Chapter Text
“Jason Todd is dangerous. He’s unstable and out of control. He knows League secrets. He knows Batman’s secrets. He is a threat to us, and to your father. Do you understand what needs to be done?”
“Yes, Mother.”
They end up on a couch in the living room—Jason is practically in Dick’s lap, because the older boy refuses to let go and Jason is not at all inclined to tell him to, and Bruce sits next to him, his hand in Jason’s. Tim is curled up on an armchair, watching with wide eyes.
“So the Pit brought you back?” Dick asks quietly, “How—how long—”
“No,” Jason cuts him off, because technically the Pit brought him back, but he isn’t going to lie to his family. “No. I was…a ghost, you could say.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what it was,” Jason shrugs, hunching to sink deeper into Dick’s embrace, “All I know is that I woke up. In that warehouse. Not a scratch on me.” He lifts his gaze to meet Bruce’s eyes. “But you couldn’t see me. You couldn’t hear me. You couldn’t touch me.”
Bruce’s fingers curl firmly around his own.
“I tried everything to get you to notice me, but it didn’t work,” Jason says quietly, “And then you buried me. So I figured I was dead. Sort of went around haunting all of you.”
“Haunting all of us?” Dick hums, “Is that why my shower went cold that one time?”
“No, that’s because you didn’t pay your electricity bill, you idiot,” Jason leans back to knock his head against Dick’s. He remembers those early months in Bludhaven, and Dick crying and crying and—
Wait a minute,
Jason bolts upright, nearly tearing himself out of Dick’s arms. “Little Wing, what—”
Jason twists until he’s facing Dick. “You were wrong,” he informs him, wonder and amazement bubbling up.
Dick frowns, “What are you talking about?”
“You were wrong, Dickie,” Jason smiles and spreads his arms, “Robin is magic.”
Dick looks confused, then stunned, and then angry. “You died,” he says.
“I came back,” Jason wiggles his fingers, “Like magic.” Dick glares, and Jason takes great delight in shoving his head into the cushions. “Nope! I was right and you were wrong! Admit it!”
Dick coughs out something that may be an admission, so Jason lets him up, smug in victory. Dick sighs and buries his nose between Jason’s shoulder blades, tightening his grip.
“You were a ghost,” Bruce says, and there’s something hard in his tone—but his eyes are soft as Jason curls his fingers back into Bruce’s hand.
“Yeah, I sort of watched over all of you,” Jason says, his gaze caught by Tim, “And one day I found this kid with a camera running all over Gotham.”
Tim goes pink and Jason frowns as he remembers the kid’s utter lack of self-perseveration instincts and—
Jason vaults off the couch so swiftly that no one has time to react—he’s in front of Tim in the blink of an eye, his hands gripping bony shoulders as he stares into wide eyes.
“You,” Jason says quietly, “You idiot.” His grip tightens. “What possessed you to go after the Joker, defenseless and untrained, when you knew full well what happened to me?!”
“Jason,” Dick says softly from somewhere behind him, “Jay.”
“Do you have any idea what it felt like, watching him—watching you—I thought you were going to die, you—you—”
“Jay,” Dick says, and there’s a hand on his own, “Loosen up.”
Oh. Tim’s eyes are not green. But they are wide, and his face is pale, and Jason’s grip is bruising-tight.
He relaxes it slowly, and lets his head drop. “You terrified me,” Jason says softly.
“I’m sorry?” Tim squeaks.
“You are an idiot with zero self-preservation skills.”
“I—okay?”
“Say it.”
“What—no, I’m not going to—”
“I was watching that time with the fear toxin. And the dogs. And the gargoyle on 5th street. Say it.”
“…I am an idiot with zero self-preservation skills.”
“Great,” Jason grins, and goes back to the couch, tugging Tim with him. The kid is folded into Bruce’s side, Jason drops fully onto his brother’s lap and laughs at Dick’s yelp, and he curls both his hands around Bruce’s wrist.
“And you kept watching us for three years?” Dick asks once they’re resettled.
“Oh, no—about a year after I died, my body sort of…woke up? Don’t ask me how, I just know that it crawled out of the grave.”
Everyone in the room has a really disturbed expression.
“You crawled out of your grave?” Tim asks, eyes wide.
“No. Maybe. Kind of? I was still a ghost, but my body was definitely present and walking around. It’s just that no one was home.”
“Your body was walking around,” Bruce says quietly, “On the streets. In Gotham.”
He doesn’t sound happy.
“Yeah.”
“How long?”
