Chapter Text
After coming back to himself, Jason had been told multiple times that his dad had never avenged him, that he had been replaced almost immediately, that he hadn't been seen as a murdered son, but as a fallen soldier. Combining that knowledge with the heightened emotions from Pit, it had taken him over a year to calm down enough to train properly to go back and fix everything himself. That wasn't to say that he was not still full of rage, he just had enough control of himself not to lash out constantly anymore.
The return to Gotham felt like coming home in the oddest ways. Crime Alley was still a shit hole, but it was where he had grown up and it was part of him. At the same time, the place was different now. It had changed even since he had been back for a few hours about a year ago.
The streets weren't cleaner, but there were less homeless people bundled up in every corner. There were still call girls on every street corner, but they no longer looked high as a kite or half starved. All the shops still had bars in the windows, but you didn't get looked at like you were about to hold them up when you walked in. This both was and wasn't a huge thing.
His unmistakable accent was the only reason he wasn't viewed as an outsider anymore but at the same time it was clear to everybody that he had been gone awhile because when he asked about Batman's current Robin everybody looked at him like he had a second head. That was how he learned about Cardinal and Spoiler. Some people said they had both been Robin at one point while others claim that one of the girl Robins, the one with the Narrows accent, had been offed just just like the boy with the Park Row one had a few years before and Spoiler had been around with the dead girl and was now stepping up to replace her dead friend. But they all agreed, the Bat no longer had a Robin and hadn't for over a year, a little after his brief visit.
The kid he had been told by Talia and everyone else had replaced him? Apparently Bruce had only fostered him for a little while and the kid had moved out of Gotham after his parents died, but not before setting up a food bank in the name of Jason Todd-Wayne that was neutral territory, just like the doc's clinic. The grave he had pulled himself out of all those years ago? It was covered in unopened bags of his favorite snacks, handpicked flowers, and graffitied with quotes from some of his favorite books.
While Joker hadn't been killed in the early days after the funeral, he had vanished about a year ago after grabbing Cardinal. Batman had searched for him for months, GCPD had a paid tip line for any hints on the clown's location, but nothing. It had taken the red bird a while to come back to the streets, but he had returned. The rumor around the Alley was that Harley had snapped and ended him, but there was no proof.
Jason looked through old newspapers at the library, found old articles and news broadcasts online, questioned locals who had been there during that time, and not a one of them could answer his questions. This meant that he had only a handful of options left to him. He could reveal himself by breaking into the batcave and getting everything straight from the source, he could confront his absentee big brother, he could guilt-trip it out of Alfie, or he could break into one of the other bat affiliated locations that would be less likely to tip off Batman.
He wasn't really sure whether or not his old man had ever been told that Goldie had added him to the system in Titan Tower. It was during one of their big fights and Barbie was the one who did the adding, so his codes probably weren't purged during a usual update. If he snuck in there, he could probably find out everything he wanted to know without anyone having a clue he had been there.
Soft hacking the system wasn't too hard, he had seen Babs, Dick, and Bruce do it a thousand times, but it only gave him basic information and he couldn't risk a deeper hack. Between that, news breaks, and knowing the secret identity of all the members, he was able to tell when they were in the Tower or not. The hard part was to either have a) everyone present so he could knock them all out or b) everyone be out at the same time.
The team liked to have half their members present and half their members in reserve most of the time. When they went out on a simple mission they always left a few people behind, so there was almost always somebody present and don't even get Jason started on the fact that several members practically lived there. It was taking so long that he had basically already established himself as a crime lord and drug boss by the time he finally got a notification that the building should be empty based on the algorithm he had put in place.
Knowing that there could always be an error in the program, he went back and verified everything and sure enough, there shouldn't be anybody at Titan Tower currently. It was a good thing that Goldie had made the old Bat put a zeta beam site outside of the batcave during one of their more aggressive fights, which meant he was in San Francisco and inside the building within the hour after hoping through a few cities to throw off any Shadows that might be tailing him and reporting back to the al Ghuls. Since he didn't need anybody sneaking in while he was nose deep in research, he put the whole building into lockdown which would keep anybody from entering from the main doors, roof access, or zeta and also shut down the entire surveillance system. To anyone outside, it would look like there had been a power surge that had been misidentified as an attempt at infiltration, and that it would be unlocked after a set period of time, making it safe for him to wander around without constantly checking over his shoulder.
So imagine his surprise when he heard voices while he was in the main control room, about to log into the system with his old credentials. He turned off the screen and ducked into a defensible position where he might be overlooked. In walked the kid he had thought was his replacement with another kid between the ages of twelve and sixteen, both entirely distracted from their surroundings.
“I don't know why we had to come here to do this. I know you can do this back at the apartment.”
“Technically, but it's a lot easier to do without having to hack my way in and use all the back door programs. I just want to see what exactly set everything off.”
“You mean you couldn't just let it be a sign for us to hang out and decided now would be a good time to work instead.”
“You didn't have to help me.”
