupts. “The peanut gallery has taken it upon themselves recently to invite themselves over whenever they feel like it. Tim never even got a formal invitation. Steph just dumped him on my doorstep like a discarded kitten. Actually, no, now that I think about it, Steph wasn’t invited either. Duke panic called her, and she didn’t share the same courtesy as Barbie.”

I’m making waffles in the morning before my appointment, Blondie. Feel free to stop by.

“Why was Duke panic calling her?” Dick asks but then, quicker than Jason can open his mouth, “Barbara found out about your house before me?”

Jason rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “It’s not like you were around big bird. I’m pretty sure Duke tried calling everyone, but only Barbara and Steph were around to answer.”

Dick looks pale, which could be because of the fever he’d evidently been ignoring. Jason stands, staring awkwardly.

“You should shower,” Jason decides. “I think I have some spare clothes you can borrow while you crash on my couch. Are you…uh, hungry?”

Dick doesn’t respond. His eyes glassy as he rises, movements mechanical and stiff, so Jason leaves to offer him some form of privacy, but then he’s alone with his thoughts and that’s always dangerous. Too keyed up to settle down for his investigation, he makes his way to the kitchen.

When Dick stumbles from the bathroom, skin a rosy pink glow, dressed in an old pair of sweats, Jason shoves the bowl in his hands with little ceremony.

“I made you a bone broth,” Jason tells him, cheeks burning in embarrassment, “and, uh, some ginger tea. Here. You can sit there.”

Dick spoons it to his mouth, eyes tracking his nervous movements with a special type of consideration Jason is choosing to ignore. Just like he ignores that tiny voice in the back of his head that reassures him he can turn his back on Dick because it’s Dick and he would never hurt him.

Dick has hurt him.

Jason had deserved it but that matters little to the thing inside him that’s desperate to keep him alive, to stop the suffocating never-ending pain. And Dick says nothing. Just sits and watches him, expression one carved from stone.

That’s wrong, Jason knows, Dick’s already regretting this, and we haven’t even gotten through two meetings.

But then, finally, Dick speaks, “You told me, weeks ago, that a gang targeted you. That they showed up at your apartment with guns. Was that…were they the reasons you were in the hospital.”

Jason shrugs; says, “I’m sure the torture hadn’t helped, but a car hit me in my escape. They were the ones who took me to the hospital.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone,” Dick continues, voice deadened and oh-so-very careful, “and then got mad when nobody showed up.”

The plate Jason’s holding cracks from the harsh way he drops it into the sink. Water and suds of soap splash up onto the front of his shirt as he wounds his fingers around the lip of his sink for support. Otherwise, he might fall over. Or allow himself to slip into the craving to reach for his nearest weapon and attack.

Dick watches, waiting patiently, as Jason closes his eyes and sucks in a deep, grounding breath.

“Batman knew,” Jason tells him, “He was there when I escaped. I don’t know what he was doing because all he did was stand there watching me. He couldn’t even bother to wrap up the thugs for the police, considering they got away. Guess he just wanted to be there to punish me in case I killed anybody.”

Jason expects…well, he’s not sure what he expects. Anger, maybe, or penitence for Bruce’s actions. Or an excuse because Dick’s gotten good at excusing the worst of Bruce. Flipping it so it’s always Jason’s fault (it is always is). Or pity or annoyance at Jason’s continuous display of self-pity.

It’s not the sharp-toned edge of the simple, “What?”

Jason raises his gaze to met Dick’s and—no, that had been a mistake. His normally soft blue eyes are swept by the undercurrent of a mounting tempest. Dark storm clouds swirling over the icy-white tips of the ocean, and it’s a look that makes Jason feel infinitesimal. Bowing his shoulders, Jason shrinks back—his fight-or-flight instinct lately defaulting to flight, which doesn’t seem like him.

“See. This is why you weren’t invited over earlier because at least the children don’t try picking fights with me,” Jason says, defensive and cagey.

Dick twitches, and his face does a funny little thing as if he’s trying to force it to relax but can’t. It’s Jason who settles first. Squaring his shoulders and settling his hips into what Duke calls his ‘casual’ stance—the one he adopts right before he hurts someone.

“That expression is new,” Jason says.

“Did you say Bruce knew?” and Dick’s voice is as cold and wild as the thunderstorm mounting in his eyes.

“How the hell am I supposed to know what Bruce does and doesn’t know? He was there, though, so I assumed he went and told the rest of you. So sorry. I recognize my mistake. You can sleep on the couch. Try not to throw up on anything.”

He rounds the counter with a strength in his step that he doesn’t feel and stops only when Dick’s fingers latch around his forearm to stop him. He remains still, refusing to play whatever this game he’s found himself trapped in.

But that’s okay, though, because Dick’s never been shy with speaking. “Don’t go. Please. I—I didn’t know. Believe me, Jason, I would have been there if I’d known, but Bruce doesn’t tell us things.”

“It’s alright, Dickiebird. I know.”

The fingers burn against Jason’s flesh. An uncomfortable pressure, and Jason gives his arm a gentle shake, but the fingers only tighten persistently.

“I’ve made mistakes, but I thought I was mostly past the worst of my sins,” Dick continues, “I now know that I was wrong, and that I’m still failing you. But, Jason, I can’t—losing you a second time would—I wouldn’t be able to bare it. Especially not so soon after getting you back.”

“Dick. It’s not your fault. I was wrong to lay all my blame at your feet anyway.”

“Little Wing.”

Jason taps fever-hot fingers in a show of solidarity support. He sighs, shakes his head, and settles his fingers over Dick’s.

“You’re not the only one with sins, Dickhead.”

The door bangs open, and Stephanie’s cheery voice calls, “Jay-son, I brought Frozen! Did you know this is Dick’s favorite Disney movie?”

Jason raises an eyebrow, but Dick refuses to look moved. He stares back, but his eyes don’t hold a challenge or dare. They’re soft and hopeful, a rolling field of Nemophilas, and Jason can feel a pressure inside his chest loosen with the gaze.

She pauses at the sight of the two of them, and her nose scrunches in confusion, but she doesn’t look uncomfortable. Her smile is honey and pleasant, if confused.

“Dick,” an explicit threat in her voice and eyes as she tilts her head to the side, “what’s going on here?”

Jason gestures to where Dick is still clinging to him. “He has a fever. He threw up all in the diner’s parking lot, and it seemed cruel to just leave him like that.”

“Uh huh,” Stephanie says.

“Steph, it’s fine.”

“And you’re absolutely certain?”

“Hn.”

“Well then, I guess it’s a good thing I got Dick’s favorite movie. I hope you haven’t eaten all the food without me.”

Both brothers turn to look at the pot in the sink, filled with soap water. Bright rainbow sparks glistening back at them as Jason returns his attention to Stephanie’s expectant face with a smile that lacks his usual sharp edges.

“Come sit down. I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

:: ::

“I need a favor.”

Jason hums, smoothing the wrinkles of the blanket he draped over Dick’s sleeping form. He didn’t even make it to the ice castle, which—apparently—is his favorite part, before he began snoring. Stephanie watches from her spot in Jason’s chair, legs curled comfortably underneath her.

She’s twirling a lock of blond hair around her finger. A nervous habit Jason’s realized recently from all the time they’ve spent together.

“The draft you found was an old one that I already made changes to,” she says, “but I fear I may have carried over many of the same mistakes. Would you mind looking at my most recent draft and writing all those—things?”

Jason glances at her. Curling embarrassment hot in his ribcage and he’d almost—almost—forgotten about his breach in her privacy and trust.

“Steph, I should have never gone through your stuff.”

Her finger stops curling her hair as she pauses, head tilted to the side consideringly. When she speaks, it’s in slow, deliberate tones.

“No. I suppose you shouldn’t have, but considering all the times I’ve just shown up at your house or how I practically forced Tim on you, then we’ll call it even. So, will you write those comments for me? They sound almost exactly what my professor writes, but that’s after she’s already failed my paper.”

Jason stares at her, mouth open. He closes it before nodding slowly. Her entire face lights up, and two days later she’s calling him to tell him she’s bringing a celebration cake because she scored the highest grade in the class on her paper.

:: ::

“I’ll take that one.”

“The purple one, sir? Are you sure? We have other colors: blue and red and orange or even black. Certainly, something less…effeminate. For such a strong-suited young man, such as yourself.”

“I’m good with the purple one. Thanks.”

:: ::

Jason can’t speak into words how he knows when the shadow drops behind him. Realistically, there is no outward indication: no sound, no trick of the light or whoosh of a cape dropping into place. It’s more like an instinct—one that had taken years to hone in.

“I forgot: stalking is caring. Right?” Jason says without turning around to look at the looming, shadowed figure standing behind him.

