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"You're safe now."
The first time Jason hears it, it feels like relief, like something he can trust in. He leans into the tender touch against his cheek and closes his eyes against the gentle smile that curves her lips. He's seven and there's a bruise blossoming along the opposite jaw. His memory feels like molten lava, a thing he shouldn't touch, shouldn't step too near, so he believes it when she tells him he fell. Tripped and fell, that's all.
In the night, he curls in on himself against the cold beneath a too-thin sheet, sleeps on the side he doesn't prefer as protection against the ache in his jaw. He closes his eyes and rallies against the dreams that whisper of something different.
It doesn't help.
He shudders in his sleep as a fist strikes him again and again. A fist attached to an arm filled with scars, attached to bunching muscles and a white t-shirt.
Even in his dreams, Jason doesn't look up. He knows better than add a face to his assailant. He's been here before. It's just the first time she's been coherent enough to tell him the reality she sees.
"You're safe now."
The second time he hears it, he knows it for the lie it is. He's eleven and he's sprawled on the floor, there's blood slipping down his chin and his vision's swimming. Two people are sliding into four and coming back to into two before him. He sees the halo of her hair against the kitchen light, the cigarette in the man's hand. He can't even remember the guy's name, the ever revolving door of his mom's dealers as they tire of her payment methods leaving the man eternally nameless, faceless despite how Jason's gazing up at him. He doesn't matter.
Jason feels like he doesn't matter, either. Down here on the floor, ruining his last good shirt, reigning in all his anger.
So much anger.
He closes his eyes and rests his head on the floor and listens to the rest of her lies. The sweet croon of her voice, so believing that she's telling her son the truth. Like this, she really believes it'll be okay.
Jason lets her believe it one more day.
"You're safe now."
The third time tastes like poison. It doesn't matter that it's rolling off the tongue of a man the whole city seems to think is their savior. Well, the portion of the city that isn't scared shitless or angry at the guy, at least.
Jason's almost twelve. Three more days. He's angry and bloody and there's a seething pit of snakes in the hollow of his stomach. He's been carved out, gutted, everything in him replaced with salt and disillusionment. His mom's latest dealer had him dragged into the alley behind their apartment, had him up against the wall.
Jason doesn't think about the rest. About what more could have happened if this freak in a bat suit hadn't just showed up.
He stands against the brick wall, his hands around his middle, the curse of his tears drying on his cheeks, and he thinks he knows what it is to wish death on someone. It doesn't matter he doesn't know the guy's name. It doesn't matter that Batman beat the guy until he was screaming.
It's not enough. It'll never be enough.
When he hears the sirens, when Batman bends to double-check the way he's tied the guy up, Jason disappears. Does what he's learned to do as a self-preservation mechanism, and becomes one with the night.
Later, beneath the scrap of a blanket that doesn't even cover his feet anymore, his shoulders shaking, his stomach rolling, Jason closes his eyes and lies to himself. He doesn't use the same words that have become venom. He tells himself he'll survive. That's all he can even pretend to promise himself after tonight.
"You're safe now."
Jason's staring at the marble floors and the mountains of books, at the couch that cost more than everything Jason has ever consumed or used in his life.
If this is safety, he doesn't want it.
He's ready to tell Bruce Wayne where to fucking stuff it until he turns and sees the way Bruce is looking at him. He expects pity in the man's eyes. Expects him to see a poor little abused street brat whose mother just OD'd two weeks ago and whose life is falling apart so bad he tried to lift a fucking superhero's tires.
Instead, he sees a pain that mirrors his own. He doesn't understand why. This man has everything he could ever want. Millions of dollars, a giant home, a literal swimming pool in the backyard that's big enough to be a nature preserve. The man's Batman for crying out loud. There's nothing in the world that should make this guy's eyes tell him he gets it, that he truly understands Jason's pain.
Still, it seals his lips shut, leaves him looking at the books on the shelf in front of him instead of spitting words laced with acid like he wants to.
The soft, "Any books you want are yours," is what Bruce leaves him with. Then he's gone and Jason's alone and the fireplace is crackling and that super expensive couch is calling his name. He chooses one and carefully takes it to the couch, curls up, and reads until dawn's light is peeking through the window and when he falls asleep, he's warmer than he's ever been in his entire life.