“You thought I was going to let you come over here and geek out without anybody to pull you back from a case bender? It's like you don't even know me! I knew you wouldn't be able to focus until you did, so I'm here to make you leave as soon as you figure it out so we can actually do something together today that isn't hero related.”
“You are just bitter that B wouldn't let you go to the party with your team.”
“No, I get where he's coming from. None of them realize that I can't legally drink, so it makes sense to not put me in that kind of situation. Am I a little ticked that I don't get to record the others being stupid? Of course, but that's why I got someone covering that for me.”
“Who?”
“Oracle.”
“You know what, I don't even know why I had to ask. Of course it was her.”
“So, no, I am not all grumpy because I didn't get to go drink with the others. I am grumpy because you promised that we would have the whole day because the Titans were all free for the day and now we are here instead of Disney.”
“I don't even get why you and Wing love rollercoasters so much. You guys get to do way cooler things as heroes and yet you just want to get strapped into a death machine and flung around.”
“You have sat through the powerpoint, you know exactly why we enjoy it. I would have settled for going to that place in Bludhaven, but you insisted that we try all of the Disney rides first so that we could tell him exactly how sucky his local roller coaster park was. I am just holding you to your promise.”
“Okay, as soon as I find out what managed to bypass all of the redundancies we can go Disneyland.”
Jason had so many questions, but most of them were about who the hell the kid was. He clearly knew Batman, enough not to be allowed to go somewhere with alcohol, Nightwing, and the secret identity of Cardinal since there was no mask or anything hiding who he was. Jason wasn't positive who Oracle was, but he had a pretty good guess from what he had heard around the streets and through the soft hack. None of that told him who the pipsqueak was or what hero he was that he could possibly be convincing anyone that he was old enough to be drinking booze.
“What's wrong?”
“It wasn't a glitch… there is someone in the building. They triggered it internally using an old pathway that O put in during the early days…”
“Entry method?”
“Not sure. There is nothing on the cameras at the entrances, but they could have bypassed them and I haven't seen it yet, zeta logs are always super encrypted to keep them from being traced or B from being a nosey bitch, and I don't know how to check the wards to know if magic was used.”
“I can check that last one.”
From his hiding spot, Jason watched glowing runes made of lightning blue energy build up around the kid and then surge out. He didn't have a chance to do anything when a symbol of some kind attached itself to him and gave away his location.
“Umm… Hi?”
Again, not the response he had expected. No weapon was grabbed, no freaking out about being watched, not even any wariness. Just a kid being way too nice and innocent.
“What did y- Red, what is that?”
“That is someone with honest intentions and like three layers of magical claims.”
“Honest intentions? They broke into the Tower and shut it all down!”
“Non-maliciously.”
Jason didn't think twice, he just ran. The glowing mark was still lighting up his entire form, which meant hiding wasn't an option, so he needed to get out of the building as soon as possible. His identity was at risk for compromise and he didn't want Bruce knowing that he was alive and back in Gotham. If he could get to the Zeta beam, he could head to just about any city he wanted and then find an alternate way to get back to his apartment.
He thought he had a chance. He had made it out of the room, down the hallway, dropped between the stairs straight to the bottom floor, only he just kept falling and wasn't actually getting any closer to the ground. Magic. This wasn't good.
Being greeted by The Big Red Cheese known as Captain Marvel at least meant he wasn't going into the interaction blind. The fact that they were now both falling while he was about to be interrogated didn't make Jason feel anymore comfortable. He had only met the Champion of Magic twice as Robin, but Goldie had nothing but good things to say about the guy, which was as useful of information now as it was then, which meant it wasn't.
“Care to explain why you're here, Bud? If you hadn't run, we wouldn't be in this position right now because now I can't trust you not to do it again. You have some interesting magic associated with you and I don't feel comfortable leaving you alone with this combo.”
“Screw you!”
“Male, teen, and not as freaked out as one would expect, Cardinal.”
Jason mentally cursed himself for opening his mouth at all. He had a voice modulator on this helmet for a reason, but somehow the nicer knockoff version of Superman had clocked his gender, age, and lack of complete panic and then relayed that to the kid he had thought replaced him. Wait, was that kid from earlier Capt’s sidekick? He wasn't sure why that was what went through his head moments after accidentally giving away information about himself, but then again, he always thought better under pressure.
“I'd say about 71-72 inches and roughly 210-230. Definitely shorter than myself, but not by much and I would say he probably has a few pounds on me.”
Clearly, he was missing out on what Cardinal was saying in the guy's ear, what with all of the air rushing past him as he began to fall faster and faster since he couldn't lean forward and spread out his arms to slow his acceleration without getting limbs ripped off by the rails, but it sounded like they were trying to get an ID on him or at least a profile while he was mostly defenseless. His helmet was protecting his ears and filtering out white noise for the most part, but it was still not meant for listening in on a comm pressed inside someone else's ear canal while air whipped by. Despite knowing what was going on, he couldn't really do anything to stop it from happening without pulling a weapon on somebody who was almost as indestructible as Superman, but with less obvious weaknesses.