“Almost two months, I think?” Jason tries to think back—he mainly tracked the passage of time with holiday decorations, but he thinks it was a month after the hospital when the League showed up.
Bruce’s fingers spasm, and they curl tightly around Jason’s hand.
“Your grave never looked like it had been disturbed,” Tim says quietly.
“I went back to check on it a few days after my zombie body started walking around,” Jason says, not looking at any of them, “It was filled back in.”
When he dares to sneak a peek, Bruce’s face is thunderous. Dick curls his arms tighter around Jason’s waist, and it doesn’t hide that they’re trembling. Tim is frowning in a calculating-mad-scientist kind of way, it’s a little bit scary.
“Then the League showed up. And it turns out that super-secret hideouts are fun to explore when you can walk through walls. That’s how I found Damian—the kid looks just like you,” Jason informs Bruce.
Bruce’s face lights up a little at that.
“And he’s eight,” Jason says softly, “And they’re training him like he’s a soldier and he wouldn’t kill a bird—that’s when Ra’s started getting pissed, so Talia threw me into the Pit to distract him—that’s when I woke up in my body, only there were assassins following me everywhere and I kept getting so angry and I didn’t know what happened to Damian and—”
“Jason,” Bruce says softly, “Breathe.”
Jason breathes, and grips Bruce’s hand so tightly his knuckles turn white.
“They were afraid of me,” Jason says quietly, “They wanted to turn me into an assassin, but I was more of a missile than a sniper bullet, so Talia decided to point me at Gotham to keep the carnage away from her. I was so furious all the time, and I let her think it was at you instead of her.”
“It’s okay,” Bruce says softly, brushing the hair out of Jason’s eyes, “It’s okay, Jay. You’re home now.”
Jason closes his eyes and leans into the touch. Bruce rubs the edge of his cheek and Jason exhales softly.
“Why didn’t you come back?” Tim asks, and Jason opens his eyes. The kid is frowning again. “You dressed up as the Red Hood and kidnapped me and Dick and—and all of it. Why didn’t you just come back?”
“Talia had assassins watching me everywhere,” Jason shrugs, “She would’ve never let me get to the Manor. I told her I had a plan, and I let her think I was going to kill you, and I waited for her to stop me.”
“You don’t actually think she’s going to give you Damian,” Dick says, his voice muffled by Jason’s back.
“No, I just wanted her to admit his existence,” Jason nods at Bruce, “In front of you.”
Bruce is looking at him with consternation.
“What’s wrong?” Jason asks warily, shifting in place—is it the anger he admitted to being unable to control, is it the violence, is it the hiding—
“You didn’t need her to admit it, Jason,” Bruce says quietly, “I would’ve believed you.”
Jason drops his gaze, his cheeks burning. Sometimes he forgets that Bruce is called the World’s Greatest Detective for a reason.
“Jay,” Bruce says softly, and gentle hands cup his face.
“She—she said,” Jason chokes out past the growing lump in his throat, “She said she called you. She said you wouldn’t come.”
“If I had even a hint that you were out there, I wouldn’t have rested until I found you,” Bruce says firmly, and Jason reaches out to bury his face in his father’s shirt and let the tears fall as he’s enveloped in a firm, warm hug.
“Jason,” Bruce says, quiet and a little choked, “My son.”
Jason holds on as tightly as he can.
“You can have it back,” Tim says into the soft silence. Jason blinks at him—he’s draped half on Bruce and half on Dick and Tim’s sitting on the edge of the couch, looking like he’s about to flee.
“Have what back?”
Tim picks at a stray thread on his knee. “Robin,” he says in a voice almost too quiet to hear.
Jason narrows his eyes.
Tim isn’t looking up, so Jason reaches out and snags the kid’s chin, forcing him to meet his gaze.
“I wore the Robin suit for two years while I was a ghost,” Jason says flatly, “I never want to see the thing again in my life.”
Tim blinks at him, and then his eyes widen as realization hits. Jason grins at the dusting of pink on the kid’s cheeks.
“You said you’d make me proud,” Jason says softly, “And you did, baby bird.”
The kid goes beet red.
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—I just—I wasn’t trying to take your place, I didn’t—Bruce wasn’t replacing you—”
“I know, Timbo. I was watching, remember?” The kid doesn’t look too happy about that. Shoe pinches on the other foot, hmm?
“Speaking of which,” Jason drawls, and tugs Tim forward onto Bruce. He grabs the kid’s face and turns it until Tim is blinking at Bruce in confusion. “What is this, B?”
