Chapter Text
He was in a cave. There was stone, stone everywhere. His lungs weren’t working, his mouth wouldn’t move, no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t reach out.
There was a woman. There was a woman holding his hand. She had bright blonde hair and gleaming green eyes and she drew him deeper and deeper and deeper. “It’s okay,” she said, and he believed her. “You’ll be safe,” she said, and he believed her. “This is the only way,” she said, and he believed her.
He was drowning. The green was everywhere, everywhere, filling his nose and trickling down his throat and piercing through his eyes and twisting-turning-remaking. It hurt. It burned. It destroyed him from the outside in and then the inside out and he could feel it rewriting every cell in his body, replacing him completely and utterly.
He woke up. In a body not his own. The woman was holding out a hand. “It’s okay, Jay-lad,” came the soothing voice, and Jason trusted it.
That was when the laughter started.
“No—fuck, wake up, you need to wake up, Little Wing, please, please wake up—”
The world was spinning. Swinging.
“—don’t know, I don’t have any antidotes on me—”
Gunshots. Loud and echoey.
“—later, right now I need to get him somewhere safe—no, Jaybird, stop—”
“Mom?”
She was cold. So, so cold. He could see the blue veins crisscrossing her pale skin, wriggling like worms come to life. She smiled at him, and her lips were outlined in red, red blood. “Jason,” she said, and she was holding a gun, and Jason fled.
Gotham towered above him, dark and monstrous, a sky as black as pitch and roads teeming with death. Hands snatched at him amidst the gunshots and screams and the cruel, cruel laughter ringing above it all.
There was a light, a dim, battered streetlight, and Jason was standing right underneath it. His clothes were ripped and too tight and there were hundreds of eyes watching, in the darkness beyond his patchy circle of light. There were hounds baying in the distance and when Jason looked up, he saw the symbol in the sky, the grotesque bat shining against the heavens.
The streetlight went out.
Smiles popped up around him, one by one by one, wider and wider and wider, and the eyes were green and there was nowhere to run and they were everywhere.
Jason screamed. It didn’t make them stop.
A swooping sensation curling through his stomach. Wind against his bare face.
“—shh, Jaybird, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s not real—”
A sickly, roiling feeling crawling up out of his throat and dripping past his lips, hot and wet and awful.
“—we’re almost there, almost home, it’s okay, hold on—”
A steel band wrapped around his chest, and he couldn’t breathe—
The Bat was standing above him. Jason’s hands were empty and the Batmobile was in pieces and the Bat loomed above him, a monster made of monsters, darkness and destruction. The Dark Knight of Gotham.
“Did you do it.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a pronouncement. It was a verdict and Jason was guilty, there wasn’t going to be a trial, justice had spoken and it didn’t care for what he had to say.
“Did you kill him?”
There was a body hanging from a noose. There was a body hanging from a noose and it was all wrong, limbs dangling limply and neck broken and dead dead dead.
“Robin, did you do it.”
The end of the noose was in Jason’s hands. He looked down, and it changed to a tire iron. He looked up and it was a crowbar.
The judgement in Batman’s gaze stole the breath from his lungs.
“Murderer.”
No matter how far he ran, how quickly, how desperately, he couldn’t escape the crime. Judgement had been passed and justice was coming. Jason couldn’t outrun it. His steps faltered as the sobs started and he dropped to his knees in surrender.
There was sand underneath his fingers.
“—got the antidote—Jason, Jay, please, stop fighting me—”
No. No needles. No no no no nononononono—
“I’m sorry, Little Wing.”
A sharp prick and the scream tore from his throat, terror and betrayal and shock.
“Shh. It’s okay now. Just breathe.”
There were fingers combing through his hair. Soft and gentle. Like his mother—
His mother smiled and extended her hand. Jason wasn’t a fool, he could see the sharp edges to her face, the glint in her eyes. He knew she was lying.
Jason was a fool, he followed her anyway.
“It’s okay,” she said, soft and throaty, “He’s gone. It’s okay, it’s just us.”
He wanted so desperately to believe it was true.
“Ha ha ha ha—” there were too many of them, too many surrounding them, and a figure stepping out of the shadows—“A little bird, far away from his nest.”
She was pointing the gun at him now. “I’m sorry,” she lied, no remorse on her face, “This was the only way.”
Something in Jason—the last vestiges of hope, of faith, of belief in something better—shattered.
Robin was magic.
But even magic runs out.
