Work Text:
It was eight in the morning when the Cave’s alarm popped up, and Bruce squinted at the notification for a full ten seconds, only halfway through his coffee, before levering out of his seat.
“Breakfast, Master Bruce,” Alfred called pointedly from the kitchen, and Bruce raised a hand in acknowledgment.
“Just checking the Cave for a sec, I’ll be back.” Bruce couldn’t think of who would go to the Cave this early in the morning. Damian, Tim, and Cass were all at home, Dick usually texted in advance of his visits, and Steph was far more likely to waltz in and eat Alfred’s breakfast than go straight to the Cave.
The question lasted him all the way down the stairs, until he saw the broad frame sitting at the workstation and tinkering with what looked like broken pieces of a necklace.
“Jason?” The name came out more as surprise than a question—Bruce had updated Jason’s codes a couple of months ago, after he came to their aid in an Arkham breakout and Bruce found him grumpily mother henning his three younger siblings, but Jason was still prickly and more apt to set explosions than communicate directly.
That he’d come to the Batcave of his own volition was…unusual.
Jason hummed an acknowledgement, not looking up. He wasn’t wearing his gear, which was even stranger, and Bruce took a moment to drink in the sight of his son, twenty years old and here and alive, before taking a cautious step closer.
“Is everything okay?” Bruce asked tentatively.
“Peachy,” Jason replied shortly. His tone was missing his usual testiness and he was apparently fully concentrated on whatever he was doing.
“Can I help?” Bruce probed again. There were a lot of tiny pieces littering the workstation table and Jason was fiddling with a pair of tweezers.
“No,” Jason replied, not antagonizing but clearly final. Bruce wavered in place, debating whether or not to push it—Jason was in a weirdly pleasant mood—before deciding to let sleeping dragons lie.
If he bombarded Jason the first time he showed up to the Cave, the boy might decide not to come again, and Bruce was too pleased at the sight of his son in his home to disturb the fragile peace.
“Okay,” Bruce said, carefully withdrawing, “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
“Got it,” Jason said distractedly instead of the vitriolic response Bruce was expecting.
Bruce headed back upstairs, wrong-footed.
“Any trouble?” Alfred asked the moment Bruce stepped back into the kitchen, and Bruce curled his fingers around his coffee as he tried to pinpoint why he felt off. Jason was acting uncharacteristically—Jason had been quiet, which wasn’t that uncharacteristic, especially when he was working on something. Bruce was just used to the more aggressive Hood.
“Jason’s downstairs,” Bruce said, unable to fight the tiny smile. Four of his children were home today.
Alfred actually paused. “That’s wonderful,” he said, expression warm, “I’ll go down and give him a breakfast tray.”
“Careful,” Bruce started to say but Alfred tutted over him.
“I know how to talk to my grandson, thank you, Master Bruce,” Alfred sniffed and headed back towards the kitchen.
The question of what was Jason doing remained a niggling thought in the back of his head.
Stephanie had stopped by after school and Bruce retreated from the all-out brawl that was happening over the video game controllers to head to the Cave, where it would be nice and quiet. He could look over a few active cases before it was time for dinner and patrol and—
Jason was still here.
Bruce stopped dead in the middle of the Batcave.
“Jason?” Bruce’s voice went high as he stared at his second son. Jason was in the same clothes, still hunched over the workstation table, poking at the necklace with tweezers. There were no little pieces scattered around anymore, and when Jason looked up, blinking distantly, Bruce could actually see the effort it took him to focus.
“Bruce,” Jason said, voice gravel rough, “What’re you doing here?” He yawned widely and Bruce abruptly realized that Jason looked exhausted. His expression was sagging and he was blinking too often and his voice was softer than usual.
“I…came to work on some cases,” Bruce said slowly, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Jason blinked a couple more times and rubbed at his face before exhaling loudly and turning back to Bruce. He looked slightly clearer. “Yeah, I just needed to use your setup to fix this thing,” he waved at the necklace before trying to stifle another yawn.
Bruce stepped forward to get a closer look but Jason reared up, eyes wild, “No, don’t!” Bruce froze. “Don’t touch it!”
Bruce hadn’t seen this extreme a reaction since Alfred tried to throw out Jason’s old threadbare red hoodie.
“You can’t touch it.” Jason was breathing heavily and his eyes looked wild even though they weren’t glowing green.
“I’m not going to touch it,” Bruce said, his tone automatically dipping to slow and soothing, “I promise.”
Jason slowly began to untense. “It’s important,” he stressed, “You can’t break it.”
“I won’t,” Bruce reassured, “Is everything okay?” He considered the traces of panic still lingering on Jason’s face, and asked carefully, “Do you have a migraine?”
The code was simple and elegant and Bruce had used it with each one of his children.