The old contingency plan for the guy consisted of morally blackmailing the guy, which wasn't something Jason could really do in the situation nor could he stop him by magically muzzling him which was the backup plan, so Jason had no way to get away from the guy right now because the All-blades weren't going to do much if he was able to summon them because the dude was basically as fast as a speedster. Technically they work against people with magic, but he had to allow the Pit to take over before he could summon them without any other source of evil around and that wasn't really an option right now, so he was a freaking bird with broken wings falling from the sky.
“Every inch of skin is covered with some kind of armor, so no I can't get you a DNA sample right now. Besides, that's really invasive, Cardinal. Sheesh. Sometimes I think you are colder than Batman, but then I remember he is just a giant teddy bear, so that's not hard.”
Seeing Captain Marvel roll his eyes at whatever was said in response made Jason realize just how childish this guy was. At least one thing hadn't changed in the past three or so years. That shouldn't be as comforting as it was, especially considering that the dude was the reason he was currently free falling between staircases in Titan Tower when all he had wanted was to do some fact-checking while nobody else was around!
“No, that is just mean. I'm going to take him to the Rock and talk with him. There is absolutely no reason to interrogate him other than to satisfy your curiosity. You already figured out how he entered, so work on seeing who's credentials were compromised while I get to know him.”
A few muttered words and Jason was no longer falling, but just hovering in mid air for a split second before a portal opened up and swallowed them both. Suddenly, he was floating in the middle of what looked like a nebula or maybe a more central part of a galaxy where stars were closer together, moving toward a skinny elongated square bipyramid thing made out of what looked like chunks of rocks squished together enough to fuse, almost like mostly dry modeling clay squeezed into a mold. Beside him, the big red cheese was grinning at him as he grabbed his hand and pulled him along toward one of the cracks between blobs, which turned out to be a lot larger than he had originally thought because this place was massive!
“Welcome to the Rock of Eternity! It's kind of the heart of magic in the universe, but it doesn't really exist in actual space? It's complicated, but just know that magic won't really work here unless I allow it. That means the two curses I found on you don't have any power at all, so don't be afraid of triggering it.”
It was stupid, but Jason immediately tried to pull up on the pit rage only to find it locked away, almost as if it was asleep instead of the usual barely contained roiling mess that it usually was. Did the Lazarus Pit actually leave a curse on him? Or was that something the old bastard had added to keep him under control? He didn't know, but he was certainly going to find out.
If the Pit was one of the curses, what was the other? Surely it wasn't the All-Blades? They were magical, sure, but he definitely wouldn't describe them as a curse like he would the ever-present green that he fought back everyday.
Maybe he had been hexed years ago and that was why his luck was absolutely crap. Seriously, how else would he end up with four parents that let him down? Willis was a crappy human being in general and deserved what he got in the end, Catherine abandoned him when he needed her due to circumstances outside of her control and a few within it, Sheila wasn't in his life long but she definitely left an impact considering she was the reason he died, and and then there was Bruce who couldn't even put down the rabid dog that had killed his own kid. If Captain Marvel was right about the curse and it did turn out to be because of the pit, that would mean that Talia would be crappy parent number five, but if he was cursed with bad luck, it would explain everything. Still, Jason wasn't sure if the guy was right about him being cursed not.
“I'm not going to make you unmask or answer any questions, but I am definitely checking these magical claims on you. This is a lot more interesting than my earlier plans for the day!”
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Tim wasn't liking what he had found. The codes used to get into the system weren't in the database and were put in in the actual code for the system itself. It looked like Oracle's work, but he couldn't verify that because she wasn't available currently. What this meant was that he had no way of telling who the guy in the red helmet was from any of this.
He had the system back up and running, so he was trying to find the pathing the person used to get to Titan Tower. It wasn't easy. The zeta beam had been used in multiple locations and there were no CCTV around those for security reasons and all the Titan/League/Bat related surveillance hadn't caught sight of him, so Tim had to search outward from the sites in each city and hope for the best. There was nothing in most of the cities, but the guy was caught still in full helmet on camera in a few accidental reflections in several places. Tim's current best guess was that the suspect had been on the run from someone and had been trying to lose a tail by zetaing into a city, racing to the secondary zeta site, and heading for the next city until he got to Titan Tower where he had locked everything down, especially the zeta system. This might be a refugee situation instead of a spy or villain one.
This thought was further strengthened when he spotted a few known LoA spies in the footage after the glimpses of that red helmet. Whoever this was, the League of Assassins was after them. It could be unrelated to the fact that Bruce was briefly married to Ra al Ghuls’ daughter, but going somewhere that was heavily fortified but only tangently related to Batman made it the best place to hideout away from the LoA, JLA, and the Bat. Well, if he couldn't find out who their mystery guest was, he could see what the the ancient slime bag was up to.