Bruce raises an eyebrow.
“It’s ridiculous, that’s what this is,” Jason says, draping himself over the kid’s shoulder and pressing his head to the kid’s left cheek—“Dickie, get over here.”—and knocking Dick’s head against Tim’s right ear.
Jason holds all three of them in place and fixes Bruce with his best judgmental look. “You,” he proclaims, “Have a problem.”
Bruce’s mouth twitches. “Do I?” he asks, level.
“Look at this,” Jason hisses, pressing their faces even closer together, “Look at it! Where do you even find us, Bruce?”
Bruce’s face quirks all the way into a smile, and their precarious position collapses as he wraps an arm around Jason and Dick and sends all three of them crashing against his chest.
“I don’t know,” he rumbles, holding them tightly, “But I’m so grateful I did.”
Jason leans against the counter and watches as Alfred shapes the last cookie. A heart for love.
“I was here,” he says softly, “I was watching, I wanted so badly to let you all know that I was here.”
Alfred rests a firm hand on his shoulder. “We felt your presence, Master Jason,” he says quietly, “We felt your love.”
Jason leans into the touch. “I missed you,” he says, soft.
“I missed you too, Master Jason,” Alfred says, and those are definitely tears in his eyes, “And I am so glad that you’re back home.”
The cookies are devoured in ten minutes flat.
“What is that?” Jason asks, heading for the back of the garage. He and Dick are messing around, trying to figure out why the engine on Bruce’s old town car is grinding, but Jason’s attention was caught by the sheet-draped outline near the back.
It’s the wrong size and shape to be a car, and Brucie Wayne never shows up anywhere on a motorcycle, which is why Jason is more than a little surprised when he pulls the dusty sheet off to reveal a gleaming red powerhouse of a bike.
He lets out a low whistle. “Whose bike is this?” He runs his fingers across the handlebars, a palm across the gleaming red metal. It looks brand spanking new.
“Yours,” Dick says softly.
Jason glances back at him, attention momentarily diverted. Dick is staring at the bike, his eyes narrowed and his face eerily blank.
“I think I would’ve remembered,” Jason says with half a laugh. Dick quirks his lips in an unamused smile.
“Bruce was going to get you a car,” Dick says quietly, “But I—I thought—I saw the way you looked at my bike. I just—I decided, why not get my baby brother a motorcycle?”
He’s trembling, and Jason doesn’t waste any time in lunging towards him. Dick’s arms wrap around him immediately, squeezing tight, and Jason doesn’t complain that he can’t breathe.
He hangs onto Dick until the older boy stops shaking, and keeps an arm curled around Dick’s shoulders as he turns back to the bike.
To the very nice, very fast, brand new bike. To his bike.
Jason grins, wide and sharp.
This time, he can feel the wind blasting past his face.
Jason is fully aware that his presence is disconcerting the kid—Tim’s messed up four forms and nearly hit himself in the face with the bo staff twice—and he makes no attempt to conceal himself, lounging on a table and staring straight at the new Robin.
Tim finally gives up when the staff goes skittering out of his hands. “Can I help you?” he asks, turning towards Jason with a raised eyebrow.
Jason smiles.
The kid edges back a step.
“Look what I found,” Jason drawls, hefting up a heavy black camera. The kid immediately bristles.
“What are you doing with that?” Tim scowls.
“Calm down, baby bird,” Jason straightens up to sit cross-legged on the table, “I’m not going to eat it.” He presses the shutter button and captures Tim’s indignant expression in all its glory.
“Give it back,” Tim demands, stalking towards him. Jason laughs and hops up, taking more photos as Tim reaches the table, seething.
“Jason.”
“Tim,” Jason mimics, “You have like a thousand pictures of me, I’m not allowed to have one of you?”
That brings the kid up short.
“You…want a picture of me?” Tim blinks, frustration replaced by bewilderment, “Why?”
Jason raises his gaze from the viewfinder and narrows his eyes. “Is it that strange that I want a photo of my little brother?”
Tim’s hesitant, disbelieving smile is forever immortalized by the camera.
There’s a picture of Jason and Tim, arms slung across each other’s shoulders, both grinning—the camera is slightly out of focus, Jason looks cross-eyed, the angle’s wrong, but it appears in a frame all the same.
Bruce is crouching next to a neat little pile of swept-up glass, staring into nothingness. Jason walks up to him and, after a moment of hesitation, leans his weight against Bruce’s shoulder.
