Chapter Text
The thing about the young Robin was that he never did complain about the cold.
He would come back after a patrol, tired to the bone but with a smile on his face, and Dick could tell that the boy was hungry even if he pretended he wasn't. Because he remembered what it was like being young and coming home from a cold night out.
Jason, however, was built different. Built tougher. A soft soul clad in swathes of self confidence and determination. Heartbreak was an old friend and his stomach knew pain.
Frostbite was gentle kisses on his skin.
And Dick didn't want Jason to ever feel that way again.
So he learnt what the boy liked. Sandwiches, it wasn't difficult. He would layer butter generously on a thick slice of bread. Add three thin slices of roast beef, then a layer of Swiss cheese. A squirt of mustard. Sliced heirloom tomatoes — the good kind, because he was a growing boy. More cheese and then he would lightly grill it. Not too much to be crisp, just enough to warm it all before he wrapped it in sandwich paper and left it on the table by the window.
There was always food at the Manor, but there was a special joy in knowing he would always have his favourite sandwich, and a brother who loved him. So Jason would sneak into Dick's room through the window (because he could) and sit down beneath it, to savour his sandwich.
Dick would glance to his right, seeing the young Robin happily munching away and a smile would tug at his lips.
“So, how many of Bruce's lollipops did you nick this time before he caught you?” He teased, thoroughly enjoying how Jason tried harder and harder to loot the whole stash Batman carried in his utility belt. He would never regret teaching him about it.
“Three before he caught me.” Jason swallowed, a mischievous smirk appearing beneath his domino.
“That's my boy.” Dick would chuckle, turning back to his work, filling out the information he'd uncovered that night in his notebook. A while later, he would hear a change in the air and would call out over his shoulder.
“Night, little wing.”
But Jason was gone.
Time passed and Jason grew older. More frustrated. But Dick never forgot the sandwich his brother loved so much.
The cooldown in Dick's room dragged longer than the span it would take to eat one sandwich. He knew his brother's frustration and he tried to be kind.
An orange juice would soon join the desktop, sitting beside the sandwich in a glass.
“Night, Little wing.” Dick glances around and the condensation slides down the empty glass. The window is still up and the boy is gone.
It gets harder for Jason, because it is a hard job and Bruce is not an easy man to keep up with. So a bar of chocolate — one with fruit and nuts — joins the sandwich and the orange juice. The boy is barely a whisper when he sneaks in. Dick doesn't even realise till Jason's arms sneak around his neck and the boy mumbles into his ear.
“Goodnight, Dick.”
Dick's heart squeezes and he smiles so bright, turning to the waiting Robin at the window who winks at him, still the mischievous boy he once was before he sneaks out like a thief in the night. Dick chuckles, shaking his head.
Some things definitely do not change.
And they don't.
Because Dick makes those sandwiches with muscle memory. The orange juice finds its way to the glass before he can remember taking it out of the fridge.
And he sits by the window, waiting for his brother.
An hour passes and then another.
Till dawn breaks in Bludhaven and light streams in from the window still closed. The sandwiches are no longer eaten. The orange juice untouched. Chocolate melts in its wrapper.
A tear rolls down Nightwing's face. Another follows.
For Winter had left, taking Jason Todd along with it. And Dick was left behind, stuck with the memories of a boy and his favourite sandwich.
The Robin Bruce found a little too late, half hidden in the snow. Dick wondered if Jason felt cold when Bruce found him.
Dawn bathes Nightwing in a golden glow, but he cannot see it, sitting on the side of his bed facing the lone window. Palms pressed back his grief, but it still steamed down his face.
It was a stupid question, but one that haunted him along with so many others. All of them remain unanswered. But Jason wouldn't complain even if he could.
Dick remembers. He could never forget.
How could he?
The thing about his brother was that he never did complain about the cold.
Chapter Text
He saw Jason often. Or at least he thought he did.
The first was when he stopped by at Alfred's kitchen at the Manor, still in his mourning suit, and there to his surprise was the Robin, hiding away in a corner, cradling a bottle from view as he dabbed at something else.
