Chapter Text
Tim felt a slow bead of sweat drip down his brow. His eyes didn’t waver, his stance was steady, coiled like a spring. With no warning, he exploded into movement, lunging on the attack towards his opponent, thrusting his makeshift staff forward and parrying the block, pivoting his body and sliding the staff down and across, striking one knee. His opponent managed a bruising strike to his abdomen on the backhand, but Tim was already reversing position, tangling the staff under the larger man’s armpit and using it as leverage to flip him. He hit their makeshift rattan mats with a thump and a groan.
“Christ, O, you are shit at this,” Pru cackled from the sidelines.
“Good,” Z nodded to Tim as Owens flipped Pru the bird from the ground. “You’re still telegraphing on the left side though. Your opponent will be able to see what you're thinking when your eyes flicker.”
“He doesn’t,” Tim pointed out, grinning at a scowling Owens.
“That’s because he’s shit at this,” Z replied calmly.
“Hey!” Owens grumbled. “Unlike you losers, I never have to kill up close and personal.” Owens had his signature finger gun and left a hole in the busted washing unit that Pru was sitting on, making her laugh and swear at the same time. “ I was an assassin. Like an actual one, not someone who got lost on their way to a bar fight!”
Tim grinned as Pru and Owens started yet another epic round of snark. It was true – Owens was the long distance sniper, so he had a surprising lack of close combat skills. Tim was pushing hard into expanding his own. There was no reason to waste months of training and effort was his reasoning, and besides, while the wastelands were surprisingly non-violent, the Alley certainly wasn’t and Tim had to go back through there on the regular. Starting a business required a lot of meetings and paperwork.
“Up,” Z told Owens inexorably. “Again.”
Owens grumbled but rose to his feet. The two combatants circled warily within the roughly delineated combat circle. Mindful of Z’s advice about telegraphing, Tim kept his eyes trained on his opponent. Discipline steadied their breaths and gave Tim a faint overlay of glittering molecules, which danced subtly on Owens and Z in the background, but didn’t show up on Pru at all.
The quantum sight had turned out to be quite a useful, versatile Talent in its own right. For example, it allowed Tim to see the gathering motes drawn towards Owens fingers as the man’s eyes narrowed cunningly. When he unleashed the bolt – concussive, but not penetrative – Tim was ready. He flickered out of the line of fire and flashed back behind Owens, even as Z shouted gruffly, “No Talents, you pair of misbegotten idiots!”
But Z’s plea for sense was far too late. Tim was already in full strike mode, looking to immobilize his target from behind. He forgot, in his eagerness, that while Owens wasn’t their close combat specialist he did have eyes that saw everything. Tim was privately of the opinion that he had a latent, unconscious pre-cog Talent. How else could he unerringly fire exactly where someone was going to be?
Like now. Tim had been so focused on the front fire he’d missed Owens pointing the finger of his non-dominant hand behind his back, ready for Tim’s teleport. Tim managed to phase through the worst of it, but it still sent him spinning off his targeted grapple grip. He jumped again, landing just long enough to get a solid right hook in Owens jaw before jumping out again. Owens’ follow-up to his sneaky stealth shot at Tim went hilariously awry, hitting the old washing unit the cackling Pru was using as a chair and sending her flying backwards, ass over head, cussing them out and laughing all the way.
“Oh, you wanna fight, eh?” Pru bounced up from the ground with a bloody nose and a glittering, sharp smile.
“No, they don’t,” Z said, though his tone was resigned to the inevitability of what was coming.
“Alrighty then,” Pru drew her shiv. “I’ll give ya a fight!” She threw herself between them with wild abandon. Unlike Owens, she really was a close combat specialist.
Z sighed and went to sit down on a broken cooking unit, content – or at least, accepting – to let them tussle it out for a while.