“Are you sure you should be out patrolling?” Batman asks instead of answering, “It’s only been days since you told me you were shot.”

“And only months since I was snatched from my apartment and tortured for weeks.” Jason turns to raise an eyebrow at Batman, even though he can’t see it. The tilt of his head will be a good enough warning to how Jason feels about his presence. “What’s your point?”

“Nightwing spoke to me about that night. He said you were hospitalized.”

Jason smirks and knows Batman can hear it in his voice when he asks, “How long did he yell at you? He didn’t seem happy that you were leaving him in the dark.”

For a moment, Jason doesn’t think he’s going to get an answer. He hadn’t been expecting one, truthfully, because the man is nothing if not without his secrets. A curious habit, as it rarely does him any good—not when his children are involved.

But then Batman says, “Three hours.”

Jason smiles; laughs. Batman remains motionless, face an impassive mask half-hidden by the cowl, but Jason recognizes the man’s micro-expressions of annoyance. It’s been a long time since Batman and Dick went at it—having mended that rift in their relationship after Jason’s untimely demise—but Jason can see the tension of hurt along his jawline all the same.

Dick doesn’t know, never really did, how much weight his words carried for the old man.

“He must have been furious with you,” Jason chokes out between peals of laughter, arms hugging his stomach as his shoulders shake.

“It was a secret I shouldn’t have kept from him,” Batman admits, “and I should have followed you to make sure you were alright. I had just assumed—”

“No! Let me go! I’ll bite you!”

Jason doesn’t wait to hear how Batman’s sentence ends, doesn’t consider what he’s about to do as he plunges off the rooftop into the alleyway below. And for a moment, he thinks, he’s not too late. Or maybe he’s just mistaken, and that the way the little girl is thrashing in the larger man’s grip is something else.

The man looks up, and there’s nothing about his features that are recognizable. A flat, ugly nose and rectangular jawline. Even his eyes, a cold gunmetal gray, could pass as any other dark gaze amongst Gotham’s population. But he shifts, lamplight catching across the long, jagged scar running from the hook of his jawbone to the soft underbelly under his left eye.

It’s the only part of this man that Jason knows because he had been the one who had put it there.

“Let her go,” Jason says, ignoring the soft rustling of cloth falling in place behind him.

The man doesn’t, but the girl doesn’t give him a chance.

She opens her mouth and screams. Wind funnels in the alleyway, wild and unforgiving. It tugs at Jason’s jacket; pulls at his pants. He can hear it ripple against Batman’s cape and, because of their proximity, Jason hears the sharp intake of breath from the older man as he watches the thug drop the girl. Wide eyes bulging as his hands close around his throat.

Without the support holding her up, she collapses to her knees. Tears pale rivers across hollowed cheeks, and the screaming doesn’t stop, doesn’t falter, head tipped back as that awful screeching strings out between the four of them.

“She’s a meta,” Batman growls.

“Wow,” Jason snarls, sarcasm thick in his voice, “so glad we have a detective present.”

Batman’s glare is audible. Mentally, Jason starts counting down, stepping forward. The wind kicks around him, stealing his breath.

The thug twitches and crumples. Jason can see his eyes rolling in their sockets, though, so he ignores him in favor of kneeling beside the girl. She screams, and screams, and screams…

“Hood!” Batman snaps, stepping forward, but has to stop because the air is being sucked into a vacuum and he hadn’t thought to consider this.

Truthfully, Jason hadn’t either.

Lungs burning and dark spots blotting his vision, Jason wraps his arms around the girl’s trembling shoulders. She shakes and shakes and shakes and, as Jason pulls her closer to his chest, he worries she may fall apart in his arms. He squeezes tighter, holding her closer and doesn’t speak. Can’t, technically, because she’s sucking all the air from the world.

Her sob comes out wet, gurgling around the soft-choking noises grow fainter. The thug’s wheezing gets quieter. Jason holds the girl close, closing his eyes. Mouth a flattened, pale line no one can see behind his hood. Batman keeps his steady vigil outside the vortex, skin milk-white and almost glowing underneath the moonlight.

His mouth is moving, but the words lost.

Jason knows what he’s saying, though. Can read the structure of the words as they leave his mouth, underlying the tension grounding in the back of his jaw.

“Hood!”

Jason holds the girl closer. Curling protectively over narrow shoulders, bending and drawing her closer on his lap. The tension vibrates under his hands as it gathers in her neck and shoulders and chest; the same tension, Jason thinks, that’s gathering all his oxygen. He hadn’t been thinking when he’d stepped forward, other than he saw a child crying and couldn’t do nothing.

So, she’s going to kill them both.

At least Batman remains unaffected. Though that may be the wrong word to use because he certainly looks affected. Firm in place—Batman does not pace—fingers curling and releasing in tight, shaking fists. Idly, Jason wonders why Robin is—hopes that Batman is sensible enough to keep the kid, all the kids, away from this.

The girl’s scream weakening and the vortex drops, releasing its hold around Jason’s lungs. He heaves in a breath, numb fingers gripping around narrowed shoulders as he shakes and waits. For Batman to finish checking on the thug behind them because logic dictates that he will. After all, Jason had remained upright, and the girl had been the cause so, somehow, somewhere in Batman’s fucked up mind, that makes the thug the victim.

Jason traces his movements with his eyes underneath the hood, as the man steps faux-confidently forward. Jason’s right, he knows he’s right; he’s going to see that he’s right.

Batman kneels next to Jason instead. Leathered hand comes to rest against the sharp corner of his shoulder blade. A warm, constant pressure as Jason continues to cough and heave. Wrong. Jason had been wrong.

Jason shakes his head; gasps, “The man. Check on the man.”

“Are you alright, Hood?”

“I’m fine. Check on him,” but Jason might as well not have spoken because the hand shifts to his pulse point under his jaw, and Batman must use it as some sort of grounding technique because his jaw no longer looks moments from snapping, and the tautness drains from his shoulders.

Against his chest, the girl shifts, sobbing. Jason presses her tighter against his chest; hand cupping the back of her head and neck, shoulders slumping against the sharp relief of her life. But then he sees it. From the corner of his eye, and the cold dread returns. Pooling icy water into his veins.

“What?” Batman asks, his own relief being pulled back to the razor-thin edge Jason’s always danced around; he follows his gaze, frowning, hand dropping to Jason’s thigh, so he doesn’t have to release him as he leans over to pluck the syringe from the pothole-ridden asphalt.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” the girl sobs.

Batman returns his gaze to Jason, head tilting in silent command for an explanation. Jason shifts his hold on the girl and says nothing.

It’s not like they’d been over-eager to help months ago when Jason first came to them about this. They hadn’t not cared, he supposes, just regarded him with sharp, patronizing looks and Jason knew. If it had been anyone else coming to them, then they’d jump at the chance, but not even the GCPD seemed to regard this as any more than a misfortunate tragedy.

Jason had been the only one who cared then. He’s not sure that now, after everything else, that he appreciates it suddenly mattering to them.

“I’m sorry.”

Jason reaches up, releasing his helmet. Ignoring the frown of disapproval from Batman (and it doesn’t matter because Jason had been distracted and now it’s too late and it doesn’t matter) he drops it at his side and presses his mouth to the curve of her ear.

“It’s okay,” he assures her; one hand rubbing calmingly up and down her spine as the other tightens its hold around her hips. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Batman suddenly commands, impatience lending a sharp point to his words, “Hood.”

“It’s a drug, B,” Jason says, “I don’t know what exactly because I haven’t successfully got my hands on a sample I could analyze, but it’s…unpleasant.”

The girl curls further into his hold, still shaking. Jason knows the only reason she’s still alive at the moment is because she’s a meta, but that’s little comfort with the knowledge of what’s going to come next. The girl must know it too because she whimpers, huddling closer.

Jason soothes her with another whisper, shifting his hold so he can rise to his feet. The forgotten thug wheezes, consciousness returning to him slowly. Jason steps over him without waiting to see if Batman will follow.

“Hood.” Batman does.

“I’ll explain later, I promise,” Jason says, “but I need to get her to Leslie’s clinic first. She can…she helps. As best she can.”

“Helps? You’ve sought her assistance before?”

The needle has disappeared, but Jason knows better than to assume he’s discarded it. Whatever impartial nonsense he’d been clinging to before vanished when the girl opened her mouth, and Batman is going will obnoxiously insert himself in the middle of this investigation very soon—which is funny because a few months ago that had been all Jason had wanted.

Jason doesn’t know what he wants anymore, but he’s willing to set his own personal feelings aside if it means stopping Dodger. That had been true then, and it’s true now.

In his arms, the girl continues to shake.

