Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This invasion thing had gone to shit really, really quickly. But hey, they won. The downside? Jason Todd was now curled up on the ground, all by his lonesome, facing the brunt of the toxins that had been released into the air. 

Whatever it had been, it was ridiculously potent. He felt parts of himself crumbling, dissolving into nothingness and leaving behind his beaten, ragged core. Leaving behind the rotting corpse of a bird with broken wings, who had been on the wrong side of a rusty crowbar and a maniac’s ire.

A strangled gasp left his lips, heart clenching in a desperate attempt to will him back to existence, to will him to keep fighting, keep living. To cling to some small part of him, however pathetic it was.

He was himself. He was…more than a symbol, more than a fallen solider, more than a cautionary tale. He was Jason Peter Todd, and he would keep fucking fighting, damn it! 

(Or would he?)

Letting loose a soft snarl, he pushed himself up on shaky arms, staving off the prickly pain the toxin brought him. All the little heroes milling about had gas masks on at this point, but the one he had found was long gone. Given to some old lady, too slow to escape before the initial wave hit the city. The stupid, hopeful fool in him hoped she made it out alright.

(Hoped she might remember him as a good person. Not a hero, not a saviour, just…good. Another part of his battered heart shattered, shards of desperation carving wounds in his soul. All he wanted…someone to think he was good.)

Every bone in his body protesting, he managed to rise onto shaking limbs, clumsily pulling his jacket closer around him. There was a chill in the air, gray clouds blocking out any chance of sunshine. The cold was certainly helping the havoc the toxin was wreaking on his body, only strengthening the hallucinations and dark despair.

He would just have to make it to a safe-house, make it somewhere quiet, alone, and there he could pass out—die—peacefully. Idly, he wondered if Talia would keep her promise, in the face of his second death. 

(“Cremate me. Cremate me and spread my ashes in that dessert, over the broken remains of that damned warehouse. That’s where Jason Todd died.”

“Are you sure?”

“…Yeah. That way, we can all pretend this second life, this…hah, this tragedy…didn’t happen. Let him pretend it didn’t happen. Let him keep the memory of his faithful little sidekick; that’ll be my last present to the old man.”)

A strained smile made its way onto his lips at the recollection, and some long-gone part of his mind vaguely remembered Talia’s sorrow. She had been…undeniably good to him, now that he thought about it. Harsh, relentless, and recklessly selfish…but he owed her for everything. What started off as a gift for her beloved had turned into a pet project and then evolved into…affection. Tenderness. She was his son, all his son, unlike Damian, who was wholly his father’s.

A pang of guilt echoed through him. Talia…would be distraught, he knew, but he offered her all he could. His loyalty, his affection, his trust. Hopefully she would remember him as he had been, a damaged bird she nursed back to health.

(She held his shaking body in her arms, characteristically quiet even as sobs shook his scrawny form.

Across the room, on the floor, were pictures. Dozens of pictures, of the Dark Knight and his new Robin. His new son. Almost adjacent to the pictures was a bloodied knife, laying pitifully in a pool of the offending liquid.

“Does it ever get easier? Any of it?” 

A pause. 

“…The firsts are always the hardest, my son. First kills, first betrayals…it gets easier. If you let it.”)

It would have to be enough. Whatever this toxin was, whatever it was doing to him…there would be no antidote in time. Jason didn’t think anyone had been working on one, anyways, because a full-scale alien invasion was an all hands on deck kind of thing.

Even if there was an antidote, he doubted any of it would be spared for him. Not when there were civilians, heroes…a criminal was not high up on their list of priorities.

He slammed into the corner of a wall, recognizing the beginnings of Crime Alley. His streets had been left thankfully undisturbed, but nonetheless there wasn’t a soul in sight. Street kids and the poor alike…had strong survival skills. They could smell trouble like it was their sixth sense, and he knew, deep down, they had evacuated with the others, even if nobody came for them. 

I’m sorry, he wanted to say, as a jolt of realization shot through him, coupled with a burning sense of shame. I’m sorry I didn’t come, like I swore I always would. 

Soon. He had a safe-house, deep in the heart of the sprawling streets, but it was only a five-minute walk from where he currently was. He could make it there in a good—

“Jason.”