Tim was getting good, but a three-way Talent art battle royale was nothing but messy. If Tim wasn’t ducking a swing from the reverse edge of Pru’s shiv, he was dancing around Owens’ blasts. He used teleportation like a champion though; mostly because it was so much fun to whap Pru over the back of her bald head when she was standing next to Owens and flicker out again before she could catch him, causing her to punch Owens and then have Owens furiously enact vengeance. They were complete idiots, they always fell for it, but probably only mostly because they existed in a state of pitched battle for most of their interactions anyway.
When they worked together, they were a well-oiled machine, though. Like right now, as Pru swiped his legs out from under Tim so he lost his jump-teleport-land advantage and was duly grappled by Owens in what Tim had to admit was a much-improved restraint hold.
“Good,” Z nodded, because he would take what he could get. “Press your foot into his knee joint and keep him off centre, and keep his arm up along his back. There, that’s a restraint.”
“Arg, not that hard,” Tim advised as his arm was wrenched upwards to the point of pain. “Not unless your goal is to pop a joint!”
Owens got as far as, “Whoops, sor—” before the ground at his feet exploded. He went flying one way and Tim fell the other, ears ringing and adrenaline suddenly marinating in his body. He rolled to his feet, ready for anything.
A figure in armour leapt from the top of the junk heap they’d apparently climbed to get a view of their ersatz training ground. A kinetic Talent, Tim noted. He was a big guy at six and change. In addition to the body armour he was wearing what looked like an old leather motorcycle jacket and… a helmet? Tim was momentarily distracted by the helmet. I mean, sure, people wore helmets; it was your average, low-income thugs' way of trying to get around civil surveillance and only used by those who couldn’t just bribe a system worker. But they were usually skimmer bike-helmets – cheap and unidentifiable beyond a brand name. This thing looked like a custom job, well fitted, with reactive eye lenses. That would have been damn expensive.
Plus, Tim frowned, there wasn’t any surveillance to avoid, not out here. If it was an aesthetic choice, it was a damn weird one.
Tim shook himself and focused. The Alley’s troubles didn’t often spill over this far into the wastelands, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t. This guy was probably looking for someone. They needed to…
“Hey asshole!” Pru said furiously, lunging for him, knife right side up this time. “Who the fuck invited you?”
… not strategize at all, apparently, Tim sighed.
Pru was fast when she was taking a fight seriously. She could strike like a snake and also take a hit that should knock somebody her size flat. She was, it had to be said, something of a berserker, but some unsung hero of a combat master had managed to hone a fine razor edge of control out of the foaming-at-the-mouth madness that catapulted her into the fray. She was, in short, tough to beat.
The interloper met her weaponized, precise fury with liquid grace, parrying easily and matching her blow for blow. Tim added ‘Discipline-trained’ to his observations, and this guy hadn’t just taken the general course, either.
Tim readied himself to leap in even as he noted Owens scrambling back into the stacks to find a vantage point to shoot from and Z hefting from a junk pile what looked like a length of steel pole with a massive chunk of twisted rebar and concrete on the end like another person might lift a drinking straw. The three assassins remained convinced that Ra’s Al Ghul was still searching for his biggest defectors, that one day someone would come for them to mark their names off a list. Tim hadn’t been fully convinced. He was of the opinion that a lot of Ra’s’ power was of the smoke-and-mirror variety, and, with the world on the cusp of having Talents launch them into the stars themselves, the illusion itself was likely shrinking by the day.
The Demons Head Cult had based its foundations on inviting in Talents who were rejected by the normal world, to give them a safe haven and the panacea of being told that they were the ones destined to rule the world. With Talent acceptance getting more mundane and ubiquitous in the modern world, the attractiveness of the various Talent cults was fading.
Nevertheless, men losing power were usually at their highest level of petty spite. Al Ghul might waste his time with a pointless revenge against people who’d damaged his cult's reputation for being inescapable. Today, Tim thought, might actually be that day.
And Tim couldn’t deny Ra's Al Ghul had some of the finest combat Talents the world had ever seen. This guy was clearly one of them.