:: ::

Leslie doesn’t regard him with surprise or shock, but this isn’t the first time Jason’s shown up towing an injured child seeking for help. Even before Dodger, before this drug, but he’s always been alone. He doesn’t miss the sharp narrow of her eyes at the accompaniment of Batman, but her attention refocuses instantly on the girl who’s fallen so silent and still she could have passed for sleeping if not for the rabbit-quick pulse of her heartbeat.

“Another one? I thought you stopped this,” she says, nonaccusatory, reaching out to wrap her arms around the shivering girl.

She reaches forward to take her from Jason’s arms. Jason relinquishes her, but neither tries shaking the desperate hold of the tiny hand around his wrist.

“I blew up a warehouse, doctor,” Jason says, following into the other room. “They retaliated by breaking into my apartment and dragging me to have a little fun. I guess whatever it was I destroyed takes a couple of months to restock, but these types always restock.”

Leslie hums, and starts her check-up. Jason’s attention shifts back towards Batman, looming, hovering, and it must take great self-restraint to not insert himself in the middle of an investigation Jason asked him to join months ago. That he had rejected months ago.

“The big man snagged the syringe,” Jason says with a smirk; Batman twitches.

Leslie doesn’t move, doesn’t look up, and her voice sounds clinically impassive when she asks, “And the man who did this?”

“Nightwing and Black Bat are handling it,” Batman says; the words were for Leslie but he’s watching Jason. “He won’t get away with this a second time.”

“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Jason tells him flippantly, challengingly.

The girl’s grip tightens around his wrist and her voice is flat and even as she declares, “I recognized you. You protect others. Others like me. I have a…a sister that’s like me. I can’t leave her alone. I can’t.”

Jason meets Leslie’s gaze. He pats the girl’s fingers. There’s not much he can say. No reassurances, no platitudes, because Jason has spent months getting almost nowhere.

Batman steps forward, and the girl tenses.

“Your sister,” Batman says in a gentle voice reserved for victims and children, “where is she?”

The girl stiffens. Drawing her head back towards the crook of Jason’s elbow with a soft whimper. Jason pets her hair in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture. Ignoring whatever expression the gesture causes to crease Batman’s face.

“No. No, no,” the girl sobs, “Please, Hood, don’t let the wicked man get me. I’m sorry. I didn’t—I can’t control it. Please.”

Jason says nothing, running soothing hands over her spine; Leslie asks, “You think Batman is wicked?”

The girl nods. “Everyone knows. He doesn’t care about us. We’re just…just potentials. He’d rather save the pretty women with houses and families because they matter. We don’t. We’re just…we’re just nothing. If not for Red Hood, then we’d all be dead. We would. Everyone knows it.”

Leslie meets Jason’s gaze. He can’t be sure what that Look means, but he knows he doesn’t like it. It makes him uncomfortable, like he’s somehow responsible for this. It makes him feel edgy, suddenly defensive.

“That’s one rumor I never started,” Jason says.

Leslie hums, “I never said you did.”

“I’ll wait outside.”

Hours later, Jason finds Batman standing loyal vigil by the clinic’s entrance, unmoving and unflinching. He’s steeled himself against…something. Jason’s anger or Jason’s gloating or some twisted concoction of both.

Jason feels hollowed out and empty, though, so he says nothing as he closes the distance between them to sink into a plastic waiting chair. He wants a hug, to be engulfed in strong, unmovable arms and be promised that everything is going to be okay because Batman and his endless supply of resources are on it, but Jason knows he’s not strong enough to deal with the magnitude of such a request.

“I suppose you’d like that explanation now,” Jason sighs, whole body deflating inwards.

From here, they can’t hear the steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor from the other room. Nor can they smell Leslie’s perfume as she settles beside the girl, making her as comfortable as she can manage. Drawing small vials of blood. For Batman because there’s no doubt Batman isn’t getting involved after tonight.

“Hng. I’ll settle for you telling me if you’re okay.”

“No, but I haven’t been alright for a long, B.” Jason smiles, all teeth, before hiding his face in his palm. “It never gets easier.”

“The girl’s sister—”

“I texted Spoiler and Red Robin the location along with instructions on what to do with her,” Jason assures, “I’d go myself but, well, this next part is the hardest.”

“Leslie—”

“Did all she can do. B, this drug, it doesn’t—it attacks the meta-gene, I guess, because when metas take it, their powers go haywire, and there’s no control. No stopping it, but then the high fades and they come down and its…its brutal.”

The white lenses widen at the implication. Jason can’t fathom why it’s yet to cross his mind after everything he’s seen and heard lately.

Maybe the little girl was right. Batman doesn’t care.

“They—”

“It’s a classic Catch-22,” Jason says at Batman’s floundering, “They take the drug, and they die. They don’t take the drug, and they die. After that first dose, it’s over, but that’s not enough for Dodger so he changes the formula and experiments on the kids of Crime Alley because, who cares about them? Not the police, not Batman.”

Batman pauses, gathering his thoughts. Jason hopes he isn’t about to say something dumb or offer some flimsy excuse on why he hasn’t seemed like he cared when, really, the whole time he did. Still, Jason can feel his defenses rise in anticipation, knowing, and then—

“You do.”

Jason flinches. “What?”

“Those kids, those people, you care about them. You watch out for them, protect them, and they trust you in return. Enough to allow you to send people they don’t trust because your word rings truer than what they’re used to.”

“Yeah, well, lotta good that does that little girl in there. Leslie says she’ll be surprised if she sees the sunrise with how quickly this drug has taken hold.”

“And if a non-meta takes it?” Batman inquires, not out of curiosity, but because he thinks he needs to know and maybe he does.

Jason slumps further in his chair. “A far less painful death.”

Batman’s silence is cold, far more telling than anything he’s said recently. Jason wonders, briefly, how these past few months have seemed like to him. First, his disappearance and then reappearance outside that warehouse before his re-disappearance. His little birds roosting in two nests: the Manor and a house Batman doesn’t know about because he’s yet to show up, acting like it's normal for them to have weekly hang-outs with Jason.

Then the park with Joker and—I thought you wanted him dead? I do. Then why does he still draw breath?—and his eventual confrontation with Dick. All of that somehow cumulating in to this. It must be dizzying, even for the detective.

“I’ve looked into it,” Jason continues because he wants Batman’s warmth, his approval, and it’s easy to forget when they’re separated but he’s been near him too long to prevent those feelings from crashing against him, “I’ve studied what little I know, but it’s difficult learning chemistry from the ground up when all you have to go by is college textbooks and YouTube.”

“You didn’t seek help from someone else?”

“With who?” Jason challenges, “I asked for you and your roost for help once and got brushed off and in case you’ve failed to notice, I’m not actually bursting with connections, and I doubt you’d approve of me holding anybody hostage for answers.”

“So, you’ve shouldered all this alone,” Batman says, clinically flat. “Jason, I’m sorry. It seems I’ve failed you again.”

“It’s alright, old man. It’s not like you’ve missed the threat Dodger’s become. Just…overlooked it.”

Batman doesn’t—never—flinch, but Jason sees the way his words cut him. Sharp, serrated teeth of a rusted blade burrowing in his gut and twisting cruelly. Jason hadn’t been trying to be cruel. He’s too tired. His exhaustion heavier than gravity.

Leslie joins them, ignoring the tension in the room, and says, “She elected to remain awake through the rest of it. I think she’s afraid of being alone.”

Jason’s hands slap his knees, and he keeps his voice jovial when he says, “Guess that’s my cue,” before trailing along the path Leslie had returned from.

The girl is on a bed, IV running along thin veins. Jason smiles gently down at her as he hooks the chair with his foot and scoots it over by her bedside. Her hand is cold in his, and he can feel the bones underneath his thumb. So small, so fragile, something delicate that could have belonged to a pianist or an artist—not this tiny, pale thing burrowed in blankets and tubes and beeping machines.

She meets his smile with one of her own. Jason doesn’t miss the way her eyes shift over his shoulder, looking but evidently not finding because she relaxes. Loose and accepting of a fate she never should have faced while still so young.

You were about this age, that voice growls in the back of his mind, when you confronted this same dilemma.

“Is it scary, do you think?” she asks.

Her voice startles Jason. It echoes around the room, cutting through the silence, and Jason wants to bow his head and cry and beg because—please, no, she’s so young. I can’t face this anymore. But Jason isn’t the one dying and if a child could face this with any sort of pose and dignity, then the least Jason can do is meet it himself.

(You did too, once.)

“Yeah,” Jason answers honestly; thumb a constant pressure across the back of her hand. “It’s fucking terrifying, but its temporary. Close your eyes and then it’s over. And you won’t have to be afraid anymore.”