Touch grounds him. It helps him feel real. Dick is always ready to indulge a hug and Tim lets him ruffle his hair with minimal complaint and Alfred places firm hands on his shoulders, but it’s Bruce’s warmth that makes him feel like he’s home.
Jason stares at the empty place where his suit used to hang and exhales slowly. “How goes the search for Damian?” he asks quietly.
“There’s been a significant amount of infighting within the League,” Bruce sighs, “I know that he’s no longer at Nanda Parbat, but I’m still narrowing down which League hideout he went to.”
Jason nods. He expected Talia to move him as soon as she knew that Jason knew. But Talia knows Bruce, and knows he won’t rest until he finds his son.
“I really hated that memorial case,” Jason says quietly. Bruce goes still. “A good soldier. Was that all I was to you, was that—”
“No, Jason, no—” Bruce stands up swiftly and envelops Jason in a hug, “No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t supposed to be your memorial. It was never meant for you. If I’d known you’d see it, I—I would have never put it up.”
“Then what was it?” Jason asks, his voice muffled by Bruce’s shirt.
“My punishment,” Bruce says softly, “A reminder of how I failed. I didn’t deserve peace. I didn’t deserve to forget. I had to make it front and center, to know exactly what I lost and how I lost it.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Bruce,” Jason says quietly, and speaks louder at Bruce’s murmured protest, “No, it wasn’t your fault. And you got me back.”
“I got you back,” Bruce repeats, and his grip tightens, and he mutters something that sounds like ‘miracle’.
The old, torn suit is burned, and Bruce leans over his shoulder as Jason designs a new helmet—black and green and yellow and red.
Jason hums as he checks the tracking algorithm—everyone else has left the Cave for a good night’s sleep, ready and packed to leave on their world tour to hunt down their baby brother—and sighs when it doesn’t turn up anything new.
As much as he hates to admit it, the League is good. All their assassins scattered from Gotham after Jason blew up their main safehouse, and no one’s caught hide or hair of Talia since she left the Cave.
It makes his fingers itch, the frustration bringing the green back—he tries to control it better, but his anger is impulsive and swift and he’s terrified of what will happen if he slips, if he can’t choke it back.
Deep breaths. Damian is fine. They’ll find him. Jason made the right choice, there was no way he could’ve escaped Nanda Parbat with a nine-year-old tucked under his arm, especially not with his rage issues.
Deep breaths.
Something prickles down his spine.
Jason reaches out and turns off the Batcomputer monitor. He lets his hand drop as he brings it back, fingers skimming along the table.
Catching and curling around a leather hilt.
The Batcave is always still. The entire set of tunnels is sealed off from the outside and the only air coming in and out is through the doors to the Manor. The air in the Cave hangs in place like a painting and if no one is breathing, it embodies utter silence.
No stranger would understand what it feels like. No stranger would appreciate the eerie stillness it imparts. No stranger would know that when Jason holds his breath, he can tell in a split second that he’s not alone.
Jason turns, knife first, and steel meets steel with a ringing clash.
A sword, black outfit—how did the League get in again—and…far shorter than he was expecting.
“Damian?”
The kid attacks and Jason hastily rolls over the table, narrowly dodging a swipe to the neck as he immediately moves to put space between them, scanning the shadows for threats.
No one else is here. No one but a kid that’s the right size to be Damian. Jason has no idea what’s he doing here—did Talia actually keep her end of the deal—
The kid aims for his heart and Jason meets the slash with a surge of annoyance, green already beginning to flicker—
Oh.
Oh no.
Talia was never going to win Mother of the Year, but this? This is downright cruel.
Jason is more than capable of taking the kid out, but green is pulsing at the edge of his vision—he knows he can stop himself from killing the kid, but he can’t stop himself from permanent damage.
Leaving Bruce with an unstable son and a crippled one. And Talia with the last ‘fuck you’.
If Bruce locks him in Arkham—
“I will make what the Joker did to you seem like mercy.”
Jason swallows and suppresses the rage as he blocks another attack. So maybe he underestimated Talia al Ghul.
“You don’t need to fight me,” Jason hisses, twisting away from another strike, “Your father is looking for you—” the kid hesitates a beat, but keeps attacking—“he’s right upstairs, he wants to see you—”
No noise. No sneer or scowl or anything. Jason ducks a sword slash to his throat—green rages because this kid genuinely, sincerely wants him dead—
Chokes it down, because he can’t, because he’s just a kid, because Jason can’t stay in this house if he loses his mind every time he gets pissed—
The moment of inattention costs him dearly.