Superman. Well, shit.

“Here to take me in, Supes?” Jason snarled, turning around to glare at the brightly-dressed icon. The man in question frowned as he descended, parental concern taking over at the disastrous sight of his best friend’s second son. The boy had clearly inhaled much more of the toxin than he could take, and was clearly fighting off hallucinations… 

“The rest of your family is back in the center of the attack, why aren’t you with them?”

Jason let loose a startled laugh, genuinely shocked. The boy scout actually thought…oh, boy.

“They’re not my family. I don’t have a family. Now, could you answer my question? I need to know whether or not I have to scrounge up a gun or run or something.”

Clark shook his head at the callous response, finally setting himself down on the ground in front of Jason. He knew the boy had taken on the title of the Red Hood, had murdered and terrorized his siblings…but he could hear the sincerity buried deep in the bitterness. He truly thought he didn’t have a place with the Bats of Gotham.

“Does your father know you were the reason we were able to overpower the Krux?” He asks gently, and accepts the surprised look Jason throws him. His heart pangs when he realizes it’s the most innocent look he’s ever received from the boy.

“Why would he? All I am to him is a constant reminder of his biggest mistake,” Jason spits out. He hated talking to Clark, despite the fact that he meant well. It was just…infuriating, how the man exuded hope. There was no hope in Crime Alley unless it was beaten in the thugs and rapists that haunted the streets. Unless each and every street kid had somewhere to sleep for the night. “Besides, they were too close to my streets, my people. I don’t let anybody hurt the people I’ve sworn to protect.”

“Yeah, that old lady you gave your gas mask to? She’s fine by the way,” Clark informed him, a small, tired smile gracing the Man of Steel’s face. He pretended not to notice the small huff of relief Jason released. Clark knew that Metropolis oozed hope, practically drowned in it, while Gotham had to give its blood, sweat, and tears for even a shred of false courage. Had given its blood, sweet, and tears to its caped protectors, who stood tall atop all the broken promises and hollow memories for everyone who couldn’t. 

But Jason was the exception. 

Jason was…unconventional. He wasn’t supported by the life force of the city; he was the city. He was the dirty streets, marred with grime and age-old bloodstains. He was the weeping children, abandoned to the streets by drug-addict parents and abusive caretakers. He was the acidic air, heaving and snarling and fighting tooth and nail to see another day. 

He was Gotham’s heir, her son. Her true-born prodigy, who burned himself away to get the job done.

But murder was murder, and Bruce was steadfast and solid in his beliefs. 

“Jason,” Clark’s voice was soft, cajoling. “You’re hurt. Let us help you.”

This was bad. Clark was being serious, and really wanted—expected—him to go back with him. Back to the League. Back to the Bats. 

He needed to get out of there. Fast. 

“Seriously? No thanks, Supes, I’d rather not be arrested today, thanks,” he rolled his eyes, despite the fact that Clark couldn’t see his eyes. There was a faint buzzing in his ears, getting louder and louder by the second, and he could tell it was one of the side effects of the drugs the Krux had used.

“You won’t be harmed,” Clark promises, tone firm and made of steel and ice and everything that he hoped screamed ‘protection’. “Not while I’m around.”

“Heard that before,” Jason mumbled before he can stop himself. Clark feels a swell of pain rise within him at the reminder of the fact that Jason Todd had suffered more than he deserved to. Was the personification of suffering, really; he was made up of death and agony.

Jason, however subtle it may be, began to feel a cold numbness spreading throughout his body, starting from the tips of his toes and moving upwards at an alarming rate. What was going on? The next phase of the toxin? He couldn’t afford to stay here and keep up a conversation, however enlightening the other may find it, damn it, he— 

Suddenly, Jason lurched forwards.

Before the boy could hit the ground, Clark had him in his arms and was up in the air, wild eyes searching the boy’s face for a hint of how much pain he was in. Jason’s mouth was wide open, chest heaving in an effort to bring in enough air to sustain his body. Accelerated stages? 

As Clark began to fly in the direction of the others, mindful of the vigilante in his arms, he listened carefully to the other heartbeats in the city, and with a sinking heart confirmed what he already knew; no one else’s heartbeats were as erratic as Jason.