The girl giggles at the explicit, like Jason knew she would, and it’s almost enough to twitch the corners of his lips. It’s not fair, but the world rarely is. The weight of it drags on him and he wants to break underneath it. To bend over her bed and cry and scream, beg for forgiveness because this is his fault. It’s his failings that’s going to cost this child her life.

Then her face drops to something more thoughtful, somber and sad, as she asks, “Will you pray for me? I don’t—Mom was religious, but I never—I don’t know how—”

“It’s alright. Close your eyes. I’ll pray,” he doesn’t stop to wait to see if she obeys him; closing his eyes and bowing his head and recites, “Almighty, eternal God, heavenly Father, comfort and strengthen your servant and save them through your goodness. Deliver them from all anguish and distress, release them in your grace, and take them to yourself in your kingdom; through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, our only Lord Savior, and Redeemer. Amen.”

Tears streak down pallid features as the girl stares, glassy eyed, at him; she whispers, “Thank you. Can I—please, don’t leave. I don’t want to—I don’t want to die alone.”

Jason nods, hand squeezing her own, and vows, “I’m not going anywhere.”

:: ::

“He’s good with them.”

“He should have never dealt with this on his own. I should have—I should have been there to help him.”

“You’re here now, Bruce, and he isn’t going anywhere soon. Though I doubt that child will want you anywhere near him. The streets have ears, and they all think you brutalized their hero without cause. They’re very protective of him.”

“Good. He deserves their protection.”

“Hmm.”

From the other room, they can hear Jason’s soft recital of Zusak’s words, “You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I’ll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps.

The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?”

“You know he’s reciting that from memory? I don’t stock those types of books here in my clinic.”

“I’m not surprised. When he first came to the manor he read that book three times.”

“Personally, I like a chocolate-covered sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see—the whole spectrum.”

“It’s not too late for you, you know. Dick was in here the other night with a fever, recounting how him and Jason have been reconciling. About how Jason is getting along with Tim now. And Duke. And Stephanie. He’s just been alone for so long he doesn’t know how to say it.”

“He shouldn’t have too.”

“Then be there for him, Bruce. He needs you more and more with each passing day.”

“I know, and I will.”

“I know that look. Where’s the but?”

“…but first I need to fix this.”

:: ::

The last thing the child sees is the bursts of colors at the sunrise. Vibrant splashes of pink and orange and yellow. Cold fingers entangled with limp ones.

Jason waits until her chest stutters one last time before he bends over her bed and allows the building pressure in his chest and head to escape. He sobs, soft and wretched, tears wetting the corner of Leslie’s sheet.

Nobody speaks for a long, long time.

:: ::

Jason doesn’t see her until she’s standing there, staring at him with dark eyes, and he can’t even say that it's because she doesn’t want to be seen until she suddenly is. It's an instinct beaten into her at such a young age, and Jason is certain she’ll never be completely free from.

Cass smiles, warm and friendly, while Jason stands stuck between the Ixoras and Verbenas. Goosebumps raise along his spine, his own instinct that he’s being watched, and her smile doesn’t waver but dark brows draw inwards.

“Hey Cass,” Jason greets, turning his head, searching for a bright spark of red or vibrant blonde curls or…anybody, really.

In response, or as an offer of explanation, Cass holds out the little pink box she’s holding. Jason deflates, feeling like a heel, because Cass is standing in the middle of this super market buying tampons. Jason’s never bought tampons. Never thought about it.

His shoulders drop. “Right.”

She grins, evidently enjoying his discomfort, and shrugs; says, “Natural.”

Her eyes drift over his shoulder and her smile brightens considerably—definitely a Dick-patented smile—as she asks, “Flowers?”

“Yeah,” Jason says, gesturing lamely over his shoulder, “I’m thinking about starting a garden. For my house. I…uh, my therapist says that hobbies are good for me, and I kind of almost finished renovating my house.”

Which Cass has never been to, but Jason had just assumed she’s heard about from the others. It’s not like the baby birds have proven they can keep secrets. And big bird definitely cannot. But her mouth parts in genuine surprise, which is not an easy expression to draw from her.

“House?” she asks, and then almost immediately, “Therapist?”

Jason releases a heavy breath, nods and sheepishly says, “I guess a lot has happened recently. What about you, though? You look good.”

She nods and repeats, “Therapist?”

“It’s…ah…complicated, but to the surprise of absolutely no one, Alfred was right. We could all do with therapy.”

Her nod is slow and deliberate; voice bright in understanding as she says, “Joker.”

“It’s part of my rules,” Jason explains. “She gave me rules. Well she guided me in creating my rules. It’s nothing.”

But she says, “No killing.”

“Well,” Jason swallows, “it’s not like my tendencies have been readily accepted amongst the family. It doesn’t matter.”

Having the conversation turn a direction he doesn’t really want to have, considering his vision bled green all night long. Plagued with dreams of children, blank-gazed and bloodless, that sends loud, echoing static that vibrates deep into his bones.

But Cass shakes her head, pokes his head, and says, “No good for others.”

“You sound like my therapist. I thought you despised me for killing.”

“Not hate; disagreed but this cannot be for Bruce. Not for me. Has to be for you,” her voice is cold-steel and adamant and Jason deflates under the intensity of it.

She’s right. He knows that. Denise has said something similar, with more words and more staring and more judgement. It is the primary factor in her adamancy of the addition of the fourth rule. That Jason waits until he’s absolutely certain he’s ready to mean it.

But it feels different, accompanied with Cass’s bright-eyed gaze. He shrinks, which probably looks ridiculous because Cass is tiny and Jason is not, but he feels cowed underneath her gaze. She must see it, always see everything, as she shakes her head and looks to want to say something more.

Jason says, “It felt good in the park. The…letting go, I guess, though that doesn’t sound right because I’m still all jumbled up inside about how I feel. He murdered me when I was fifteen, but then all this other shit happened and. I don’t know. It just kind of left me mixed up. Confused. But I’m figuring it out. Kind of. Slowly.”

“I am…happy for you.” Cass points over his shoulder, evidently realizing that this current strand of conversation is making him uncomfortable and chirps, “Roses. Very pretty. And red.”

Jason follows her gaze and, oddly enough, she keeps talking. “But sharp, dangerous, like you.”

“Or you,” Jason says back, just as teasing.

He adds the pot of roses to his cart.

:: ::

Somehow, under some cosmic force Jason has given up on understanding, he turns towards Cass at the self-checkout kiosk and says, “You know I could use some aid with my garden.”

Which is how he ends up with Cass sitting in his living room, curled underneath the purple blanket he had bought days ago and sipping delicately at a honey-lemon tea Talia used to make. Maybe it’ll help with cramps because that’s a part of women's menstrual cycles. Maybe. He thinks. Hopes.

Cass regards him over the lip of her cup, steam blurring her features, and she says, “Not broken. Natural. Nature.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jason nods, “I just…I’m not good at things like this, and I want…”

His voice tampers off. The words lost to him because he’s not sure about them himself, but Cass must hear everything he doesn’t say because her lips curl upwards. Her head tilts to the side considerately. She takes another slow, careful sip from her cup.

“Good. Helps.”

Relief bursts inside Jason’s ribcage. A bright and warm feeling that replaces the static and the anger and the hollowed-out numbness. It’s something he sort of recognizes from the before but his mind aches trying to come up with a name.

“I’m glad,” Jason smiles. “Talia used to make it. It had helped with the pit. And everything else.”

Cass hums but turns her attention elsewhere. Dark eyes snagging on his television stand where the 72-inch Full Array LED 4K Ultra HD something or another Duke showed up with one day—

(“Your house fills empty without it.”

“Seriously, where did you get that? Actually, how did you afford that and—wait, come back, I don’t want this? Stop installing it, Narrows.”)

—and the Playstation console Tim had gotten him along with the pile of the colorful array of games and movies everyone has contributed to (color-coordinated, of course, Jason isn’t an animal). It’s an ever-growing thing Jason has lost control over, and he wonders if they’re buying all this or stealing it from the Manor.

But why would they do that when this thing is a temporary thing?

Also, why would any of them want to crowd around this tiny house when the Manor is available to them?

“Watch,” Cass decides.

“What? I thought you were going to help me plant flowers?”

“Tomorrow. Tonight, watch.”

Not looking for a fight, Jason accepts his fate. He cooks her salmon and asparagus before curling into his chair. Cass stretches lazily out on the couch underneath his warmest blanket, watching the Disney movies Dick brought. All classics, which Jason realizes just mean they were older than him.

Jason isn’t really paying attention to them. He has his sketchbook in his lap, scribbling the general layout of how he wants his garden to look. Only looking up whenever Cass laughs or when the movie ends and she rises to change them out.

His neck aches in the morning, when he blinks open his eyes and realizes that he fell asleep sitting up. Cass had too, but in a much more comfortable position spread across his couch, as she blinks expectantly at him. He rolls his eyes as he rises to his feet to start breakfast. Cass close enough to be his shadow.