Pru was suddenly disarmed with a twist and flip combo.
Tim froze before he jumped. That move… he frowned at it. That had seemed awfully familiar.
He hesitated, stumbling over his own memories, long enough for helmet-guy to advance in the field. Pru was fine but sweaty, winded from where she’d been planted into the hard ground with a kinetic assist. Owens tried a rapid barrage of kinetic shots, but the helmet guy’s kinetic Talent was good enough to shield and disperse the bolts of force – and that in and of itself was pretty rare.
Next in his sightlines was Tim, with Z moving up the rear, makeshift war hammer at the ready.
Tim shifted into a fighting stance, hitting quantum sight and ready for the fight…
… only to nearly fall over in shock as the helmet guy got between him and Z, showing his vulnerable, if armoured, back to Tim and blocking Z’s view of him.
… what?
Tim’s first wildly puzzled impulse was irritation. He wasn’t that bad a fighter to be disregarded like that. But even that faded fast as the guy backed up from Z once he was between Z and Tim, forcing Tim to back up too. Almost like helmet guy was protecting him.
Z narrowed his eyes. He’d seen it too. He lowered his makeshift giant cudgel slowly, neither giving ground nor gaining it. “Another one of yours?” he asked Tim archly.
Before Tim could do more than open his mouth the helmet guy said. “Hey asshole! You’re the ones who started the fight. I’m just evening the odds.” He held out his hands. “Come at me fucker, if you really need to pick on someone that badly.”
Tim felt his confusion thrum higher. His instincts were screaming at him, but he was too taken aback to immediately realize what they were trying to tell him. “Uh… I think you’ve got the wrong…?”
“Fucking really?” Pru snarled, rising to her feet. “Another Institute brat? What the fuck, how many of these assholes are gonna show up at our door, Red? What is this, grand central station?”
Helmet’s gaze flickered towards her. There was a faint hesitation in his stance now, like he was trying to get a read on the situation.
“In my defence,” Tim muttered. “I didn’t know they were going to show up the next day.” They had, much to his embarrassment. The last two weeks had been one long conga line of visiting Bats, one after the other, way too staggered to be anything but meticulously planned. It was like having to introduce your cool new friends to your seriously uncool family. He’d had to ask them to slow their roll a little. The people around here got really antsy about new faces. They would scuttle into their safe spots and would require hours of coaxing to come out again.
In short, Tim’s family was a little bit much .
Except Alfred. Alfred had a standing invitation to come anytime. The people here liked him because he bought food. Really good food.
Z was carefully putting the cudgel down. “I’m not interested in fighting you,” he said mildly.
“Oh yeah?” Helmet guy spat. “You sure seemed interested in attacking him, you pack of fuckers!” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a surprised Tim.
Tim hastily came around him, hands raised. “They weren’t attacking me!” he explained. “Really! I guess it might have looked that way from a distance but we were just sparring. You know, combat training. I’m helping Owens. He’s shit at it.”
A distant and insulted, “Hey!” came from the stacks.
Helmet guy stared at him for a long time before relaxing his stance. “… Oh,” was his reply.
Tim felt his confusion rise, along with his sense of foreboding. “Do I… know you?” he finished in a croak, as it hit him there was literally one person in the Institute that moved the way this guy moved.
The guy moved to release his helmet.
No, Tim pleaded with the heavens. Please, no.
The helmet came off. Dark hair. Chiselled jaw. Blue-green eyes. And a shock of white hair at the front.
“I sure hope so,” said Jason.
*
Tim managed to get away from the three with Jason. They ended up all the way over at the Basin, sitting on what had once been a public bench seat near the water's edge, though at no point in the future would Tim ever be able to recall how. He was too busy staving off a panic attack. He was too busy trying not to just die on the spot. He was too busy trying not to just stare at Jason, to drink in the sight of him standing under the waking sky.
He wasn’t succeeding at any of these things.