It wasn't hard to connect to Batcomputer, especially since the Dark Knight with currently in a board meeting and Alfred was supposed to be grocery shopping at the farmer's market. From there, Tim was able to find all the latest information B had on his ex and her family. There had been an increase of Shadows in the states over the past few months and apparently several nests of the spies had been kicked out of Gotham where they were banned from being. There was a whole collection of safe houses that they had purchased across the city, but there was clearly two different groups, Talia’s and Ra’s’. Now that he knew there was a difference he turned back to the operatives he had spotted.
The first few cities were those who followed the daughter of the Demon’s Head, but the later ones were those loyal only to their current leader. It could mean that the helmet guy was part of Talia's group that was being chased by other operatives as soon as he broke away from the group or both groups were currently after him. One way or another, this guy was associated with the League of Assassins and he was currently with Tim's little brother.
Billy had said “That is someone with honest intentions and like three layers of magical claims”, which did imply that the guy hadn't wanted to do them or the Titans any harm. Given the stories he had heard about how the megalomaniac had been keeping him so alive for centuries, it wouldn't be surprising if the guy had been using magic on his followers to keep them in line and his daughter likely followed in suit, but where did the third claim come from? That was something Billy was going to have to figure out without him, but in the meantime, Tim had some Shadow chasing to do.
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Billy was fascinated by the magic linked to this guy. There were two ancient, dark forces with deep claims on the guy and a complex protection spell in his very bones. There was an ancient fey energy that had been corrupted for centuries that attached itself to his body and was only barely held at bay by the web of runes and wards that had literally been etched into his bones shortly before exposure to the corrupted fey energy. The main claim was that of Gotham herself.
Whoever this guy was, the City had her own designs for him. If Billy had to guess, he would say that it had been from either birth or a very young age when Gotham decided that he was hers. It was a far older claim than the previous two and while technically it was a curse, it wasn't malicious.
The guy also apparently had an affinity for magic because he had remnants of it from where he had cast some of his own. He didn't recognize it at first, but the gods pointed it out and he was a little baffled. How could somebody pure of heart enough to wield the All-Blades of the All-Caste be tied to the fey and Gotham?
Sure, this time was supposed to be used by him screaming and nearly passing out from the crazy rides at Disney, but he had a living magical contradiction right here, so it was totally worth it. Yeah, that probably made him just as much of a nerd as his brother, but magic was a lot more complex and fascinating than computer science in Billy's opinion. Besides, he and Tim could go another day and this felt like a much rarer event.
The three claims and that affinity were fighting each other, but Gotham was truly trying to unify them from what he could tell. The pure corruption of the fey claim kept the All-Caste from settling and the protection complex was fighting against both of those because they were potentially harmful to him. The poor guy had to be exhausted from the internal turmoil from those mixed magics. The red helmed dude had relaxed moments after his feet were on solid ground and he was currently either asleep or meditating while Billy did his investigations.
Part of him wanted to remove the truly malevolent hold on the guy, but he could see it was in every part of his body that wasn't etched with protection. He took it away, there would be so much backlash in the dude’s system. Things he usually would have walked away with with no issue would leave him permanently maimed if Billy got in there and started ripping stuff out. Though, that didn't mean he couldn't sabotage the one side and convince the other three to work together, right?
Gotham herself wasn't really an issue. Bruce, Dick, Tim, Barbara, Stephanie, Kate, and all the other vigilantes from the city had similar claims on them. It was a way of protecting them when they left her borders. It was a curse, but a helpful one.
All-Blades were very dangerous in the wrong hands, but he had a feeling that these weren't the wrong hands at all. It took somebody who was basically a real life paladin to be able to wield them and he could feel the magical calluses that came with their use in this guy, so he wasn't bad. The bad part was, they were summoned by being in the presence of “true evil”, but that meant this guy could summon them whenever he wanted because there was something it considered pure evil inside him.
From what he and the gods had pieced together, this guy had been placed into a very corrupted fountain of youth, which got its powers from the fey. That could mean that this guy wasn't as young as they really thought he was, or it could also mean that he had been through some terrible things that were only healed because of the fount. If he had to guess, he would say that the engravings on his bones might have been why he had to be placed in it in the first place.
Without physically seeing them, Billy could only make speculations as to what the actual symbols were, but based on the magic they were imbued with, they had been placed by somebody who deeply cared and wanted no harm to come to this red helmeted person. Those two facts were technically contradictory because it would have been absolute torture to have placed them because they weren't magically branded there, they were physically carved. There was only one way he could think of for those to be added without causing pain and that was if the person was dead when they were placed.
A lot of fountains of youth could not bring somebody back from the dead, only heal those who were sick or on the verge of death themselves. It took multiple thick fey lines intersecting for there to be one strong enough to bring somebody back from the dead. There was whispers of one that had vanished back during the Wizard Shazam’s days, shielded by wards that could blind even the champion of magic of it's location. If it was the one that had been corrupted, it could very well be where this dude was brought back.