The Joker raised the crowbar and Jason felt every fucking blow. Every lance of pain as the sharp edges scored his skin. Every explosion of agony as the metal broke bones. The heavy feeling of suffocation as his rib punctured a lung. The torture of watching his mother watch him get brutalized, expression blank and cigarette at her lips.
“Which hurts more?”
His heart. His heart, broken too many times for him to fix. His heart, lying scattered in pieces.
“A? Or B?”
He was dying. He knew he was dying. He could feel it. Feel himself slipping away.
“Forehand or backhand?”
The timer was counting down, seconds slipping through Jason’s fingers. He tried. He really did. He tried. He tried so hard to save himself, to free his mother, to yank at a locked door with broken fingers before he accepted his fate.
It was too late.
“Tell the big man I said hello.”
In that final second, Jason wondered who he meant. Batman? Or the Devil?
Did it make a difference?
He felt the fire searing across his skin, boiling him from the inside out with that last gasp of ash-choked air. He felt the cold, cruel, torturous agony of his soul being ripped from his body. He felt himself fall.
Everything was black. Unending. An expanse that made him feel so enormously insignificant something inside him shriveled when he tried to comprehend it.
“—it’s okay. It’s not real. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
He was choking. Gasping. There was no air, his lungs weren’t working, there was no air—his fists hit something that sounded like wood—wait—what was he wearing—where was he—
“You’re alive.” Tears splattering on his skin. “Oh, Jaybird, Little Wing, you’re alive.”
That was dirt, beneath his fingers. That was a box, he was trapped in. He kicked and punched and fought, panic and desperation and dread, what was going on, what was happening, no, please, make it stop.
“Thank you.” The words were choked and cracking. “Thank you so much for coming back.”
He dug himself free, mud squelching between his fingers, rain beating fiercely down. Lightning cracked across the sky, thunder booming soon after, and in that instant of clarity, he saw the words engraved on smooth, gleaming stone.
Here lies Jason Todd.
The darkness closed in.
Jason woke to the distinct, overwhelming sensation that he’d been run over by a truck. Every part of his body was sore, his stomach was turned inside out and gnawing on his bones, his chest felt like an elephant was sitting on him, and when he tried to swallow his mouth both tasted like death and felt like someone had sandpapered his throat.
He made an inarticulate groan and tried to move a hand, half expecting to find himself inside a dumpster. Instead, his arm hit something soft and prying his eyes open netted him a blurry visual of something that looked like a couch.
Jason exhaled and tried to not sound like a dying whale. Rubbing to clear his eyes took longer than he expected and the world slowly returned to clarity as Jason stared up at a plain white ceiling.
“How are you feeling?” came from the other side of the room in a cool, familiar voice and Jason suppressed his groan as he twisted to look at Nightwing.
“Like crap,” he rasped, sounding like a rusty, broken chainsaw as he squinted at the doorway. And froze.
The blue-and-black suit was gone, replaced by sweatpants, a tank top, no mask. And a stern expression. Jason tried and failed to swallow. Dick Grayson met his gaze calmly.
Jason reached up to his face and found a lack of his gas mask, domino mask, and voice modulator. His hoodie was gone too, his belt, his boots, all his gear, even the comm in his ear. Instead, he was wrapped in a bright blue-and-red Wonder Woman blanket. Jason squinted at it. A familiar Wonder Woman blanket, one he distinctly remembered purchasing for a birthday gift.
Jason slowly dragged his gaze back up to Dick. “Who told you?” he asked hoarsely.
“Did you really think I couldn’t recognize my own brother?” Dick raised an eyebrow.
Jason flushed. He debated the merits of denying it, but his head was killing him and he didn’t like his chances of escaping the couch for a quick escape. Goddamnit. This was exactly the opposite of what he wanted.
“Wait,” Dick narrowed his eyes, “What do you mean, who told me? Who else knows?”
At this rate, the entire fucking city. “Babs,” he listed, “The brats. You. And no one was supposed to know.”
Dick’s expression crinkled in confusion. “I don’t understand,” he said quietly, slipping further into the room. Jason, skin prickling at being at the disadvantage, forced himself upright, muscles groaning, until he was sitting up. He kept the blanket. He wanted a shield for this conversation, as paltry as it was. “Babs told me a little—about the Lazarus Pit, so I could monitor any symptoms, but I don’t—you died, Jason.” Dick stopped, several steps from Jason, hand outstretched like he wanted to touch Jason to make sure he was still there. “How did you come back?”