And suddenly Dick knows, and yet he doesn't. But he calls out anyway.
"What are you doing?" His words were an echo of a memory. One tucked away into the folds of time and yet one he was living.
The bite in his own tone was enough to make his own self wince, but the words had already been said.
The boy jumped. Looked up terrified blue eyes under a mop of messy auburn curls that seemed to carry the warmth echoed in his scared little voice.
"Making a sandwich." Jason speaks in street roughened speech. Full of fear because he had been caught and the kind that tightened Dick's chest and stirred up pity. His face too thin, clothes to large for his frame and Jason carried a loneliness. One that Dick knows and yet,
"That's bread and tomato sauce." Dick's eyes narrow. His arms fold over his chest and he looms when he approaches the younger boy. "That's not a sandwich."
The boy cowers from him, holding onto the bottle and bread like it's a lifeline.
His eyes water, his vision blurs and the memory all skewed, for the boy standing before him does not carry the eyes of a thief. There is a tilt of his lips and a twinkle of mischief in those dancing blues.
"Maybe the tomato sauce was better."
"You're not eating that crap anymore. Use some real tomatoes."
"C'mon, Dick. That was a classic. Sure I can't do just plain ol' cheese."
"Jay, I told to watch me."
And Dick is at the counter, his hands working and he glances at the boy beside him, warmth and wonder. His smile mirrors the lad's, and the annoyance of having a younger one around has ebbed with time. He turns back to the plate before him. The sandwich is piling high now.
"Can't believe we've been perfecting a bloody sandwich for years." The boy peers at Dick's handiwork, taller than when he was first found and yet so little. "It only took like what? Two bloody years?"
"Language."
"Dick-head."
"Jason." A year ago, Dick would have lashed out. Not now. He decided he didn't hate Jason as much as he used to. For sharing the name he once was called, for sharing the home he thought was his and for sharing the father—
No. Bruce was still his. Jason could fuck right off.
"I'm sorry! I'm hungry. It's bloody two in the morning and you're taking bloody forever talking about the perfect bloody sandwich." Jason is whining and he's grabbing the sliced meat to chomp down on. "Who cares if it's bloody perfect? I just want to eat.
Dick grins at the younger boy.
Maybe this was what it felt to have a sibling.
"Master Dick."
He jumps.
Turns around.
And he's standing in an empty kitchen. There is no sandwich. No brother.
Just a very confused butler. "Are you okay?"
His voice is deeper now, older. "I'm just tired."
Alfred nods. He understands.
But does he?
Dick cannot possibly tell him that he was sure he saw Jason, a younger Jason. Just now? Because Jason wasn't here. Wasn't in the house. Hadn't been for a month. Or maybe a little more.
Dick can't think. His head hurts. His heart fares worse.
He hides the tremble in his hands in the pockets of his suit and let's a small smile play on his face. Bruce taught him to play out the acts necessary when they were out in public, amongst people who were always surveying them over crystals of liquor held loose between their unblemished, uncalloused fingers.
He didn't think he'd ever use that before a man he considered almost a grandfather.
His gait is slow, so Alfred doesn't worry. The man had enough on his plate with the way Bruce was spiralling all too often these days. He had been wild eyed when Dick came through his study, meeting the eyes of his first with a look that Dick had never seen on the stoic brick wall of a man before. The desperation. The blame.
Dick wished he could share his father, but no. Bruce was only his.
He crosses foyer — looking around at the cold building that once held his scoffs and sneers and then the laughter of two boys, cursed to be short lived for Dick would move away and Jason would miss him — before he makes his way to the foyer.
And when he's out of the doors, Dick breaks into a run. He runs like it's all he can do, because he didn't when his brother needed him. He didn't even know. Did Jason cry out his name that fateful night? Did his warmth leave knowing his brother never saved him.
Tears stream down Dick's face and the echo of his brother's laughter follows him.
There is relief that Jason hasn't left him, not wholly, and yet...
So much pain.