He probably hadn't even been back alive for too very long, seeing as he hadn't been driven insane or torn apart by the conflicting magics. It could very well be that he had broken into Titan Tower to get answers about what he had missed. That would explain why he ran and why Billy's search for malevolence had tagged him as safe. If that was the case, an apology was owed for causing that guy to drop in a loop like that.
Wait. No… it couldn't be, right? Gotham, dead person, knows the way around the tower, protective wards throughout the body, the age, the attitude, and the color red. How is he supposed to verify something like this?! He couldn't drop that on Tim! He didn't want to hurt Bruce or Alfred if it turned out not to be Jason…
He would need to get some DNA, right? He could hand it off to Clark or maybe Barry? Would they be able to find anything without letting Bruce know? Was the DNA of Jason Todd even in the system? Should he even try to minimize the influence of that curse if it could possibly be what was keeping him alive?
He needed expertise about biology and physiology before he poked around with this stuff. For now, nothing was going to happen because the magic was limited to its passive use, but he was worried about the future. This was only going to get worse if something didn't change, especially if the Bats got nosey and started messing with stuff, which was probably how the protection stuff happened in the first place.
“You think loudly.”
“Yeah, sorry… You went from a cool puzzle to a depressing realization.”
“What.”
“You have magic tied to your bones that were placed there while you were probably dead… Someone out there didn't want your body harm again and now it's part of a bigger mess.”
“In my bones.”
“Yeah… it's not everywhere, mostly core, limbs, and skull, but it seems to have been hand etched.”
“When?”
“Have you died multiple times?”
“I spent a year with my mind disconnected from my body. I need to know when.”
“I know it was a few years? I deal with magic that has been sitting around for millennia. It's hard for me to narrow it down. Maybe somebody not as attuned to all magics would be able to narrow it down for you, but yeah.”
“Where?”
“Huh?”
“Where are they on my body, specifically?”
Oh. He probably still had scars from where the bone was exposed. This felt like it was probably going to be more traumatizing than helpful, but he asked and Billy felt like he owed the guy. It was a pretty simple spell to cast to make the magical signatures of the wards and runes glow over where they were located.
To be honest, he expected cursing, yelling, or maybe even crying, but not laughter. It was very creepy and hysterical laughter being filtered through whatever that sound modulator thingy the guy had going. It went on for a little bit before sobs replaced the unhinged giggling and the large figure curled up on himself like a child trying to make himself small.
“Are you okay with me giving you a hug? This definitely feels like a hugging type situation.”
The nod was very small, but Billy thought and pulled the guy into his arms. He wasn't as good at doing this as Dick or Clark, but he knew what made him feel better when he got one, so he did what he would have wanted in the situation. As Captain Marvel, he had a very wide chest and long arms, so wrapping them entirely around somebody as big as this guy wasn't hard. If this was Jason Todd, Billy was just hoping that his hug was anywhere close to as good as that of Batman.
“All this time, they lied to me. They made me think he never cared. They fed the rage inside me until I couldn't think straight. This is the first time I can remember having a clear head since I was fourteen and hadn't had a big fight with him yet…”
“Can I ask you a few questions? You can always refuse to answer or tell me to stop. I won't get mad if you do. Some of it is a little personal.”
“Sure, why the hell not… I might not even actually know the truth anyway…”
“First, I think I might know who you are? If you don't want me to say it, I won't.”
“It's not like I can hide much anymore. Not now that I know…”
“Everything points to you once being Robin. The one who died. Are you?”
“Yeah… I was…”
“I don't want to be the one to have to tell B, but Jason, he misses you. Alfred and Dick too.”
“The old man finally revealed his identity to the Justice League?”
“A few of them, but I know for a different reason… I am kind of related to the third Robin, Cardinal?”
“The f-
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Tim was kind of freaking out. He had gone deep diving into the League of Assassins and everyone known to be associated with it and found more than he had bargained for. He had found pockets of LoA spies in each of his friends' cities, including Fawcett, watching the heroes living there. The largest group he had found was actually in Gotham and they seemed to be actively avoiding Bruce rather than watching him. There was at least two factions, possibly three or four.
It was actually tracking them that led him to Billy's current guest at the Rock of Eternity. He was originally funded by one of the factions, but had since cut ties, which was probably why he was being chased. He had settled down in Crime Alley and had taken the crime there from deadly and uncontrolled to just unsafe and firmly controlled in a few weeks. Everybody was referring to him as the Red Hood, probably because they remembered what Joker used to be and had just named him that due to his habit of wearing that red helmet, but it could be deeper considering he showed up only a few months after Billy had banished Joker to a magical prison where he couldn't escape, couldn't die, and didn't need food, water, or sleep.
Getting kidnapped by the man who had killed his predecessor had been terrifying. Thankfully, he had been rescued before the monster's plans could get out of the initial stages, but his muscles still occasionally spasmed from all of the Electroconvulsive Therapy he had gone through without any kind of muscle relaxers or anesthetic. Thankfully, the seizures had stopped, but it had really messed with Bruce and Billy there for a while. Still, that didn't make Tim feel any more comfortable about his little brother being around somebody who was being called the same name as his tormentor had been in the past.