Jason could taste dirt on his tongue. “No clue,” he snapped, “If you’ve talked to Babs, you know as much as I do.” His hands ached with the sense-memory of punching wood—a box, underground, his gravestone, and Jason didn’t know if it was real or a nightmare, but the word coffin made something twist unpleasantly in his stomach. “Can I ask questions too or is this a one-sided interrogation?”
Dick’s expression tightened, a blaze of familiar anger in his eyes, and Jason remembered how easy it was to poke Dick’s buttons, to compress him deeper and deeper into the icy, expressionless vigilante, mouth twisted with the effort it took to suppress his urge to lash out—and Dick’s expression…softened.
Jason blinked.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking a seat on the coffee table so he was no longer looming over Jason, his tone soft and strangely fragile. Up close, Jason could spot even more differences—there were deep, dark bruises around Dick’s red-tinged eyes, his skin looked washed-out, exhaustion pressed at the corners of his barely-there smile. There were splotches of color along Dick’s arms and a deep, vivid red burn scar on his left shoulder. “It’s not an interrogation,” Dick said quietly, and his smile brightened and faltered, “I—I missed you.”
There was something thick caught in Jason’s throat.
“I—” Dick raised a hand before stuttering, fingers caught in empty space. His eyes were suspiciously shiny. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t get your call. I was in space, on a mission with the Titans, and I—” Dick’s voice was cracking and Jason’s eyes were prickling now—“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
Jason reached out to grab Dick’s hand as the first tear slipped down. He squeezed, desperate to forestall them, but they kept dripping down, Dick drawing in a shuddering breath as he stared at Jason’s hand.
“It’s not your fault,” Jason said, and it was born of a panicked urge to find something to say, but when the words left his mouth he found that it was true. There was a deep, aching sadness inside him, but he couldn’t watch Dick crying and search for the threads of spiteful rage.
Dick gave him a watery smile. “I’m so happy that you’re back,” he said, wiping at his face, “Everyone missed you so much.”
Jason tensed completely. Dick, who was still holding his hand, couldn’t fail to miss it. In a desperate attempt to redirect, Jason asked, “Wait, what happened with Mask? And where are we?”
“You got a face full of fear toxin, that’s what happened,” Dick said, making no comment at the abrupt change in topic. “I got us out of there and called it in to the GCPD, they recovered most of the fear toxin. Sionis managed to wriggle free by claiming that the cavern isn’t his property and there’s nothing tying him to it, so they had to let him go. Currently, the cops are trying to see if they can get the goons to flip.”
Well, moving the fear toxin out of his reach was a good thing, but Jason was still wary. A man that had been planning a takeover for this long had more cards up his sleeve than a warehouse full of fear toxin. And wolves were always the most dangerous when cornered.
“I brought you here to give you the antidote. It’s a safehouse in the East End—my safehouse, not Batman’s,” Dick said, correctly interpreting the expression on Jason’s face, “He has no idea that you’re here. Babs mentioned that you didn’t want to tell anyone.”
Jason let go of Dick’s hand and withdrew it. There was a leading undertone to Dick’s words, a silent ask for an explanation that Jason didn’t want to give. “I’m not going back,” Jason said, voice clipped and short. “I don’t care what you say. I’m not going back.”
Dick looked at him, expression serious. Just don’t ask me why, Jason begged inside his head, because he was running out of excuses. He’d met the kids, Babs, Dick. He’d heard from multiple people how much his family had missed him, he’d seen how much they missed him. But the idea of Bruce Wayne was still a looming black hole in his heart and Jason felt like he was holding onto control with his fingertips where Batman was concerned.
If he let go—he didn’t know what would happen if he let go. He didn’t know how far he’d fall. He didn’t know if he’d be caught. He didn’t know which terrified him more.
“Okay,” Dick said quietly.
Jason stared at him.
“I’d be a hypocrite if I told you to go to the Manor and work it out,” Dick quirked his lips, clearly reading Jason’s shock, “I won’t tell anyone, Jaybird.” Jason narrowed his eyes, waiting for the catch—“But can we still hang out?”
Jason opened his mouth to tell him that he was perfectly fine living on his own, thank you, and if he wanted nosy birds hanging around, he would’ve said so, and—Dick was looking at him, blue eyes wide and pleading, and fuck, Jason had forgotten about the Golden Boy’s puppy-dog eyes.
“Fine,” Jason retorted, crumbling against a weapon with no defense, “But I am not visiting that shithole you call a city, and if you cook, I’m fleeing the country.”
Dick’s smile brightened, like the sun coming out of the clouds, and even his pout couldn’t diminish the happiness. “What’s wrong with my cooking?”