“Steph right,” Cass decides at the kitchen table, mouth full of a bacon, egg and cheese on an English muffin, “You cook. Good. Better than the others.”

That feeling explodes in his chest once more. A starburst of fuzzy warmth—happiness, Jason realizes with another bite of his sandwich. It’s happiness. He’s happy, and it’s been so long with too much other stuff polluting it he’d thought he’d never get here again.

But he says, “Dick’s an adult. I’m sure he can cook.”

Cass shakes her head, solemn and serious, leaning close to offer in a conspiratorial whisper, “Only basics. He measures with heart, not cups, and creativity. Creativity tastes no good.”

It’s said with such seriousness that another burst of happiness bubbles up in his lungs and throat and Jason laughs. Loud and genuine, and it feels good. Better at the triumphant look Cass dons, like making Jason happy, making Jason laugh is some sort of accomplishment.

It’s such an odd thing that neither looks at their buzzing phones, returning to their meal in silence.

Cass follows him to the kitchen, filling the sink with lukewarm water and half a bottle of liquid soap. Eyes wide and bright as she watches it fill with bubbles, and Jason doesn’t think. He stands rooted behind her, close enough to hurt if she considered him a threat, and splashes the water and the soap and the bubbles in her face.

She stumbles back in shock, still smiling, and proclaims, “Mistake.”

Jason matches her feral expression. He tilts his head back in silent challenge, and that time neither of them hears their phones vibrating incessantly for their attention. Both of them soaking wet when they’re interrupted by loud knocking; Jason still stupidly grinning when he goes to answer the door.

“Steph!” he greets, warmth carrying with his tone, but she doesn’t match it; her eyes guarded and cold—a needle against the balloon of happiness in his chest.

“Bruce wants you back in Gotham,” she says. “Someone broke into Arkham last night. The Joker is dead.”

:: ::

“Not Jason. With me. All night.”

“Nobody has said Jason did this, Cass. The technique is very distinct, though, and Jason was one of the last people that saw him alive before sending him back to Arkham.”

“Not said. Thought. All of you.”

“No, we didn’t, Cass. We—it’s complicated.”

“Not. Jason.”

Jason stares at the pictures with sightless eyes. Cass stands beside him, clothes and hair still dripping, arms crossed and tilt of her chin defiant. Protective.

(“Are they dead?”

“No, they are not fucking dead, you fucking asshole.”)

Cass had fought against returning to the Cave. She knew, as well as Jason, why he was being summoned, and fighting against it had been the only way she knew to shelter him. A silent protector, fierce and determined, that Jason doesn’t want.

He didn’t do this, but doubts it matters.

The damage cannot be undone.

Kill them all. Jason’s fingers curl into shaking fists at his sides. It’s been a long time since that voice has echoed louder than the rest.

Worst, though, is the fact that Bruce hasn’t said anything. He’s just standing there with his dark aura the permeates through every careful defense Jason has built around himself, and it was easier before. Before he invited fucking Duke over to his fucking house. Before he allowed them all, one by one, to show up demanding food and pretending to enjoy his company, all the while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Well, har-fucking-har, the joke’s on them.

Jason is innocent of this.

Dick smiles, cold and unnatural, having found himself inserted into the center of this whole debacle. It’s a place he doesn’t look like he wants to be, but drifts too instinctively. More habits drilled at young ages that they find impossible to break into adulthood.

The others crowd impartially around them. Jason thinks they’re waiting to decide which side they want to fall on. Cass’s adamance at his innocence is a strong alibi, but it’s never easy standing between Batman and the person he’s decided needs condemnation.

Jason wishes for the surge of anger, of betrayal, but everything is gouged out of him. His ribcage is just…empty.

The pictures swim back into focus. The clown’s features twisted in a last laugh; morbid red mouth a bright slash across his pale throat.

It’s not Jason’s style, but it is the League’s. And Jason was League, once. Sort of.

Ra’s still owes him from that. Desertion equals death and Jason had sworn, pale and shivering and broken, to all the League and its code and its way. Most nights, when everything else in his mind is quiet, thoughts of why he hasn’t ended up like Joker in these pictures keep him up.

Jason glances up to stare directly into Damian’s eyes. Damian stares unflinchingly back. He stands at Bruce’s side but, in the grand scheme of things, that means so very little.

Jason’s eyes flicker upwards to meet Bruce’s, and it's easy to sound indifferent when he feels nothing. “Good riddance.”

Bruce doesn’t ask. Bruce doesn’t anything.

He just stands and stares.

“Realistically,” Duke speaks, sure but timid, “why would Jason wait until Joker was back in Arkham, anyway. He was alone with him at the park for…I don’t know. Long enough to do that to someone.”

Cass turns, her glare sharp. “I said Jason didn’t.”

“I know Cass. I’m agreeing with you.”

“I told you dragging him here was a bad idea,” Stephanie whispers accusingly at Tim, “God, we’re so stupid.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, and nothing else.

So, it seems, not all the little birdies have turned on him. Not that it matters. It does little to feel the empty gnawing inside of Jason. It’s expanding, icy tendrils stretching like thick roots spreading throughout him.

“No one has said—”

“Quit playing dumb, Dick. It’s so obvious Bruce thinks Jason did this, and he’s not going to listen to any of us on the contrary.”

Dick blinks, looking as if he’s been slapped. He twists, contorting his whole body to stare wide-eyed at Bruce. Silently begging him to refute the statement. To assure him that that’s not true. That this is all a misunderstanding.

When silently doesn’t heed any results, he asks, begs, “Bruce?”

Bruce stares unblinkingly back at Jason. His silence echoes around them, answer enough; Dick blinks. A hurt look pulling at his features. And not the my-siblings-are-bullying-me-but-I-can’t-help-but-love-them sort of pout or his this-is-for-show-because-I-love-you-too-much-to be-affected-by-your-words expression.

He looks as if someone beat his dog right in front of him, then spat on his face and set his world aflame. It’s a dangerous expression as, with it, comes an anger that rivals anything Jason felt from the Lazarus Pit.

Kill them.

“No,” Dick gasps, strangled; he steps back, shoulders curling inwards, “Bruce—”

“Do you know the person responsible for this?” Bruce finally, finally, asks.

“No,” Jason lies.

:: ::

“Have you heard from Jason recently?”

“No. Cass and I went by his house the other day, but it’s clear he hasn’t been back in a while. We cleaned his kitchen and watered his flowers for him, but then felt like trespassing and left. I knew it was a stupid idea to drag him to the Cave like that. With Bruce like that.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You’d tell me if you heard something, though. Right?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. Would you?”

“Of course, I would. God, did you see his face? He looked—he looked—”

“Yeah. I saw it. How many voicemails have you left on his phone?”

“Twenty-three. I just…I can’t lose him—especially not like this.”

“Then you should have thought of that before asking me to drag him back to the Cave. After Cass had already vouched for him.”

“I didn’t need Cass to vouch for him. I just—”

“Yeah, Dick, I know. We all do.”

“Jason doesn’t, Steph, and if we lose him this time, then that’s on us. All of us.”

“Yeah. We know that too.”

:: ::

“I hope you’re not planning on killing anybody else?”

Talia glares. Green eyes almost glowing as she regards him with a serious expression. Jason doesn’t bow beneath it, but the instinct is there. Curling at the base of his stomach, begging for obedience. For him to bend over in compliance, in total submission.

A dutiful son.

A good soldier.

Jason doesn’t move. Talia doesn’t look angry. She doesn’t look anything, stare flat and unamused. Not even impressed at being found, which isn’t a surprise because the trail she left has been obvious. She wanted to be found.

“I can assure you, there will be no more deaths in Gotham tonight,” Talia says, “at least, not by my hand.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. In Gotham—in Arkham. Are you trying to get yourself—”

“What? Hurt? Killed?” A clear challenge rings in her voice. “I do not fear the wraith of my Beloved. I assure you, I can handle it. Do not concern yourself for my sake.”

“Talia,” Jason sighs.

His insides bubble with anger or anxiety or worry or—Jason isn’t sure, but he knows it makes his fingers shake and breath catch and ribcage deflate. Knowing green eyes looking at him, looking through him, isn’t helping.

She tilts her head to the side, dark curls cascading over her shoulder, and her voice is that dangerous icy fire that creates spiraling frostbite that burns and burns and burns—

“He accused you of the act?”

“Not in as many words. No. Or any words, really.”

Talia’s face melts back to an indifference mask as she steps back. Eyes flickering over his broad form considering, her tone feather-soft and gentle. Pleased.

“You look well, Jason. Better. Healthy.”

“I found myself a therapist. We talk through some things. Well, I talk. She sits there and stares at me, waiting for me to talk.”