The kid lunges up and Jason raises his arms to block the attack, sword clashing against his knife—and something stabs into his heart.
Jason looks down at the needle in his chest. At the kid, withdrawing back a step.
The world goes fuzzy.
“Shit.”
There is a river. It flows fierce and quick, and any corpse dropped into it will be in Gotham Harbor in less than an hour.
An efficient method of disposal. Strange things lurk beneath the surface of the bay and, in all likelihood, the body will disappear into the flotsam that rings this polluted, filthy excuse of a city.
Todd—the body is slack and still. The river rages under them, but their perch is unnoticed. Will be unnoticed for some time yet. He is not required to check in until the evening.
He is a good warrior. Mother does not need to worry about him. Grandfather does not need to worry about him.
He can still see the bodies—the bird, first. Another and another and another until they were satisfied. The dog was next. This is the first human. And all of them lie still and quiet in the same way.
He is a good warrior. He needs to be.
“Your father is looking for you.”
He is a good warrior. Father does not need to worry about him.
The fingers twitch first. Then the leg jerks, and then the body jolts upright, gasping.
Eyes glow an unsettling electric green. He stays where he is, sword in hand, and watches.
Eyes squeeze shut. When they open, they’re no longer glowing. Admirable control. Clearly not unstable.
“The river,” he motions to the water surging beneath them, “There is a sandbar a mile down. No one will be watching. Cover your tracks. Dye that ridiculous strip of hair. The League will not investigate your disappearance too closely.”
A long, slow blink. The body does not immediately jump for the river. Instead, it straightens, leaning an arm on top of a bent knee.
“Damian,” Todd says quietly, “Did you kill the bird?”
Damian jerks a step back in surprise—what—how had he—when did he—Mother had said he knew their secrets, but he didn’t think—
“Yes,” Damian snarls to cover up his loss of composure, but he can see that the hesitation doomed him.
“You didn’t,” Todd rebuts easily, “You pretended to, and then you took them and you set them free. You saved them. You are not an assassin, Damian Wayne.”
It strikes at him. Damian Wayne. He ignores it. He is a good warrior. He has to be. Because if he’s good, then they won’t look too closely. If he’s good, he can get away with drugging his targets instead of killing them. If he’s good, he can look at his mother with blank obedience and not let her see a fraction of the seething rage underneath.
“Just go,” Damian snaps, “You’re supposed to be dead. Go. Start over.”
Todd laughs, and the sound isn’t entirely amused. “Been there, done that. Don’t particularly care to try again.”
He knew it won’t be easy, with a human. Birds and dogs will run and fly and no one will care if they look familiar. But for humans, they will. For this human, they will.
Damian has two options. Both end in death. But he knew that the moment he stared at a bird in a cage and said ‘no’.
The world is meant to be protected. And how can he protect the world if he doesn’t protect those in it?
“Leave,” Damian says, tired. He briefly entertains the thought of pushing Todd into the river. But the boy straightens, dwarfing Damian, and he’s well aware that he had only one opportunity to catch Todd off guard.
One dose.
One chance.
“Bruce has been looking everywhere for you,” Todd says softly, “He’s going to be so happy when you come home.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Damian says automatically. He needs to check in. And then he’ll be sent back to Nanda Parbat to continue his training. Until they realize that Todd is still alive and give him a traitor’s death.
“Oh, you are so much like Bruce it’s almost painful, baby bat,” Todd sighs, “Especially the way both of you cling to a course of action and refuse to consider alternatives.”
Damian narrows his eyes. He will not kill. He made the decision, and it will go against his honor to turn back on it.
Todd crouches until he’s at Damian’s eye level. Foolish. Damian can think of three different ways to leave them blinded. “Damian,” Todd says quietly, “Do you want to go back to Nanda Parbat?”
No. “Want has nothing to do with it.”
Todd disagrees, “Want is what turns this from a kidnapping to a custody dispute.”
“What?”
“Damian,” Todd says, almost gentle despite the fact that his eyes are a flickering green, “Your father wants you to come home.” He holds out a hand.
Like it’s that simple.
Like it’s that easy.
Like all Damian has to do is take it.
Damian wants—
Damian is a good warrior. But he can be a good warrior here.
He takes the hand.
Damian’s fingers are warm between his and Jason holds on maybe a fraction too tight, because the fear of waking up to find out he’s a ghost really never goes away.
But Damian’s hand is warm in his and nothing is green and they’re going home.
“Now we get back to the Cave and hope no one noticed I was missing, because if they did, Bruce won’t let me out of his sight for a month.”