“Nothing, if I ever wanted to set my mouth on fire,” Jason groused. Dick’s idea of spice was a whole bottle of red chili powder because apparently the Titans had all gotten far too used to Starfire’s cooking. “And if you tackle me, I will bite you,” Jason warned, seeing the way Dick had braced himself to jump off the coffee table.
Dick subsided, leaning back against the coffee table and watching Jason. The intensity of his stare was making Jason’s neck itch. It was like Dick was afraid to look away, lest Jason disappear.
“Can I still get hugs?” Dick asked, voice light, but the casualness of the question couldn’t disguise the way his breath hitched.
Fuck it all.
Jason levered off the couch and closed the distance between them to half-collapse against Dick’s side and wrap his arms around his big brother. Dick completed the hug, arms warm and encompassing and tight, and Jason didn’t know which one of them was sobbing but it felt like coming home.
Fuck, but he’d forgotten how much of an octopus Dick Grayson was. It had taken the rest of the day to escape his clutches, forced to stay under Dick’s smothering overprotectiveness as the older boy checked and rechecked to make sure Jason wasn’t suffering any side effects from the fear toxin. And then Dick wouldn’t let Jason leave without taking a whole bag of antidotes with him, just in case he had a flare-up.
Jason had drawn the line at being escorted back to his apartment. That Babs knew where it was was bad enough, he refused to have people climbing through his windows. Dick was sneaky, but he was very not subtle and Jason had been suspicious of the stories Dick was telling about Tim and Stephanie long before Dick casually asked if they could all meet up.
The whole point of living on his own was to live on his own. It wasn’t to agree to a movie night at Babs’ place next week so Dick would finally let him leave, no matter how much something inside Jason ached for his family back.
The anger, the burning rage that had fueled his return to Gotham, was gone. The green had been drained out and Jason wasn’t quite ready to confront what remained. Without the comforting shield of anger came a whole host of emotions Jason didn’t want to deal with, and his time was running out.
But Jason had trained under the Bat, and emotional repression was something he knew well. He was suited up for patrol that night.
His comm took a while to focus, buzzing in and out before he could hear Oracle’s voice. “—suppose there’s no chance—crkk—you to take a night off, is there?” her weary voice said as Jason straightened on his rooftop.
“Come on, O, does that work on anyone?” Jason laughed, running for the edge of the rooftop and jumping off the ledge. He landed cleanly on the next one and kept running.
“I’d like it to,” she grumbled.
“I’m fine, I got the antidote, I even took a nap.” He felt so much lighter, running across Gotham’s rooftops with the wind curling around him. Like he truly was a Bat again. “You got anything for me?”
“Well, Mask’s not happy, but that’s to be expected. Cops are—clk—thugs, but doubtful that they’ll get—scrr—much from them. The Bat’s still out of town, Wing’s back in Bludhaven, and the kids are at home.”
“So I have Gotham all to myself.”
“Don’t let the power go to your head,” Oracle said, before the rest of her voice ended up drowned in static. Jason took his comm out and tapped it before sliding it back in. “Hood?”
“Connection’s a bit scratchy,” Jason said, eyeing the threateningly cloudy sky above him, “It’s just a normal patrol for me, I’ll click off and come back on when I’m done.”
“Alright,” Oracle said, “Be safe.”
His good mood seemed to carry. The working girls smiled when he did a quick jaunt down their street and he spotted a window full of laughing children when he stopped briefly by the orphanage. Despite the looming threat of a storm, the air felt crackling with energy and rejuvenation.
He was alive. He was alive. It was a heady thing to be reminded of, that he’d once been dead but he had come back. He’d gotten a second chance. It was a miracle, and he wouldn’t waste it.
Jason completed a circuit of his entire territory before realizing that he hadn’t spotted a single Grey Ghost.
He paused on a high-rise rooftop close to the East End, surveying the streets below him. Not a single black-and-silver jacket, much less a face he recognized, when the Ghosts claimed at least half the Alley as their own. And, now that he was thinking about it, actually thinking, the Alley wasn’t in a good mood. The Alley was quiet.
And that was definitely not the same thing.
The thugs stalking the Ghosts’ meetings. Mask, humiliated and outraged. And cornered wolves always lashed out.
Fuck. Jason might’ve made the situation even worse, given that it was not an uncommon opinion that the Ghosts enjoyed his favor, and Jason had definitely been spotted in the building last night. He clicked his comm back on as he headed for the arcade that was the Ghosts’ main meeting hall but the burst of static nearly took out his eardrum and he hastily slipped the comm off.