Talia dips her head and acknowledges, “It is clear that it is helping. My Beloved’s help has had a point after all.”

Jason bristles at the casual mention of Alfred as Bruce’s help when most days, every day, it feels like he’s the only thing keeping them all together. But it’s Talia, and she doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, and Jason didn’t come to allow himself to succumb to her deflections.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Focus.

“You killed the Joker in a padded cell,” Jason says. “Last I checked, the League had no cause for his death.”

“The League, no, but I pulled the file of what he did to you in that warehouse. You were a child, and he brutalized you for no other reason than because he could. Then he had the gall to laugh in my face. Claim that it was out of boredom and that you looked so prettily lying there bleeding.”

Flashes. Pain. Laughter.

Jason squeezes shaking fingers into fists. It doesn’t take long before they’re quivering, too, as he fights against the mounting green vapors.

“I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t plead or beg. I didn’t—I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.”

A hand taps against his shoulder. A delicate touch that’s so unlike the Talia the world knows, but it feels familiar to Jason as he forces himself to look up at her gentling features. Her smile is small, private and not unkind, filled with a rare warmth she rarely indulges herself in.

“Oh, my dear boy,” she says; soft as a whisper. “I fear we fail you more with the passing of each moon. You have nothing you need to atone for. In fact, it’s us that are in due to some atoning, but it’s important for you to understand that when we yell—when we lecture—it’s never anything personal. Parents cannot help, but see the worst of themselves in everything their children do and we remember all the pain those failings led to. And that are the things we seek so desperately to protect you from.”

As she speaks, her hand guides upwards to his cheek. Jason doesn’t pull back or slap it away, but leans into it. As the thing in his ribcage crumples, fading to dust inside of him.

“I’ve done horrible things, Talia,” Jason croaks.

“Indeed, you have, and I’m sure there’ll be a time in the future where you’ll think you’re doing horrible things once more. But don’t focus on those things, dear heart, it’ll tear you apart.”

Her hand drops to his chest. Fingers splayed out as she pushes against the spot his heart belongs. Jason’s seen her kill people like this—with nothing but a hand to the chest—and he leans into. Eyes fluttering closed, hoping for if not peace than acceptance. Silence.

Something.

Anything.

Fingers curl around her wrist. His skin a translucent pale against her dark complexion, and the bones feel fragile beneath his palm, but he’s not stupid. Talia could kill him a thousand times over before he ever got the chance to lay a single mark on her.

“You are not the same person you were before,” Talia says instead. “You are not the same naïve child that died nor the scared little boy who crawled himself free from his own coffin. You are not the thing I assisted my father in creating. Those were but moments, however fleeting, and with their passing, you rise as something else. Something new and you’re better than any of us give you credit for.”

“I’m a serial killer.”

“You are young and went through a great deal with no support or love. It’s of no one’s fault but our own that you rose with teeth and claws. Besides, I’ve heard a rumor that you’ve stopped killing.”

Jason shrugs beneath her palm. “I’ve stopped a lot recently. There’s been a lot going on lately, and I’ve been trying to clear my mind.”

She smiles, nodding approval, and steps back. With her goes all of Jason’s strength, and he crumples without it. His armor has kneepads to protect him from these falls, but he’s not dressed in his armor. He’s dressed in jeans and jacket. Needles of pain wiggle, blossoming from the spot Jason hit the roof. Hands dropping to his side, neck bent as he weakly breathes.

Some days, it feels like all he can do. Others, it feels like too much to ask from him.

“You’re still cold, dear heart,” Talia tells him, “I’m surprised the rest of the flock hasn’t swaddled you in warmth to compensate.”

Jason doubts they’ve noticed.

It’s one thing clinging to a wrist or a hand and another to hold him and realize that Jason doesn’t feel right. That Jason feels as cold as the night he died.

Something flashes across the roof, but Talia barely flinches. Barely moves between Jason’s heartbeats, but in the next she’s standing, tall and proud, sword outstretched in front of her. At her boots is the batarang, lying in two pieces.

“I will not allow you to take any more lives tonight, Mother!”

Jason tilts his head to where Robin stands—a bright spot amongst the grim and the dirt of Gotham—though the expression twisting the younger boy’s face inspires anything but hope. Damian looks like a carnivorous bird and his mouth pulls back in a twisted snarl. His shoulders hunch forward, caving inwards, his own blade held out in front of him.

They can’t see his eyes behind the burning whites of his domino mask, but Jason feels the weight of his assessing gaze. There’s no Batman, which isn’t a surprise. Like Jason, Damian had recognized the blade of the person responsible for Joker and, like Jason, he hadn’t offered the information to the occupants in the room.

They should have. Jason should have.

Talia’s mouth twitches upwards, almost cruelly, but affection rings true in her words. “And if I’m not sated until I finish what I’ve started years ago?”

Damian growls, leaping forward in what’s definitely a Grayson flip. Jason stays where he is, watching, expecting for their blades to clash. Steel beating against steel until Talia tires with toying with them and leaves, but she just steps back. Allowing for Damian to slot himself between her and Jason with an eloquent expression.

“I will not allow you to steal my brother from us a second time,” Damian snarls, and he’s so tense; he’s practically thrumming underneath it and Jason knows from experience how much easier it is to cut down a taut line.

“Three, if you include the things that monster did to him,” Talia corrects lightly, perched gracefully against the building’s corner, “but fear not, I’ve corrected the oversight. Goodbye dear hearts.”

Then she’s gone. Dropping into nothing, and Damian looks moments from plunging after her.

Jason grasps his elbow, tethering himself in place, and closes his eyes in expectancy. Waiting for Damian to shrug off his loose-fingered hold or to whip around and plunge his own sword through Jason’s chest. Maybe that’ll finally end it, but it doesn’t. Of course, it’s doesn’t.

Damian breaks his hold—it’s a weak thing, meant to be easily breakable—and Damian spins to face him, but he practically collapses against him in a shivering embrace reserved for people who have certainly never been Jason before. Jason pauses, hesitates, before slowly locking his own arms around the child.

Around his brother.

Damian presses the gentle curve of his jaw, still rounded out in his pubescence; his breath hot and ticklish against the side of Jason’s head as he warns, “Do not do that again, Todd. Confronting Mother alone and unarmed was not only reckless, but foolhardy. Hardly surprising for you.”

Jason just squeezes tighter.

:: ::

“You could have been killed. Do you have any idea how stupid and reckless that was? I’m actually speechless, Jason.”

Dick is not speechless. Dick spends the next thirty minutes lecturing him, backed by Cass’ warning stare. Tim pats his knee good naturedly from where he’s curled next to him on the couch; Steph and Duke offer supportive smiles, but no one seems eager to jump to Jason’s defense.

Jason crosses his arms, slumping underneath Damian’s weight, and tries not to think about how this is the warmest he’s felt since waking in his coffin.

:: ::

“You blamed him.”

“I assumed. It wasn’t that far-fetched of a conclusion to come to. Less than the League wanting him dead.”

“The League did not desire him dead. I did. Do you know the things he was saying about our son, Beloved? The things he had been planning to do to him when he got out? No. Our son needed our protection, and I do not share in your ideals.”

“You can’t kill in Gotham.”

“I think you’ll find that I can do whatever I please in Gotham, and it’s only been my father’s respect of you, along with my love for our sons, that have stayed my hand. Oh, lighten up, Beloved. There’s no need to stare at me like you’ve swallowed something unpleasant; we both know there’s little love lost between us.”

“Talia—”

“I’m leaving in the morning. Please refrain from fucking this situation up any further.”

:: ::

Jason wakes to a foot in his ribs and drool soaking into the knee of his pants. He groans, eyelids fluttering, as he realizes he’s fallen asleep on his couch. Damian lies on top him, Tim sprawled across his legs, and Dick’s fingers curled around his wrist. Wrenching his arm at an awkward angle, tight and unyielding.

He doesn’t see anyone else, and a horrible realization settles on him.

Tim groans, growling unpleasantries under breath, as Jason wiggles himself to freedom. Damian just flops over, glaring between slitted eyelids, and Dick’s hold tightens as the older man jolts to wakefulness. Blue eyes flicker over the three of them before he relaxes, sinking back into Jason’s chair.

“I’m glad you’re safe, Little Wing,” Dick coos; eyes still flickering, still searching, and he’s yet to release Jason’s wrist.

Jason shakes it with a sharp, “They’re in my bed, Dickwad.”

Sure enough, they find Steph, Duke, and Cass buried beneath Jason’s (expensive, soft) sheets. Dick beams and is quick to set his hand against Jason’s sternum in silent plea.

“Look how cute they are,” Dick whispers, starry-eyed and blissful, and what in the hell?