Jason blinked at him in confusion before recognition solidified. “No,” he ran a hand across his face, “Nothing like that.” He yawned and slumped back in the chair, looking more like an overworked college student than a crime lord. “I just spent a lot of time fixing that,” Jason grumbled, “And I don’t want to do it again.”
He punctuated his words with a halfhearted glare.
“I’m not going to break it,” Bruce reiterated, though he was itching to figure out what it was and what Jason was doing with it, “I promise.”
Jason stared at him with narrowed eyes before appearing to accept Bruce’s word.
“Would you like to stay for dinner? Alfred’s making lasagna,” Bruce said, out of politeness rather than any real hope that Jason would accept. That Jason had deigned to spend the day in the Cave was itself enough—
“Sure,” Jason bounced up, “I love Alfred’s lasagna.” He headed for the stairs, leaving Bruce gaping at his back.
The last time Jason had had dinner in the Manor was before his death.
Resolving to ask Ivy if she’d misplaced any mood enhancers, Bruce followed Jason up, all thoughts of casework abandoned. Jason was definitely acting uncharacteristically, and Bruce could never resist a mystery. Jason wasn’t under duress, or aware that he was under duress, which left several types of conscious and unconscious manipulation.
Mad Hatter was in prison, Ivy had been quiet lately, the Joker was still in Arkham—there were no major Rogues out on street at the moment, their current cases were all small fish. Maybe something from out of town—but Jason hadn’t been with the Outlaws for months.
Bruce made his way to the kitchen to find his other children all clustered around the doorway. Inside, Jason was helping Alfred roll out the pasta sheets, a spot of flour on his cheek. He was grinning and Alfred was smiling fondly.
“Okay,” Steph said, sotto voce, “Did I step into an alternate universe when I wasn’t looking? Did someone tear the framework of reality again? What is this?”
Jason looked up, one eyebrow raised, “What is what?”
Steph gestured incoherently to all of him. The second eyebrow went up.
“Did you turn into a pod person?” Tim asked, looking very mistrustful.
“Did I—is that a joke or a legitimate thing we have to be worried about now?” Jason was frowning, “Do we have actual pod people?”
“No,” Bruce clarified before Steph could jump in. He didn’t trust the glint in her eyes. “There are no pod people.”
“If Todd is making dinner, I refuse to partake,” Damian said snootily, glaring at Jason, “I shudder to think of what mangled concoction he will pass off as food.”
Jason held the rolling pin up to point it threateningly at Damian, “First of all, you little brat, no one’s forcing food down your throat, and secondly—”
“Rest assured, Master Damian,” Alfred cut him off, “Dinner remains under my purview and it will meet my usual standards.” His tone was a subtle rebuke and Damian responded with a huff before stalking away.
“Something’s clearly wrong,” Tim still looked suspicious, “You’re in the Manor. You’re never in the Manor.”
“Maybe I decided it was easier to poison you if I had access to your food, Replacement,” Jason shrugged and turned back to the pasta. The words were missing the venom they would’ve had a week ago.
“Nope,” Tim was watching with narrowed eyes, “Not buying it. How can we be sure you’re Jason?”
Jason put the rolling pin down and stared directly at Tim. Even in the bright light of the kitchen, his eyes flickered a virulent green. “If you wanted a rematch, kid,” Jason said levelly, “All you had to do was ask.”
Tim edged a step back. “Cass will do it,” he said confidently, hiding behind his older sister.
Cass had been staring at Jason the whole time, head slightly tilted. “No,” she said finally, her tone firm, “It’s Jason.”
Tim turned on her with a betrayed look and Jason actually laughed, a bark of a sound that even he looked surprised to hear. He immediately ducked his head, cheeks tinging pink in the way they always did when he was embarrassed, and Bruce felt his lips quirk in response.
Cass and Tim headed out, still squabbling while Steph egged them on, and Jason turned to help Alfred with the sauce. Bruce stayed there, watching, unable to shake the feeling of wrongness though he couldn’t figure what was wrong.
Jason had just…changed. Abruptly. Two days ago, he’d told Bruce to fuck off, complete with warning shots, when Bruce accidentally crossed into Crime Alley, and today he was joking with Alfred in the kitchen and helping with dinner. Something had happened, but Bruce didn’t know what.
After a brief hesitation, he shot off a text to Dick.
Family dinner tonight.
And before Dick could come up with an excuse—
Jason’s here.
Maybe all of them together could figure out what was going on with his second son.
Dinner was loud and rambunctious. To be fair, dinners had started being loud and rambunctious when he’d taken in Dick, and the normal was punctuated by only brief, sporadic periods of quiet. Tonight, with everyone in the same room for the very first time, the chatter was deafening.
There were at least three separate conversations occurring, Tim and Damian were engaged in a silent but ruthless war to transfer vegetables to each other’s plates, Dick was bouncing around as usual, and everyone was casting subtle glances at Jason.