Based on the counts given to the police and just by word of mouth in general, Red Hood had a natural Crime Alley accent, which means that before he was picked up by the league he had grown up in Gotham. Given the age Billy had given for the guy, cross referencing it with boys who went missing or were presumed dead from the city, especially from the Park Row area had shown an even bigger problem that Tim hadn't realized existed. There were over 500 listed. Those were just the ones that were reported, not kids that might have been trafficked out with nobody left behind to miss them and he knew without even looking it up that the numbers were even higher for the girls. Since he couldn't narrow it down that way, he looked into what the Red Hood had been putting his energy into.
Protecting kids, better working conditions for the street girls, and controlling the drug market to keep it out of the hands of kids and clean of dangerous additions. When he ran the missing kids through an algorithm that tied them to these particular points, he got only two results that were technically only one. Robin AKA Jason Todd. From there, everything started to fall down like an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine.
Statistically, he was probably wrong. All it took was one of those kids to have a secret connection that wasn't documented, but it being his predecessor made a lot of sense. If there was one thing he had learned from conversations with Alfred and Dick was that Jason was very dramatic and taking up the name of the person who killed him was definitely something he would do to own his trauma. Of course Jason being friends with Barbara and Dick not being on good terms with Bruce would have gotten back doors put in so that he could run off to hide with the Titans so he could hang out with his big brother. He had probably broken in to get some answers once he realized that he was being controlled by the league, who had a freaking Lazarus Pit that could bring people back from the dead.
He wasn't sure what he was feeling right now, but he was definitely apprehensive for two Street kids to be hanging out together without supervision. Sure, there wasn't too much trouble Jason and Billy could get into if they stayed there, but what was keeping them there other than the two of them trying to keep secrets from each other? Surely two street kids would realize what the other was and bond over it, but how long would it take and how on Earth was Tim going to verify any of this without some DNA?!
He had hidden Billy away from the family because he didn't want to bring up bittersweet memories and now he potentially had Jason freaking Todd alive and hanging out with his little brother. He definitely couldn't go dropping this on them without verifying anything! Which meant he either needed to meet them or they needed to get themselves back to the Tower before Tim lost his mind.
He was supposed to be at Disneyland and yet here he was having a crisis over the fact that his pseudo older brother, who he was wondering whether or not somebody had cloned him or just raised him from the dead, that he only vaguely met a few times wasn't actually dead but was currently hanging out with his biological half-brother in a magical location that he had no way of accessing without said magical brother. How was this his life? A few years ago he had just been a normal kid who chased around local vigilantes who were just humans dressed up like birds and bats and now he was best friends with somebody who could run nearly as fast as the speed of light, someone who could change into any animal species he could think of, a half alien clone, and the daughter of a literal Greek god.
Technically, he did have the magical panic button thing that Billy had given him after Joker had tortured him, but this wasn't an emergency for anything other than his sanity. Not that he was fully sane anymore anyway. He had almost quit hero work entirely, but therapy and beating criminals up definitely helped. Still, he didn't want to freak Billy out by using that right now.
Instead of letting himself spiral thinking about how he was going to get Billy and Maybe-Jason back to Titan tower, Tim got all the equipment ready to run DNA for whenever they did show up and started coming up with the plan on how to break this news to the rest of the bats. Telling Alfred first was definitely the only option for who to tell first, not just because he would know how to handle Bruce and Dick, but because Tim knew that he wouldn't survive that man's wrath if it came down on him. The trouble was, figuring out how to let the guy know without jeopardizing his health.
Nobody wanted to talk about the fact that after all of these years, they treated the former MI6 agent like he was immortal, but Tim had seen the collection of medications he was on. His blood pressure alone was enough to be concerned about. Tim needed to be gentle with the butler.
Despite that, the best option he could think of was literally asking him to come verify somebody's identity. It would have him on edge, be ready for a surprise, but not throw him in the deep end by dumping everything on him at once. It sucked, but it was better than telling him over the phone and having him stress out and overthink until he saw his grandson with his own eyes.
Part of Tim wanted to have the reunion be in the batcave, but that would require scrubbing footage from the cameras if Jason didn't want to see Bruce, which was a fairly high likelihood seeing as he hadn't gone straight home when he got back to Gotham. Alfred would just have to come to Titan Tower and work through whatever the League of Assassins had poisoned Jason's mind with. To be honest, part of him was screaming that he shouldn't be assuming, that assumptions got people killed, but there was too much data pointing toward this outcome that he was basically accepting it as fact, which wasn't something he would usually do, but Billy was clearly rubbing his optimism off on him.