When did Jason’s home become a menagerie to lost little birds? Dick pouts, honestly, when Jason voices as much out loud, and Jason regretfully relents. Not at all enjoying the sunshine of a smile Dick levels him with, stretching as Jason clicks his door shut and moves to the kitchen.

“So…Talia,” Dick starts; hands raising beneath Jason’s glare, “Forbidden topic, got it. Just…don’t run off like that again. We thought you—”

“Killed Joker?”

Dick actually looks hurt at the not-accusation. Lips parted and eyes watery, Jason deflates beneath it because as skilled an actor Dick’s capable of being there're moments like these where he’s too open to be anything except genuine and Jason relents to that tiny, desperate voice begging him to see that only Bruce had stared at him with blame in his eyes.

“God, no, little wing. We thought you hurt or captured, again, and none of us knew last time, so what if we just didn’t know this time and my heart can’t handle much more of this. You’re not alone, so please quit pushing all of us away.”

Jason stares at him, head tilted to the side, and simply says, “I started buying that cheap beer you like, Dick. I don’t even drink beer. Or those disgusting energy drinks or prissy bubbly water that’s sitting in my fridge. I have frozen waffles in my freezer when I prefer to cook all my meals. Last week I bought a blender so I can make smoothies. I don’t drink smoothies.

I bought this house for me and, yeah, okay, some part of it had been because my last safe house was compromised, but it wasn’t until I was sitting there in that hospital bed that I was like—nah, fuck this, let’s buy a house—so I did, and then I poured thousands of dollars in reinventions because it made me feel better, but the house never found its warmth until I invited Duke over. Then Steph and Tim and you.

Until all of you, it was just a house. Not a home and I couldn’t—I’ve never been pushing any of you away because it never works because I find myself right here, entrapped by this family’s fucking gravitational pull over and over and goddamn it. Fuck. I feel like I’m falling without a net to catch me.”

Jason’s knees buckle, and his face squishes against a broad chest as brawny arms hook beneath his armpits. Dick’s face is wet when he buries his nose against the soft, floppy parts of Jason’s hair, and the balloon bursts. Jason’s fingers tighten around the front of Dick’s cotton-tee as this thing hooked beneath his sternum drags him further and further down.

The soft wet sounds Dick’s making forms words, pleads, soft and breathless.

“It’s okay, Jay, we got you. I got you. I’m here. We’re here. You’re here, and I’m never letting you go again. I promise, Jason, you don’t have to fall alone. I’m here. I’m here.”

“We all are,” Duke announces, and Jason’s mind short-circuits for a moment at the addition of their arms and hands.

Eventually, Jason’s good-sense returns and he wiggles in protest, but it’s clear none of them are moved by his empty, biting growls. They squeeze tighter, and he relents underneath their weight.

:: ::

“He doesn’t look sick.”

“You don’t understand. His skin felt ice cold. How have we never noticed before, Babs?”

“Well, it’s not like he’s been the most welcoming person. Don’t worry so much. We’re going to figure this out. We always do.”

“I always worry about them, Barbara.”

:: ::

“You missed your last three sessions.”

“I was busy,” Jason says, but his words don’t feel as weighted as they normally do and his smile isn’t as heavy. “Have you seen the news lately? Someone broke into Arkham and sliced Joker’s throat in his cell.”

“I saw. Can’t say I was moved by the report,” Denise tells him, “A common sentiment shared by the public. Do you want to talk about Joker, Mister Peters?”

“Not really,” Jason admits; his fingers fiddle with the hem of the pillowcase as he says, “I finished my house. The others were over all weekend helping with my flower garden, and they actually listened to what I wanted. Well…sort of. The demon brat made some suggestions based on color theory, and Tim created a whole mood board, but in the end, they relented to what I originally planned.”

“That’s great, Mister Peters.”

“Yeah, well, I also bought a car. Truck. It’s a piece of junk, but I think I enjoy fixing things. Piece by piece, until one day I step back and realize that this thing is something I put back together. I’m going to pick it up after this. Steph and Cass are taking me, and I think Barbara was trying to take off from work to join us.”

“And Bruce?”

“What about Bruce?”

“Have you talked with him lately?”

“No. I haven’t.”

:: ::

“Where do you get all this money?” Steph asks, watching the man count the bills on the table in front of them.

Cass is at his other side, arms crossed and protective glare dark. An understandable gesture considering the roving smile the salesperson had offered Jason, along with a private, “Well look who grew up all pretty.”

Barbara had grabbed onto his wrist to drag him over so it leveled him with her face and hissed, “Do you know him.”

Jason shook his head and shrugged. Honestly, he couldn’t remember but there are a lot of things he doesn’t remember. Gaps in his memories left from residue trauma of having a crowbar repeatedly beat against his skull. The others know about this. Jason’s talked about this to them recently—he’s pretty sure.

There’s other holes Jason doesn’t talk about, though, and considering the way the man is staring at him, Jason has a guess on which dark spot he belongs in. Jason isn’t about to breach this topic in this situation to the others, or ever, so he settles for smiling pleasantly and allowing the Birds of Prey to seize him up with razor-sharp glares.

Jason shrugs at Steph’s question and reminds airily, “I was a Crime Lord, Stephanie. I could have given Bruce a run for his money. Ha. Get it?”

From the three frowns he received, they did. Jason smiles proudly.

The man returns, eyes focused on Jason, dangling Jason’s new key around the hook of his finger. Jason doesn’t offer him a pleasant smile because he doesn’t owe this man anything.

At least his focus is on Jason, and not Steph—who’s underaged—or Cass or Barbara. The girls might disagree with that sentiment.

“We should have brought Kate,” Steph announces, climbing into the passenger seat of Jason’s new (old?) truck.

Jason hides a grin as he sticks the key in the ignition, turning it on. Definitely, disagrees with that sentiment.

:: ::

Snow in Gotham has never been rare, but there is a moment, brief as it is, where it's still a crisp, untainted white that looks picture-perfect and serene. Those lucky enough to catch sight of it consider it a rarity, a true novelty. Even Jason, dressed in sweatpants and long-sleeved Nightwing shirt Dick gave him a couple of days ago, finds that the corners of his mouth are twitching upwards as he stomps across his yard.

He had been sleeping, another novelty, and woken up abruptly to a scratchy throat and demanding pressure at the base of his stomach. So, after relieving himself and stumbling to his kitchen for a glass of water, he chanced a glance out the window and saw the looming, shadowy spot amongst all the white.

He could have pretended to never see. Turned on his heel, dump the glass in the sink, and curl under his covers. He might have even convinced himself it had been a dream.

But it isn’t and doing anything less than acknowledging it feels like pandering to someone else’s ego, and Jason doesn’t attend therapy once a week to pad gently around Batman and Batman’s needs.

“God, B, it’s freaking freezing out here,” Jason says as he comes to stand across from where he stands at the corner of the tree line.

“I’m not trespassing,” is what Bruce says, cowl and all. “Your property line ends here.”

He gestures towards the ground with his chin. Jason follows it to the snow, frowning. He doesn’t even know the exact positing of his property. It never seemed important because it really feels out in the middle of nowhere. Some nights, not tonight, he can look up and see the starts of the stars.

“Right,” Jason drawls, “so is there a reason you’re out here in the middle of the night standing beside my property line in the freezing cold?”

“I was checking to make sure your home was secured,” Bruce admits, “Talia was never apprehended, and there’s been chatter of Dodger preparing to emerge from the shadows. Apparently, Batman’s attention is making him fidgety and nervous, and he’s found where you lived before.”

Jason stares, shivering. It was all said so matter-of-factly that it’s taking Jason a moment to connect all the things he’s left out. Ever since Leslie’s clinic, they hadn’t discussed the girl or the drug again. Steph asked him about the sister because of course she did and Tim hadn’t, but was listening with obvious interest.

Jason had told them it was none of their business and left it at that, though was sure to leave a suitable sum for her future. Enough to go to college, if she so chooses, or to start a family or business or whatever she grows up wanting to do. Then, two days later, he’d checked to make sure no money was being skimmed, only to find a rather large addition to Jason’s contribution.

Anonymously donated, of course.

Jason has an idea of who anonymous could be.

“You’ve looked into Dodger?” Jason asks and blames the cold for the way his voice comes out, surprised even though it had been something he had been expecting, “You’re keeping tabs on Dodger?”

Bruce’s face is carved from granite. Jason stares expectantly back, cross-armed and waiting.

“He’s been selling Bat-tech,” is what Batman settles on saying; and then, softer, undeniably Bruce, “He attacked my son.”

The words do something to Jason. He’s spent the past couple of months, he’s spent years telling himself that they wouldn’t. That he doesn’t need them. Bruce’s son died tragically at fifteen in a crumpled warehouse at fifteen, and it doesn’t matter.