To make matters worse, the silence between them was awkward as hell. Jason looked as discomfited as Tim felt, even though some of the tension had left him when they’d left the three former assassins behind. Tim’s shredded nerves were on fire. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“What’s with the helmet?” Tim blurted when he couldn’t stand the silence any more. He cursed himself; the words were shrill and rude.
Jason looked down at the helmet tucked under his armpit and back up at Tim. “It’s a therapeutic aid.”
Tim stared at him.
Jason shuffled and then thrust it at Tim wordlessly.
Tim fumbled it in his hands and turned it over in them for lack of anything else to do. The internal set up, however, made him frown. “This is a sensory deprivation rig!”
“Yeah,” Jason admitted. “I still have some sensory issues, you know. Overstimulation and sensory spikes and shit. The helmet is basically so I can make the call on how much stimulus I’m getting.”
“Oh. Oh, right,” Tim replied, wincing at the lameness of it. Of course Jason would have those kinds of issues. Tim couldn’t even imagine the amount of new and raw neural pathways he'd grown inside his brain in the last few months. Rebooting a thinking engine was a complicated process. “Um, sorry!” Tim thrust the helmet back at Jason hastily. “Do you need it on?”
“… No,” Jason replied slowly, eyes darting all over Tim. “Not right now. I’m good.”
Tim looked away. He was terrified of looking Jason in the eye right now. Terrified of what he’d see in them. “Um… good, that’s good. Um. What… what are you doing here?” He tried to keep his voice level as he could. “Not that, um, I’m not happy to see you, or anything!” he added, voice climbing higher. “I just thought… well, I didn’t think you’d be up and about. Like, by now.” He squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could just sink into the Basin and die.
“Uh, I’m not, really,” Jason admitted sheepishly. “I’m more or less here against medical advice.”
It was on the tip of Tim’s tongue to say Jason should probably go back if he wasn’t a hundred percent yet, but his conscience pointed out that he really was the last person in the universe who should really be advocating staying at the Institute when you really didn’t want to. He kind of understood the fond-edged frustration that pulled Jason’s mouth. He felt much the same when Bruce and the rest of them started showing up here in a careful but steady stream. I mean, Tim appreciated their eagerness to fix the cracks in the relationship, it did hit him in the feels, no question, but he also had to admit… they could be a bit much when all their attention was on you.
But, given that he couldn’t say that, Tim was at a loss as to what he could say. ‘You look well,’ sounded like the pithiest of pithy small talk. He still couldn’t bring himself to look Jason in the eye. “Um… so what made you come out to this pile of junk?” he asked instead
And immediately regretted it when Jason leaned back in sheer surprise, hurt and shock fighting for space on his brow.
“Not that I’m not happy you’re here,” Tim hastily tried to correct. “I am! It’s just… why here? You just got out of a coma. Surely there’s a world full of things you missed out on that you’d want to do first.”
Jason's mouth worked soundlessly for a second before he scowled. “To see you, you dumbass! What the fuck… why the fuck wouldn’t I want to come out and see you?” he asked, sounding honestly bewildered. “You saved my fucking life!”
Tim, shocked into hope by Jason's declaration, felt a part of himself fall off a cliff at the addendum. He doesn’t remember, Drake, he repeated harshly, furious with himself for being irrational, for letting that irrationality ruin Jason’s first taste of the outside world.
He tried to force himself to speak levelly and clearly past the excruciating torture of Jason’s presence, but it was hard. “It… it wasn’t a big… um, you’re welcome,” Tim managed lamely after fumbling, his voice too choked to be natural.
He’d known it would be bad. But it really was a thousand times worse than anything he could have imagined. Jason was flushed, there was a fine sheen of sweat glittering just at the edges of his temples and if Tim tilted his head into the breeze just so , he caught a faint whiff of what was unmistakably another human being, all tangy and smoky.