It is the beep of the computer that draws his attention. On the screen is a notification from a league communicator to his personal Titan account. After a brief freak out, he realized that it was from Billy telling him that he and their guest would be coming back to the Tower five minutes after the message was sent, which was already two minutes ago which meant he had three left to get his head on straight and have everything completely ready for officially meeting what he hoped was his unofficial big brother.
Seeing as he had already gotten all the machines up and running, had the program waiting, had all the supplies for a DNA test laid out in the infirmary, and had already done everything he needed
to do, he sent back a message for them to come back to the medbay and decided to shut off the camera system again, in that room, so that if this was Jason, and he didn't want to deal with Bruce, that there would be no footage to be hacked into. All of that left him with nearly two full minutes not knowing what to do with himself, for overthinking, and to stress himself out. At the same time though it felt like almost no time passed before the portal opened and Billy, not Captain Marvel, stepped out with an unmasked, nearly fully grown, Jason Todd.
“I hate being right…”
“See? I told you he would have figured it out before we got back!”
“Yeah… you did.”
“You know I'm going to have to verify your identity with the DNA test, right? We have dealt with too many clones, shapeshifters, and other tricks for me to fully trust what my eyes are seeing.”
“Hey! You think I didn't verify anything I could?”
“You know that I can't verify anything you can verify with magic, which means that I can't use the scientific method on it and it makes my brain itch.”
“Nerd.”
“One day I will figure out how to use science to explain magic, but until then I need some blood, hair, and a mouth swab. We are doing this the correct way with multiple ways to verify.”
Jason didn't look very comfortable, but he allowed it. Tim might be freaking out very badly and therefore actually saying what he was thinking, but the only person who should be able to realize that right now was Billy, who seemed very distracted by the idea of having another family member. Once all the tests were completed then he could freak out, not before.
⚡🦆🦨⚡🦆🦨
Jason wasn't stupid. As soon as Captain Marvel did that same hand on the back of the neck nervous tick that he had seen the kid do, he realized that the kid he had seen earlier wasn't Big Red Cheese’s sidekick, but the Champion of Magic himself. The little bird from next door was only seventeen and the kid who had been wanting to go to the amusement park had looked a good three or four years younger, which meant Captain Marvel, somebody he had met back when he was Robin, was currently only thirteen or fourteen, meaning he had only been around ten when Jason had met him.
The wave of clashing emotions that crashed over him left him with the realization that this is how Bruce must have felt dealing with him and Goldie back in the day. Did the old bat know about this now or had these two kept that a secret from him?
“Language!”
“Agent A isn't here.”
“B is the one who says it. A just calls your name all scandalized and gives you the eyebrow.”
“Yeah, you check out. You know them.”
He had to lean out of the hug, something he hadn't realized he had been deprived of for the past few years, to take off the helmet. Sure, it made him feel more vulnerable, but what was it really doing for him right now? The kid figured out who he was already, had Supes level of strength, and had blocked any help he might have had in a fight by blocking the Pit and the All-Blades, which he had tried to summon earlier to test the magic block statement, so if Marvel wanted him dead, he'd be dead helmet or not. At least this way, he could build some trust, even if it left him feeling like a live wire.
“Huh.”
That wasn't the response he had expected, but it wasn't bad. He had expected a pinched smile or maybe a hint of tears, not that face. It was like a confused puppy, but as a tank of a human, inches from his face.
“You look like you got B’s body, D’s hair, but kept your own face. I thought you would look older, but you are like T’s age…”
“I'm not seventeen!”
“You look it though!”
“I'm at least two years older than him!”
“Are you? You were put in an evil fountain of youth! It could have de-aged you a little!”
That stopped him short. The freaking Lazarus Pit was a corrupted pool of eternal life? Ra’s had taken a place of miracles and built a cult to himself and world purification over it? Had he used the pit to make everyone indebted to him like he almost had with Jason? Was Tali-
His racing thoughts slowed down when the arms around him tightened and started to gently rock him. He didn't understand what was going on, why the sudden attempt at comfort, but as he focused back on himself and his surroundings, he realized he was crying again. He was shaking and tears were streaming down his face. He hadn't cried like this since the night he had had that yelling match with B and then his so-called big brother never picked up the phone.
“Sorry! I'll back off!”
Jason hadn't realized that he had pulled away and fought the arms around him until they vanished and there was nothing there to ground him from the painful memories that were demanding his attention. The loud bang had him dropping to the ground where he had been standing, memories of gunshot wounds and explosions taking over his instincts. How he ended up curled around the kid, back to being his scrawny early teen self, he wasn't sure, but he was being hummed to when his mind dialed back in.
It was the Wonder Woman theme song from that old show he used to watch before Catherine died. This kiddo knew a lot about a dead guy. Who had told him about loving that show? He never told Dickhead, B, or Alfie, so how did he know? Magic?
“You good now?”
“I- maybe? I don't know what just happened?”
“Might be my fault? I might have triggered you?”
“Maybe. So, what do you plan to do with me now?”
“Take you back to the Titan Tower.”
“So your- cousin? can interrogate me?”