But it does.

And they do.

A full body shiver racks Jason’s form—part genuine, part show—as he groans and complains, “I don’t know about you, old man, but I’m catching my second death out here. Why don’t you come inside, and I’ll make myself some hot coco? Your demon spawn found this—did you know they made a Lego Batman game?”

“I did.”

Jason grins wolfishly, edging backwards. He doesn’t turn his gaze away from Bruce because at any moment the man may disappear, and Jason’s not sure that’s something he wants. Two days ago? Absolutely no question. But tonight?

Tonight, Jason doesn’t want to be alone.

“It’s so ridiculous,” Jason continues, “I think they just jammed all us Robins together to create one person. Like, seriously, do they think you just found some ageless child to swing recklessly over rooftops with you? And what about the girls that have taken the Robin mantle? They just thought it was some phase of some preppy boy in tights?”

“Hn.”

“And he’s white. Like, seriously, if you’re just going to make one, at least make it match the original or even the current one, and you’d have to be blind to confuse the colors. It’s outrageous.”

“You seem quite attached to this abstract version of Robin.”

“Well, yeah. It’s the most important part of Batman.”

Bruce’s face twitches and looks soft as he considers the back of Jason’s head; says, “Yeah. It is.”

:: ::

Jason doesn’t fix Bruce a cup of hot coco.

Bruce doesn’t ask for one, but Jason isn’t sure if it would have changed anything if he had. Denise says when he’s ready, and he’s not. But they can’t keep dancing around each other. Ignoring the other until they can’t, and then their interactions are tentative at best.

As brief as they’re proving to be lately. The baby birds swooping in to play interference at the beset of their big bird. Jason isn’t dumb. Ever since he’s told Dick about his hospital stay, he’s decided that Bruce was no longer trustworthy with Jason. A sweet, if predictable, sentiment.

Except.

Except Jason can’t decide when it’s time to mark Bruce’s name off his list if he’s never around him, and he wants nothing more than to see that dark line crossing through the letters. Joker’s had been almost cathartic and, he’ll admit, partly because he knew it would send the man into a spiral. One of his greatest accomplishments had been fucking up Jason, and he’s taken credit for it for a long time.

It’s only fitting that he also marks the beginning of Jason’s recovery. After all, he can’t remain a bitter killer for the rest of his life. People evolve, they recover, and he refuses to allow Joker to be the cause of him breaking. He can’t allow him to hold that type of power over his life—shouldn’t allow anyone with that sort of influence.

Bruce stands. Gunmetal blue eyes tracing over Jason: over his casual pajama-set and pale skin and tangled curls. Damian called the look domestic. Dick said that it looked good. Steph told him that it fit him. Jason wonders what Bruce’s thoughts on it was.

It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself, Bruce’s opinion doesn’t matter—it doesn’t.

“Jason,” Bruce starts, watching Jason settle himself on his couch; pulling his fuzzy purple blanket over his legs.

Denise would say he’s inserting barriers between him and perceived threats. From anyone else, it would sound like a bad thing. From Denise it sounds like a factual statement, and Jason knows Bruce is smart enough to pick up on the gesture.

He doesn’t care. Some petty part of him hopes Bruce will and realize the reason why Jason feels the need to protect himself from him.

“I think we need a break,” Jason says.

Bruce blinks dumbly. It’d be comical if Jason isn’t serious. He sips noisily from his cup, never taking his eyes from Bruce’s expressions. He doesn’t offer much, but he’s human. He expresses like everyone else just quicker, and easier to miss if you’re not trained to watch for them.

Bruce’s voice is flat, which Jason knows to mean that he’s affecting him. “What?”

“It’s unhealthy. This cycle we’ve found ourselves entrapped in,” Jason tells him simply, “You nearly killed me for thinking I broke your rule.”

“You shot Penguin in the face.”

“You keep a memorial of me in your cave like you’re still mourning me. Maybe you are. I don’t know, but I’m here, Bruce, and I’ve been here for years now. I can’t keep tiptoeing around your triggers because you’re not ready to admit that the kid that died is the same person as me. Like it or not.”

“Jason.”

“I stopped killing forever ago, and yet that night in front of the warehouse you still asked me if I killed anybody. After they showed up at my apartment and kidnapped me. They spent weeks torturing me, and you never bothered telling anybody else that I was even hurt. Dick thought I’d died, Bruce. Do you realize this?”

From the twitch of Bruce’s face, he did not. Jason takes another sip of his drink.

“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, Bruce,” Jason says when it becomes clear Bruce isn’t, “but I can’t keep falling in this gravitational pull of yours until I do something you disagree with, and you punish me. I can’t, B. I’m not strong enough.”

“I’m not strong enough to lose you. Not again, Jason.”

“And that’s our problem, Bruce. Ever since I came back, we do this. I push you away to hurt you. Then you draw me back close only to hurt me later. It doesn’t matter that it’s unintentional or we don’t mean it or don’t know. It’s what we’re doing, and we can’t keep doing it until one of us breaks. Hence, the break.”

Bruce’s entire face shutters. Fingers flex into fists at his sides as he closes his eyes and force a heavy breath into his lungs. His next words are ones Jason’s expecting, but still hurt.

“You forgave Joker in that park. The man who murdered you. The man you hate more than anyone else in the world. He destroyed you, Jay.”

“He killed me, Bruce,” Jason says simply. “Not destroyed me, and we’re not talking about Joker. We’re talking about you, and we’re talking about me, and the fact that you’re bringing up the man who killed me as an argument on how you’re better just further proves my point. I can’t be whatever it is you want. I can’t be the thing you lost, and, truthfully, I don’t want to go back to how things were. I can’t keep living in the past knowing how it ends.”

“Jason—”

“Jesus, B, quit acting like I’m dying or something. I’m not saying I don’t want to ever see you again. I’ll still go out on patrol, eventually, and I’ll help you where I can, but the man I sought after as a father died the same night I had. Just nobody had realized it at the time.”

Bruce’s expression goes cold as granite. Jason’s stomach is tight, but the pressure against his chest is alleviated. With each word, Jason feels lighter and the twist on Bruce’s face hurts, but Jason believes this is what’s best for them both. That someone needs to say this, so they can heal.

And maybe, one day, they’ll find their way back to each other.

“So, what? You don’t want to be my son anymore?” The words are careful, and Bruce is taking great pains to not show any expressions.

“I haven’t been your son since Ethiopia, Bruce,” Jason tells him less carefully, “because you never learned how to let that little boy go. You want me to go back to being that bright-eyed child that stole the tires off the Batmobile but refuse to realize that he’s never gone anywhere. He’s just changed. I’ve changed, Bruce, and until you come to terms with that, we can never go back to how things are.”

Bruce inhales. It’s noiseless. Jason can tell only by the way his chest expands then loosens as he unfurls the fingers at his sides.

“I understand, Jason,” though he doesn’t sound like he does, “I’ll stay away from you.”

“Christ Bruce, it’s not an either-or type of deal. We can still do things together, and I certainly don’t want you doing this out of some misplaced obligation to me. Otherwise, it won’t work. You have to realize the importance of this as much as I do.”

“I can’t lose you, Jason.”

“You’re not losing me. Not anymore than you already have. I’m just asking you to confront the truth of what’s already happened.”

“You don’t want to be my son.”

“I’m no one’s son, and I haven’t been in years. But I’m still Dick’s brother and Tim’s and Cass’s and Duke’s. I bought a house, and a truck because I’m trying to rebuild my life. This new life because I’m not the same person who died, but that little boy came back when I did. There’s no divide, no split, and you’re never going to get one of us without the other.”

“Alright,” the word is steeped with the tension trying to crack Bruce’s jaw, “I understand.”

Jason smiles brightly at him. “You don’t, but that’s alright. Maybe one day you will. Now, insert the game and bring me my controller. I’m about to wreck your furry ass at Lego Batman.”

Notes:

Now, obviously, Jason's therapy rules are basically taken directly from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I just thought they were an interesting concept and wondered about how they'd take with other characters.

Nextly, since the Robin: 80th Anniversary special, I personally headcanon that Jason likes fixing things. And that he's good at it. Also, its a bit in the air for me rather or not Jason still kills. In some things he does, in others he doesn't, but I wanted a story where Jason doesn't kill because he doesn't want to. Not because Bruce doesn't want him to or because they have some agreement or whatever.

And, finally, yes. I know I left Dodger's storyline unresolved. I'm considering writing a sequel-esque continuation that'll probably have more plot. As in, it'll have a plot, but the main purpose I wanted for this was just Jason reconciling with the family and felt that the spot it ended was a good resolution for them.

Feel free to shout at me down in the comments. I'm very shout friendly.