Jason was real. He was here, and he was real in ways that he just hadn’t been, couldn’t have been, as a lost ghost trapped inside his own mind. Tim wasn’t prepared for the sheer, high definition reality of Jason. He couldn’t stand to look at him. He couldn’t stand to look away.
This was a nightmare.
Jason stared at him, open mouthed. “You’re welcome? You’re welcome ?!” he said incredulously. “What the fuck even is…” Then he blew out a breath. “Look, maybe I should just go.”
Tim’s insides lurched. “No! I mean, why? You don’t have to!” he exclaimed.
“Because I’m making you uncomfortable,” Jason said, rising to his feet. “You can’t even look at me. I shouldn’t have come here and disturbed you with no warning. I’m sorry, okay?” he mumbled, looking pained. “I won’t come here again if you don’t want to see me.”
“No, wait!” Tim jumped to his feet. “I do want to see you. I’m happy to see you. I really am!” He couldn’t stand the thought of Jason thinking badly of him in that way, like Jason was a nuisance.
Jason scowled. “Are you fucking serious? You think what I’m picking up from you feels like happy?”
Tim faltered. Receiving empath, he remembered miserably. Of course his sadness was pouring all over Jason. He pulled in a breath and tried to rally, to get himself under control.
“Just lookin’ at me makes you hurt,” Jason looked away, fists bunched at his sides. “No wonder you never came.”
“… what?” Tim blinked.
“Up at the Institute,” Jason scowled at the ground. “The others wouldn’t stop talking about you. I thought you’d come up to see me. I really, really wanted to see you. I waited for weeks. You never showed.”
Tim stared at him, throat too tight for words.
“I didn’t get it,” Jason’s jaw tightened. “But I guess feeling what seeing me is doing to you, I do now. I just wanted…” he spasmed helplessly. “I just wanted to talk to you. I shouldn’t’ve sprung it on you like this.” He slumped. “I should just go.”
“Jason,” Tim reached out. “I did want to see you. Every day. Every single day, I wanted to see you. I’m happy you’re here. You’re awake,” Tim let all the awe he felt for that fact colour every inch of him, so he knew Jason would pick it up. “But there were all these other things going on and… and I just couldn’t. It was too hard for me.”
Jason looked him over, wan and shaken. “Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “Yeah, I get that. Shit, this ain’t your fault, Baby Bird. I shouldn’t have pushed. I just… I just wanted to say I was sorry.”
Tim froze all over, vision tunnelling at the edges.
Jason went on talking, so determined to get the words out he didn’t immediately pick up that Tim had gone as rigid as a statue. “I’m sorry for those things I said,” he said, voice aching with regret. “When I said I didn’t love you, that you couldn’t be loved. I didn’t mean them, Baby Bird, I swear!” Jason looked up at him pleadingly. “I just knew… I thought there was no way out, that the only way I was going to stop the Joker was to pull my own plug and… and I knew you wouldn’t let me without a fight and… and I thought,” Jason’s face screwed up, like he wanted to cry. “I thought it would be easier for you if I could make you hate me. You didn’t, you never did, but once I started I couldn’t stop and… and I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Baby Bird.”
Tim stared at him in silence.
Jason slumped. “Well,” he said miserably. “That’s all I came to say, really.” He seemed to shrink in on himself as he turned away. “You seem happy here, I guess. I’m glad about that. Sorry for bothering you.”
“… what did you call me?”
Jason turned back to him, blinking at the choked whisper. “What?”
“What…” Tim was milk white and still frozen where he was. “ What did you just call me?” His voice came out shrill and tinny. He couldn’t even hear it over the pounding in his chest.
Jason looked at him worriedly. “Baby Bird?”
“You,” the word came out almost a sob. “You remember that?”
Jason looked baffled. “Remember it? Why wouldn’t I…” then he got it, the credit dropped. His eyes blew wide. “Tim, did you think I’d forgotten you?”