Jason spared a half second to wonder if this was how Batman felt when he realized his actions had consequences, when the web he was holding spiraled beyond his ability to contain. When he realized he couldn’t control everything.
He heard the screaming before he reached the arcade. Thugs with black masks had converged on the position and the sound of gunfire was loud enough to clear the block. Jason didn’t bother with preparation or planning, he dropped down on the first thug he could see and jumped up swinging.
The place was a mess. Overturned tables and flickering lights and the sparks of broken machines, intermittent gunfire sounding on and off. The masked goons had clearly not expected anyone else to show up, and Jason used the element of surprise to his advantage, focused on knocking them down and out of the fight. There were already bodies littering the floor, both the black-and-silver of the Ghosts and the black masks of Sionis’ goons.
This had been a desperate attack, and a foolish one. Mask clearly didn’t have the numbers for a full-fledged assault, but he tried, what? A surprise attack? Either way, the Ghosts hadn’t been unprepared for long and the fighting was dying out.
The screaming hadn’t stopped, earsplitting and heartbreaking. The bodies on the ground shifted to more masked thugs than gang members as Jason crept closer to the back rooms, but he moved carefully, silently, watching for anyone trying to sneak up on him.
He was met with a gun to the face the moment he pushed through the curtain to the back rooms. Thankfully, the Ghost on the other side didn’t shoot on sight, taking the second to identify and lowering the gun when he saw the red.
“Hood,” the Ghost said, hard-eyed, “What are you doing here?” There was still screaming coming from the back, but the Ghost had his back turned in that direction, so he wasn’t expecting an attack.
“Common enemy,” Jason retorted, “What’s going on?”
“Rin got hit by something,” the Ghost said tersely. Jason remembered the boxes of fear toxin vials, any one of them could’ve been misappropriated in the chaos. “The situation’s contained.” Leave, he stopped short of saying.
“Let me through,” Jason said, “I can help.”
The man narrowed his eyes, but before he could respond, someone else stuck their head through the other door and snapped, “Oh, let him through before the cops get here.”
Jason shouldered into the back without resistance. The Grey Ghosts’ inner circle was here, their lieutenants and their boss—the man had a bullet hole straight through the forehead—and amidst the downed bodies lay one that was writhing, pinned down by four others.
“Rin,” a girl was shouting above the screams, “Rin, please, it’s not real!” Jason shouldered through the gawking crowd to see Rin pinned to the ground, face twisted and mouth open in a scream that got hoarser and hoarser.
“Here,” Jason said, digging out the prepared syringes he had, “These are antidotes for fear toxin.” Three of the four gave him wary glances, but the girl just snatched the syringes and stabbed one into Rin’s thigh with a practiced hand. Rin’s scream, long and drawn out, gradually subsided.
“They’ll be out of it for another hour or so,” Jason said, leaning over the group to check that Rin’s breathing had settled down. “If they’re having further symptoms, take them to a hospital. If—”
“I know the spiel, thanks,” the girl said, pushing her hair out of her face, and Jason recognized her as one of the Ghosts under Rin’s command. Sanju, was it? She scowled at him, “What are you doing here, kid?”
Jason stared at her blankly. He was seventeen goddammit, he was pretty sure there were Ghosts younger than him, and he’d eat his boots if Sanju or Rin could legally drink. He was not a fucking kid.
“Heard the gunshots,” Jason said bitingly, “The Alley’s my territory.”
“Yeah?” Sanju said, narrowing her eyes, “Tell that to those masked weirdos. Whoever they are and whatever they want.”
“Black Mask,” Jason volunteered, “Roman Sionis. Thinks he can stroll in and take Falcone’s place.” A hiss went around the room. “As you can probably imagine, I’m not the biggest fan.” He took a glance around the room, at the gang members who were weary but still alive. “Besides, he’s an idiot. Half his crew is sitting in jail and he chooses now to attack you guys? There was no way he was going to win.”
“It wasn’t about winning,” Sanju said flatly, stretching up to her feet. She tilted her head at the bodies in the room. “He took out the boss and a couple of our lieutenants. Not enough people to cause us to break up, or breed in-fighting, but enough that we’re going to have to consolidate. That takes time. Time spent focusing inwards and not on expansion. He didn’t need to get rid of us, he just had to make us withdraw.”
That…was a good point.
“Keep your eyes open, Hood,” Sanju said, voice grave, “Because whatever Mask is planning, he’s going to do it soon.”