Jason was quiet. He hadn’t said anything after sitting down, avoiding all attempts to draw him into conversation, but neither did he seem focused on his food. He was just watching them, his gaze flitting around the table in a pattern, like he was checking them off a list, over and over and over again.
It wasn’t calculating either, or cynical. Bruce couldn’t begin to untangle all the emotions on Jason’s face, but he could spot both concern and hope. Jason was getting increasingly tense as the dinner stretched out, trepidation visible on his face as his fingers tightened on his fork and his gaze flicked faster and faster and faster.
Bruce found out what Jason was waiting for when Dick got up, plate in hand, “Alright, that was delicious, my compliments to the chefs. If anyone wants me to help them stretch out before patrol, let me—”
“No.” The entire table fell silent when Jason spoke up. “No patrol.”
Dick shot a quietly bewildered glance at Bruce before turning to Jason, “What do you mean? Tonight’s a clear night and we’re all here, we can—”
“No,” Jason stressed, staring straight at Bruce, “We don’t have to patrol every night. Gotham will keep. Can’t we just—have a movie night or something?” His tone sounded oddly rehearsed. “We’re all here for once. Can we spend the night as a family?”
Everyone was staring slack-jawed at Jason.
Before one of the younger ones could pipe up—Damian had a mutinous expression on his face and Tim looked outraged—Bruce asked calmly, “Is there some reason you don’t want us to patrol tonight? Is something going on?”
“No,” Jason shook his head, and he sounded so weary, “But we can take a day off. You told me that, remember? Can’t we take tonight off?” His tone wasn’t robotic but it was too fluid, like Jason had practiced it in a mirror before coming here.
Bruce looked at Dick who gave him a confused look and a head tilt—Dick had no idea what was going on either. Each of his other children looked similarly puzzled. Bruce paused on Cassandra, who shrugged and made a face—Jason was being sincere, but he was planning something and she didn’t know what.
Jason wanted them to stay here. Ordinarily, Bruce would be more receptive to his children’s requests, whatever surprise or prank they were planning, but Jason was the Red Hood. Bruce couldn’t trust that this wasn’t a play to get them out of the way for some criminally inclined plan—
“Dad, please.”
Everyone froze. The air was so still they could’ve heard a pin drop, and every face bore an expression that clearly communicated what-shit-what-this-is-going-to-be-a-disaster. Bruce momentarily wondered if he was hallucinating.
Jason was still staring at him, expression soft and pleading, and Bruce had never once been able to stand up to that face, especially not with—Dad, he called him Dad—Bruce had never dared to dream—that was his son, his Jay-lad, and Bruce would give him absolutely anything he asked for.
“Sure,” he said hoarsely, “No patrol.”
The rest of his children were ready to erupt, but the sheer relief on Jason’s face halted their protests. Dick looked incredibly concerned but he plastered on a smile and redirected, “Movie night it is! Who wants to choose?”
Jason didn’t allow anyone to leave. Tim tried to slink out and Stephanie said she was going to go home and Alfred attempted to leave after the first movie and each one was met with the full force of Jason’s intense stare before grudgingly capitulating.
Tim had gotten his revenge by wresting the remote from Damian and putting on a Star Wars marathon, but Bruce didn’t think Jason even noticed. He certainly wasn’t paying attention to the movie—he spent more time staring at his siblings than the TV.
Bruce had climbed past worry and into rabid concern. He kept his gaze trained on Jason, afraid that if he looked away, his son would disappear. Dick had texted him long strings of question marks, just as worried.
Between the several unspoken conversations occurring, Bruce didn’t know if anyone was actually concentrating on the movie.
The third movie was wrapping up by the time Jason finally moved. He headed closer to his siblings and visibly counted them all before he walked out of the den. Damian and Steph were tangled up together, fast asleep. Cass was in an armchair, eyes closed, and Alfred had been snoring in the back since the end of the second movie. Dick, with Tim slumped across his extended legs, gave Bruce a silent glance as Bruce straightened off the couch.
“Need backup?” Dick asked quietly.
“I’ll let you know,” Bruce said, absently ruffling his eldest son’s hair as he headed out of the room.
Jason wasn’t moving particularly fast, and Bruce caught the edge of his shirt disappearing through the open clock door. He followed behind quietly, keeping a healthy distance between them until he emerged into the Cave.
Jason strode across the Cave floor and stopped in front of the necklace he’d repaired. He didn’t turn around at the sound of Bruce’s footsteps, or even when Bruce stepped right next to him.
“What time is it?” Jason asked hoarsely.
Bruce checked his watch automatically. “Twelve fifteen,” he replied.
“Are you sure?”
“What?”