“But you did!” Tim burst out, hands digging bruises into his own forearms as he tried, almost physically, to hold himself together against whatever storm was going on inside. “You did before! I dug you out of the dust and you didn’t recognize me!”
Suddenly the tunnelling at the edges of Tim’s vision was a real problem. He lurched sideways and blindly tried to stagger his way back to the bench. His head was spinning. This can’t be happening, Tim told himself. It can’t be real.
He didn’t dare hope it was real.
Jason was suddenly in front of him like he’d picked up teleportation on the side, grabbing him and setting him down on the bench. “You need to breathe for me Baby Bird, okay? I just need you to breathe for me.”
The realness of Jason hit Tim like a hammer when he touched Tim. The warmth and the smell and tiny flickers of memory dancing right at the edges of Tim’s awareness, his brain too overwhelmed to process them. He shakily grabbed for Jason’s face, wanting to feel him; skin, blood, bone. Mind. “Jason,” he croaked, desperately trying to rally some kind of coherent thought. “ Jason.”
Is this real? Do you remember me?
A wave of tenderness suffused Jason’s face. He cupped Tim’s face, eyes watery and bright. “Oh, Tim,” he murmured, leaning in to press his forehead against Tim’s. “Of course I remember you. How could I forget you ?”
“But you did! ” And then Tim burst into tears, because it was either that or explode. Something had to give.
They weren’t wild, hysterical sobbing tears. They were quiet, shaken, ugly, wretched things, waterfalling down his face as his brain tried to make sense of this reality reset. It didn’t matter that it was good. It was too much. He felt like he was spinning in space, no point of reference, no anchor.
But then he was engulfed in Jason, who wrapped his arms around him and held on tight enough to hurt. It was enough of a focal point to keep Tim in the here and now as he tried to gather his scattered thoughts. Jason stayed with him, hardly any more steady judging by the fine tremors that wracked his broad frame.
“Jesus fuck, Baby Bird,” Jason said hoarsely into his hair. “Have you been walking around all this time thinking I didn’t even remember you?”
“You didn’t recognize me,” Tim whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. “After the explosion. I looked you in the eye. You didn’t know me!” The words came out harsher than he meant them, an unspoken accusation even though Tim didn’t blame Jason. He was accusing the universe.
Jason drew back a little, just enough to lean back and look Tim in the eye. “Tim, I’d literally just woken up from a long term coma and then been busted down to my component molecules and then remade from my component molecules. I dunno, Baby Bird,” he gave a wan version of his devastating smirk. “I think expecting me to be compos mentis was a bit much, really.”
Tim choked on whatever spasm was happening in his throat, be it a laugh or a sob. “You jerk.” More tears dropped off his chin. “The unconscious mind stores memories differently than the conscious one. You shouldn’t remember. I don’t understand how this is even possible!”
Jason tucked Tim’s head into his neck and stroked his hair soothingly. “Maybe the whole busted down to component molecules and remade thing did something to the consciousness barrier,” Jason shrugged, his chest jostling Tim a little. “What the fuck would be the difference between the unconscious and the conscious at that point? Fuck knows. Mind you,” Jason admitted, squeezing Tim again. “I was pretty fucking scrambled mentally for the first few days. I probably wouldn’t have recognized myself in a mirror, let alone you or anyone else. Hell,” Jason mused, rocking Tim in his arms. “Maybe Bruce fucking did something. He was the one mostly unscrambling me, getting my brain to recognize the order my memories should go in. Maybe he pulled a barrier-breaking rabbit out of his hat. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
Tim nodded and sniffled, reflecting that if this… this miracle had, somehow, been because of Bruce, even Tim couldn’t deny it was a hell of an apology. He felt too lightheaded and drained to try to untangle the threads of the mystery though. He just slumped against Jason and let him hold on too tight, like Tim was about to plummet off a cliff if he let go.