There's a second where he thinks: maybe he does want this safety, this warmth, this place.
He tucks his pain way down deep and casts the blanket of his lies over himself, just like he always does. He's strong. He'll survive.
The nightmares still come and the hands still grasp him and cast him against brick walls, dash him against the floor, attempt unspeakable things. Some things Jason cannot escape, even in sleep.
"You're safe now."
The fifth time Jason hears the words, he hears them through the metallic ringing in his ears, like an echo inside the chamber of his mind.
His face is swollen, blood is trickling from his mouth and from the feel of it, nearly all his ribs are broken, shattered and attempting to skewer him alive. Every breath feels like a fight. His nails dig at the concrete flooring of the warehouse, his cape dragging along after him, torn and tattered and spattered in crimson.
It takes him far too long to get to the door. Even longer to grasp and haul his way to his feet. For one swaying moment, he's standing, padlock grasped in his hands, his belt somewhere in the dimness of the vast warehouse instead of where it's supposed to be.
All he can do is turn and slide down the door and that's when he sees it. He sees the seconds left in his life, a giant sickly red sign, screaming the end of everything as he knows it.
Jason's shoulders sag and his world dims at the edges and he knows exactly which lie it is that he needs to tell himself now. So he closes his eyes, blots out the handful of seconds he has left in this world, sees the things that hedged in and gave him hope. He sees Bruce reading beside him before the fireplace. Alfred teaching him to bake. Batman flying through the night beside him, his cape fluttering on the wind.
He refuses to poison it all with the mother who seems to have come back from death just to lead him to his own. He kills the thought with the same ruthless efficiency as his own life is being snuffed out.
His own voice echoes, a cracked and broken little thing in the stillness of the warehouse. "You're safe now." A single tear tracks down his cheek.
Jason doesn't feel it when he dies. He's there and then he's not. Alive and then gone. He never thinks a single other thought as his time runs out and he dies with his words still a caress in his mouth.
"You're safe now."
The next time he hears it, Jason's already been back for well over a year. He's lived through amnesia, the streets, a scalding dip in the pit, and the seemingly unending rage that curates his every thought and action.
He's taken a whirl on the Gotham City villain revolving door, come out the other side with a sense of who he is now, who he thinks he was always meant to be. He's still grappling with the fragments of his mind, the fractures of his memories, the rage that turns his vision green in the early morning light. But he's settling.
Or he thinks he is until he's caught on the edge of an explosion and his whole psyche goes for a dive. One minute he's tying up the ones he thinks can be turned around, the others a distant memory his smoking gun has taken care of. And then he hears the sickening scream he learned a time or twenty as Robin filling the night. A missile tearing through the sky.
Jason doesn't think, he just runs. It doesn't matter if it's coming here or not. He has to run and everything in him tells him so. He spills out the door and the explosion behind him takes him off his feet, sails him through the air, flings him crashing into a shipping container like he's nothing more than debris.
It's Bruce's broken voice he hears screaming across the night before his world goes black and silent.
"Jason!" Not Red Hood. Not Robin. Jason.
There's hands holding his body, tears wetting his hair, the heaviness of Bruce's cape draped around them both, a heavy curtain holding the world away. It's only when he croaks, "Bruce?" that he hears those words.
"You're safe now."
Jason breaks. He lays in Bruce's arms and releases the desperate hold that's been keeping him together. Shatters into a million pieces and hopes and prays that for once in his damn life, it might be true.
He doesn't have a clue how they leave the docks or how they traverse the black of night to arrive at the manor. Not the slightest inkling how he's lying in the Master bedroom, curled in Bruce's warm sheets, Bruce sitting by the bed, his face ashen and his grip tight and his eyes bloodshot red. All he knows is that look is for him and no matter the things they've been through, the things that have been said, Bruce still cares.
Jason doesn't see an abuser when he looks up into Bruce's face. He sees the man who did his best to protect him, to save him. He sees the man who tried so hard to tell him how it broke him to lose him. Robin's replacement doesn't matter here, in this room. Joker drawing breath is a line in the sand, but it doesn't belong here, between them, when Bruce is looking at him like that.