“Half-brother and by now he has definitely figured out who you are. He is scary good at it. Figured out Batman's identity at like nine. It's been hours. He is probably trying to figure out how it's you rather than whether or not it's you.”
He had known before B had found a homeless kid stealing his fancy tires? It had to be Dickwing’s fault. No way the old man outed himself to a pipsqueak like that otherwise.
“So… Do I let him know that we are about to head back? I need to give him a little warning or he might greet us with a weapon to the face.”
“Knock yourself out. I hope you are right about him being a genius or whatever because I really don't want to deal with at interrogation right now.”
The kid ended up being right. Timmy Drake took one look at him and make a comment about how he hated being right. There was multiple ways to interpret that, but Jason was trying to be optimistic and not think about the guy not wanting him to be alive. At least the guy was justifiably paranoid, unlike a certain closet furry.
It felt like overkill to need three DNA sources, but redundancies was something Robins were taught to use if at all possible. The hair and mouth swab were fine, but Jason hated needles for good reason and blood draws were less than pleasant. He'd give it to his replacement, the process was pretty much painless, but his heart rate definitely was higher than it should have been for something so simple.
“Well, if you were a copy, you would be a good one. Not many people knew Jason Todd was trypanophobic.”
“It ain't a phobia if it is justified.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
“So what's next?”
“Protocol says health evaluation, but I think we wait for the tests to run and then let Agent A do that because even if I do it, he's going to want to do it again himself, so I am saving myself the hassle.”
“So you just want us to sit here with our thumbs up our asses for the next few hours?”
“I forgot how crass you used to be. Ms Marshall almost fainted when you summarized the world wars.”
“We had classes together?”
“I sat in the back. I was pushed up a few grades in elementary.”
“Huh.”
“Wait. Really?! No one told me about that!”
“I'm probably the only person who knew. It wasn't like I could bring it up without bringing down the mood.”
Jason had to admit, the guy wasn't really wrong because the room went dead silent after he said that. Apparently it was a mood killer. But was it because Jason had died and everyone was sad or was it because it was awkward to talk about the little soldier who didn't make it home? That was the entire reason he had snuck in here in the first place.
“Soo… are we just going to sit here for the full five hours that takes to run?”
“Only the hair takes five hours. The rest will only take about four.”
“Okay, but are we just going to sit here the whole time?”
From there, they ended up playing I Spy, then Never Have I Ever, the Batman version of what's in Jimmy's Pocket was pretty funny, Two Truths And A Lie was concerning, and by the time they were desperate enough to go searching for the Uno deck, the results were back for the blood and swab. 92% on the sample from his mouth even had Jason concerned since that was clone or sibling range, but the blood was a 98.7%. Death and the Pit could be at fault for that slight difference, but a clone wasn't out of the question. They were still looking over the differences when the hair came back and showed 99.8% with the dark portion and 96.3% on the white. Obviously, that was concerning and the kid turned back to his big boy self and did a magical thing.
Apparently, Jason had freaking cancer that was getting held back by the pit and the spells carved into his bones. His scars, the old ones the Pit didn't touch, were growing wrong. The thickening inside his cheeks from years of biting until it bled, the cigarette burns, his old scalp rash from his time on his own, and just about any mark from before he was taken in by Batman. It should be completely treatable since it was still isolated, but if he hadn't died at such a young age and had these protections, he probably would have been too sick, either from the growths or the treatment, to have gone to college like he had dreamed.
“Umm… I'm going to go get Alfred… you two… Bond? I'll be back in a little while.”
And just like that, Jason was stuck with his former neighbor who the LoA, mostly Talia and Ra’s, had convinced him was his replacement. They clearly didn't know what to say to each other because they were sitting in silence trying not to stare at each other. One of them needed to take the first step before Alfie showed up.
“I don't know what all you know, but your family misses you a lot. Dick, Bruce, Alfred, even Barbara.”
“They didn't make it seem like that before I died. Babs I get, she was still recovering, but Alfie sided with B and Dickhead wouldn't even answer his phone.”
“Wait… Did you not know the Titans had been off planet and out of contact when Garzonas died? They didn't get back for months.”
“Prove it. I can't take anyone's word on anything.”
“I have mission logs, the cave footage of Dick confronting Batman before I stepped in, but I don't know if that's enough for you.”
After looking at all of it, including the cowl footage of his death and what came after, Jason felt sick. He had definitely been lied to, probably to manipulate him into offing this kid, but what hurt the worst was seeing the two people he had thought had hated him in the end falling apart after he died. B had punched Dick for not being a safety net, despite knowing what his eldest had been doing at that time, but grief apparently wasn't logical.
“My boy…”
Jason hadn't heard anyone coming in. Drake had left him alone after his eyes started glowing when he saw Alfie give B the cold shoulder, so he had been by himself until now. Part of him was mad at the man in the doorway, but seeing those tears falling and the tremors in those usually steady hands, he didn't have the heart to tell off the only grandparent he ever had.
“Hey Alfie”