“Nearly right,” Jason’s lips were distractingly close to his ear. “I was scared out of my fucking mind you’d just up and vanish on me. Teleport away. I had fucking nightmares about that when I thought about coming up here. That you’d vanish and… and I wouldn’t be able to find you ever again.”
“I’m sorry I never came to the Manor,” Tim mumbled, feeling a horrible shame well up in him when he thought of his cowardice. “A part of me wanted to, more than anything. But there was so much other stuff I had to process and… and it was just too hard ,” he admitted, voice rasping in pain.
“Hey, hey,” Jason murmured gently, nuzzling his hair. “I don’t blame you, Baby Bird. Bruce fucked up by being an uncommunicative asshole and, as usual, someone else had to wear the fallout. He always fucking does this, you know? He did it to Dick, which is how we got Special Constable Nightwing. He did it to me, and I wound up as good as dead for five fucking years. Three times is a fucking pattern. You’d think he’d learn.”
Tim pressed his cheek harder into Jason’s neck. “I think he might have cottoned on this time,” he offered ruefully. “I heard a lot of people have been yelling at him. Maybe it finally penetrated.”
“Yeah, well, it oughta have done because I was yelling the fucking loudest,” Jason grumbled. “The guy is fucking nearly omniscient! He can’t be this stupid unless he’s actively, voluntarily, working it on some level.”
“Bruce flies too high,” Tim agreed, pulling his head up so he could smile at Jason. “He forgets that all the little things he sees up there are really fucking big when you’re on the ground. Hopefully he gets the message in time to do right by Damian, because that kid doesn’t have the forgiveness in him that we all had for Bruce’s foibles.”
Jason smiled back at him. “Hell, the demon brat. You fucking did demons a disservice lumping that hellion in with them.”
Tim snorted with laughter. Suddenly, for the first time in months, he felt as light as air. Like his wings were outstretched and he was taking flight. “I take it you’ve met him.”
“The little asshole is badgering me every waking minute for training in micro-kinesis,” Jason nodded. “Because ‘spawned from peasant stock or not, you have at least mastered one semi-useful skill’.”
Tim felt a wobble in his take off. “Jason… I’m sorry about your mo… about Sheila,” he said tentatively. He had no idea what Jason’s current stage of therapy was about that part of it, but he felt it had to be said, if only because he doubted any of the others would have thought to.
Jason grimaced. “She made her bed,” he said in a low voice. “I get that she was messed up. She was fucking messed up before she even had me, seems like. Willis Todd sure didn’t fucking help and the Joker definitely didn’t. But some of that messed up was purely her own shitty choices, and she made ‘em fully aware of how fucked up it would leave other people. So, she made her own bed and she died in it. She’s a fucking stranger to me. I’m happy to just leave her as that.”
Tim nodded. A clean amputation was really the best option for everyone still alive to be hurt. “I’m glad that… well, I’m not sorry she exists because… because it means you get to exist. I can be sorry about the rest of it, but not that bit.”
“Yeah, but I’m kinda glad Bruce had more input into parenting me than she ever got the chance to, even though me and him still have a pretty messed up relationship.”
“You’re fighting with Bruce?” Tim blinked. Tim would have thought death and resurrection would have at least gotten them talking.
“Yes. Well, no,” Jason corrected. “We don’t fight like we used to fight. We don’t talk at each other like before either. We… talk,” Jason admitted. “Got the air cleared between us. Having to unscramble my brains probably gave Bruce an insight into how much what he said hurt me before I ran off. I think it’s finally hit him that he and I fundamentally don’t speak the same language. Like, he keeps bracing himself to help me through the guilt of having killed the Joker and I just don’t feel anything remotely like guilt about it. How could I? And I know he gets it, he can understand the reasoning behind it but he can’t logic his way into feeling comfortable with that. I think he gets that I’m not totally aligned with him, philosophy wise. At least he’s not so hair-trigger sensitive about moral greyness now that he feels his only option is to give me the boot. But we both know that pre this fun little learning experience it definitely would have been on the cards. I think realizing that about himself really shocked him; that his supposed perfect moral line, can, in fact, from a certain angle, make him the one in the wrong was a pretty scary epiphany for him to grapple with.”