Jason enunciated, “Are. You. Sure.” He took a ragged breath, fingers clenched tight on the table. “What’s the exact time?”
Bruce looked at his watch again before pulling out his phone. “Twelve thirteen,” he said, “Do you want the seconds too?”
“No,” Jason said, high and wavering, his grip spasming, “I—I need a containment box.”
Bruce looked at the necklace. And then at Jason. And at the necklace again.
He went to get a containment box without a word. There were a thousand questions on his tongue, a hundred theories swirling into place, the detective in him already churning away, putting broken necklace and containment box and no patrol and Jason together in various configurations as he tried to make sense of it all.
“Here,” Bruce proffered the box and Jason took it with trembling fingers.
Carefully, gently, as though the necklace would break if Jason breathed on it wrong, he picked up the repaired necklace and placed it inside the box. He stared at it for a moment that stretched in silence, before snapping the box closed.
The sound was startlingly loud in the quiet.
Jason took a deep, cracking breath. “I suppose you want an explanation,” he said, voice rough. He still wasn’t looking at Bruce.
“You’ve been acting…strange,” Bruce said carefully, “Is there something going on?”
Jason made a slightly hysterical chuckle, “There was something going on.” He motioned to the necklace, “I accidentally broke that. Yesterday. Turns out it had a curse on it. The nasty kind.”
Bruce felt the kick of anxiety from the addition of curse to his solidifying theories. “Zatanna or Constantine,” he immediately started, but Jason cut him off.
“Already talked to Constantine,” he said wearily, stumbling back a step to sink into the chair. His expression was open and exhausted as he stared up at Bruce. “That’s how I knew how to fix it.”
Bruce stared at Jason, waiting. There was something missing in Jason’s explanation, and it was heavy, Bruce could feel its weight.
“The curse,” Jason said haltingly, “It’s a—a time loop, I guess.” Something in Bruce went cold. “Of today. Wake up at seven fifteen every morning and it resets at midnight.” His tone was matter of fact, like this wasn’t the first time he’d explained it. “Someone dies. Every time. No pattern to who, but every loop, someone in the family dies.”
His voice had gotten rough again.
Bruce shoved down the part of his mind screaming and demanding to know every single detail. “Including you?” he asked in a remarkably even tone. He could barely restrain himself from reaching out to hug Jason and reassure himself that his son was alive.
“No,” Jason’s mouth quirked slightly, “That’s what the curse wants. I die, it ends. Unfortunately for it, I don’t give up that easily.”
Now Bruce really wanted to hug Jason.
“I finally tracked down Constantine,” Jason said, closing his eyes and leaning back, “And now the curse is broken. You can add that to your collection of junk.”
Bruce curled his fingers into a fist in lieu of reaching out. “How many loops?” Bruce asked quietly.
“Twenty-one.”
Bruce scanned Jason’s face. There were no physical injuries, but Jason’s exhaustion was visible in the lack of guardedness. No hard green eyes or clenched jaw, no frown or vicious sneer, and it felt like the years had melted away from his face. For the first time in too long, Bruce felt like he was looking at his son. Not the Red Hood, but Jason. Not Batman’s greatest failure, not the Robin who died, not a vigilante or antihero or crime lord or whatever Hood woke up and decided to be that day.
Just Jason. Just his son.
Bruce reached out to grab the containment box—he would need to label it before putting it away, and file a report with the barebones details Jason had given him—but he was halted by Jason’s voice, so quiet it was barely a whisper.
“I was late for my patrol route last loop,” he said. He still hadn’t opened his eyes. “There was a report of gang activity in the Bowery I was going to check out. You beat me to it.”
Bruce stayed exactly where he was, frozen to the spot.
“They were—it was a trap,” Jason said, voice choked, “The warehouse was rigged to blow.” He was taking deliberately even breaths. “I—I—I got there too late.”
“Jay—”
Jason opened his eyes and they were wet and glimmering. “You died,” his voice cracked, “You died in my arms.”
Bruce abandoned the box and stepped towards his son and Jason leaned forward at the same time, practically throwing himself into Bruce’s grasp. Bruce held him tightly, held him through the shaking and trembling as his shirt grew damp and Jason clutched him like a drowning man with a life raft.
“It’s okay,” Bruce said thickly, his mind split between my son and crying child. He wanted to break down in tears himself, but Jason was struggling to breathe and Bruce ran a hand down his back in soothing strokes. “It’s okay, I didn’t die. I’m right here, it’s okay.”
“I saw you!” Jason nearly wailed, “I had—I had to watch you—”
“It’s okay,” Bruce said as calmly as he could, “You broke the curse. Everyone’s safe.” Jason made an inarticulate sound and clutched him tighter. “Everyone’s safe,” Bruce whispered to Jason’s hair, holding him safe.
Everyone was safe.
And in the end, that was all that mattered.