So Jason curls his fingers around Bruce's and closes his eyes and whispers, "I'm safe now," because this time he's telling Bruce that he understands. The words aren't for him.
"You're safe now."
Jason's the one speaking them the next time. He's crouching over Bruce, stroking his hand through blood-greased hair, looking into a face that's mostly a bruise. He can't imagine how Bruce is still conscious. He remembers how it feels to be one degree less beaten than this, recalls how close to dying he was before he ever saw those neon numbers telling him of his demise. Bruce can only barely be hanging on.
Jason isn't sure if he's telling Bruce he can let go now if he needs to or if he's telling him he'll get him out of here. All he really knows is he made it. He got here and Bruce still has a pulse, still has ears to hear him with and consciousness to understand him with.
He slides to his knees, careful, so careful not to touch Bruce's broken body anymore than he already is. His breath is tight in his chest as he takes the kit from Bruce's belt and extracts the tiny vial, attaches the needle, and finds the barest hint of where he needs to be on Bruce's wrist. He pushes the needle into his skin, raises his gaze to Bruce and whispers, "You're safe now," and it's permission and hope and it's something that makes his chest tight.
Pushing the plunger down, Jason watches Bruce until his consciousness fades. Then he tucks the needle away and picks Bruce up and carries him away.
He's heard the stories; he's seen the footage. The irony doesn't escape him in the slightest.
It's a week before Bruce opens his eyes again. A week that Jason spends by his bed save the evening of the second day. He's joined by three others in the night when he goes. Silent. Deadly. Unforgiving, they enter the darkness. And when they come home, there is no report, no footage, no words to be spoken. They have done for Bruce what no one did for Jason. Jason's finger pulled the trigger, but there were four of them in the fight.
Jason shows none of that when Bruce opens his eyes. He only strokes his soft, clean hair and smiles down at him and whispers, "Made you a promise, didn't I?" and Bruce holds his hand like he never wants him to leave.
For the first time, Jason wonders if maybe he doesn't.
"You're safe now."
Jason whispers it against Bruce's ear in the stretch of morning before dawn's first light. He's curled behind Bruce on the bed, holding him tight through the violent shudders and shakes of his nightmares. The echoes of Bruce's scream are still ringing on the air when he says it. A breath of truth against the backdrop of horror Bruce has been living through night after night.
It's been months. Jason knows how it is. He lives it on repeat. So he uses the words he desperately needs to reclaim and births them into the darkness, holds Bruce so tender and close.
He feels him cry. Feels the way his body trembles and his world breaks. Feels the way he puts himself back together. But most of all, he feels that Bruce never pushes him away.
They live their fragile world like they're on a ship sailing the same cursed seas again and again and again. But they stand at the helm together now. Words remain unspoken, feelings are a thing that other people discuss and he and Bruce just shove way down deep when they're not in the safe space of the darkest hours before dawn. Even there, the words they speak are gossamer and light.
It's a great many years before Jason finds himself in Bruce's bedroom in a completely different context. He expects to wake to Bruce's body trembling, to his voice yelling in the night. Rather, he wakes to the ghost of a palm against his cheek, to the rasp of Bruce's aching voice breaking all their unspoken rules.
He holds Bruce's hand against his skin and listens to things that make him feel warm and heady and light. He listens to the illusion of emotion solidify, to the things he's thought might be true be spoken as gospel. He holds Bruce's hand and lets him feel his tears as he rips himself open and lets Bruce see the raw naked truth of who he is. He tells him the world if only because Bruce is the first person to ever tell him his.
When Bruce's strong hands hold him close, when those skillful fingers take him apart, when his mouth finds home and purchase on his skin, Jason can only hang on for the ride. He holds and he clutches and he fights to brand every single second of it into his memory.
In the morning light, he expects there to be shame, regrets, to be alone in the great expanse of Bruce's bed. What he finds instead makes him believe, for the first time, in the truest sense of the words he's heard so many times. He says them in his head, tells them to himself, and he means them more than he ever has.
"You're safe now."
For the first time in so many aching years, Jason knows what it means to be loved and no matter what else happens, he knows, if nothing else, his heart is safe now.
He reaches out and takes forever in his hands and promises himself; he's gonna hold on tight.