“I’m sorry,” Tim said, and meant it. Bruce had been as much of a hero to Jason as he had been to Tim. Tim knew how painful it was to have to reckon with Bruce’s flaws after admiring him so much for so long.
“Hey, it’s fine,” Jason ran his thumbs over Tim’s cheekbones. “Like I said, we talk. He’s willing to listen. For that alone B might have started to grow a little, just like the rest of us. I think he knows that I’m not really interested in falling in with any of his old plans for me. I think he’s at least willing to accept that, even if can’t bring himself to like it. He’s trying.”
Now finally able to look Jason in the eye, Tim felt a whole new kind of tension thrum through him. Jason was just as handsome as he ever was; perhaps even more so out here in the real world. It was a dizzying feeling to look upon him, his heart levitating into the coronasphere at the sight of him.
“So, uh,” Jason clearly felt it too, though Tim didn’t know if he was getting it from Tim or if it was something all his own. “I heard someone was starting up a restoration business in this place. And, you know,” Jason ducked his head bashfully. “I know my way around an engine or two. You think maybe they’re looking for new hires?”
Tim gave a half hysterical giggle of disbelief. “I don’t know if it’s the wisest career move. It’s not the most interesting work, really. The pay is kinda really good or really, really bad depending on the day. We live in decrepit old basements on welfare rations and half the time we’re still choking on the dust anyway. It’s a shitty deal, working out here. You could have a lot more than what we could offer. You should,” Tim added softly, because it was true. The world, which had been denied to Jason for so long, was literally now at his feet. If he stayed at the Institute, he could have it. He could have space, just like he’d wanted. Tim didn’t have that to give.
Not yet. Not for a long time.
Jason’s face softened. “What if I don’t give a fuck what I should have, Baby Bird? What if living in shitty squats and choking on dust and fixing up old wreckers is what would make me happy? Are you gonna say I shouldn’t choose what makes me happy?”
And yeah, Jason kind of had him there. “You still got therapy and stuff,” Tim mumbled shyly, but it was a half-hearted argument at best.
“Yeah, but not forever. A few more months, maybe. Then I gotta get on with my life.” Jason gave Tim a little exasperated shake. “I’m tryin’ to be all romantic and sweet here, Baby Bird. I’m tryin’ to point out that I’m happy where you are, wherever that is because… because I love you. I wanna build up the Drake-Todd & Co Aerospace and Plumbing, just like you dreamed because getting to spend the rest of my life with you is my dream. You might wanna be a little more helpful here,” Jason smirked. “Just saying.”
“Todd-Drake.”
Jason blinked, smirk evaporating. “What?”
“It’s Todd-Drake,” Tim murmured. “On the documents.”
Jason kissed him.
It was awful and awkward, his lips were chapped and Tim knew his breath was bad. Their teeth clashed. Two teens with no experience except what pure fantasy could teach them.
It felt like the merest whisper of dust sailing on the summer breeze. It felt like a supernova going off right at the heart of the universe.
It felt like everything and everywhere, all happening at once.
It was real. It was fucking wonderful.
“I love you,” Tim said as they came up for air. “I missed you so much and I love you.”
Then they were kissing again.
They didn’t speak for a long time after that.
“… I guess you’ll have to get back soon,” Tim said idly later on, when the sun had started going down, turning the world into a haze of red twilight through the lens of the dust. It painted them in crimson relief, all stark red contrasts in the gleaming, coppery landscape.
Tim wished he had a camera. But then, he was a psychometrist. Capturing a moment was but a fingers touch away.
“Nah,” Jason pulled him closer. “I can stay a while. I got time.”
Tim turned his head onto Jason’s shoulder, waiting for the stars to come out and beckon them on.
Jason was right.
They had all the time in the world.