“Hang on, Jason,” he murmured over the roar of the wind, wondering if he could even hear him. “Hang in there.”

He touched down mere moments later, the sudden weight cracking the asphalt beneath his feet. Diana and Bruce both lifted their heads to nod in greeting, but the latter froze at the body in Clark’s arms.

“No…” Clark heard his best friend breathe out, the single syllable drenched in horror. Now there was another heartbeat as erratic as Jason’s. 

His father’s.

Diana and the other Leaguers watched on, concerned, as Bruce forgot everything he was doing and strode towards his best friend. Jason was doing his best to breathe, to grant himself some level of comfort, but it was impossible; Clark wondered if his lungs were closing, or collapsing, or—

“Hey, Clark,” the ex-Robin rasped. “If I don’t make it, make sure…make sure Talia Al Ghul gets my body, alright?”

“Stop that,” the Man of Steel admonished quietly, eyes burning. “You’re not dying today, Jason.”

“We don’t have an antidote,” Bruce was finally at his side, and behind him, Clark could see the other Bats staring, Nightwing already beginning to run in their direction, his teeth gritted. “Damn it, Superman, we don’t have an—” 

“I know,” Jason cuts in, voice hoarse. “Don’t sweat it, you ol’ geezer, I know.”

Bruce reached out, trembling fingers checking his son’s pulse. Too slow, too erratic, too…abnormal. Jason was watching him, he realized, watching his reactions to see how bad it was.

“Where was your mask? Where was your mask, Jason?” He finds himself asking, voice harsh as fear overtook his senses. He was going to lose his boy all over again, he was going to lose Jason again before they could mend things, before they could fix it— 

“Unbelievable…I’m fucking dying and you’re choosing now to lecture me? You asshole,” Jason throws back, somewhat good-naturedly, though Clark could hear the undercurrent of anger. Bruce’s fingers had found his damp hair, and were gently pushing the thick locks out of his face. “Lecture that glass case you have in the cave.” 

“Jay,” and then Nightwing was there, hands reaching and searching and stroking. Jason didn’t have the strength to push him away. “Little Wing…no, no no no no no.”

“I got a piggyback ride from Supes before you did, Goldie, how do ya feel about that?” Jason manages a feeble smile, and Clark found himself wondering how Gotham’s son could have so much warmth left in him. A sob tore itself from Nightwing, who clung to his little brother’s shaking fists in vain. “Chin up, the batbrats need your ass. I…look—” 

The sound of heavy motors cut him off, and a strange look crossed the man’s face. They all looked up, and watched as a sleek, midnight-coloured jet descended onto the ground. Why did it look…familiar? Almost as if Clark had seen it before, seen it in use…but it wasn’t from anywhere around here—

Before the wheels hit the ground, the grounding door was open and Talia Al Ghul, heir to the Demon, was racing down the platform, a vial in her hands and naked fear on her face.

“Heh,” Jason chuckled. Bruce was watching wildly, eyes going back and forth between the duo in a way that most would deem undetectable. “Didn’t think she would make it.”

“You fool,” Talia snaps as soon as she’s in hearing distance. Clark watches in wonder as she races right up to his side, despite her status as a wanted criminal, and began to check Jason’s pulse frantically. “You damn fool, fighting wars that not yours to fight, getting hurt…”

“Already got a lecture,” Jason cuts in dryly, weakly tilting his head in Bruce’s direction. “Tell me you brought two of those vials.”

“Of course I did!” Talia glares at him, and Clark takes in the sheepish look that suddenly appeared on Jason’s face. “You and your damn hero complex would not have let me do my duty otherwise.” 

“Save it for when I’m not dying, mom.”

At that, Bruce visibly flinches. Mother and son spare the man a fleeting glance, but then Clark had all of Talia’s attention.

“Put him down on the ground,” she instructed, eyes daring for a contradiction. They had none to offer. “He needs space. I will care for Hood while you and Batman get the antidote replicated. It’s of a weaker concentration than the one I prepared for him, but it should be enough.” 

Clark glanced at his best friend, and found the man’s jaw clenched so tight he was worried his teeth would crack. But…Jason had asked him to bring his body back to Talia. Talia had brought the antidote to them, only because of Jason. 

He set Jason down on the ground and accepted the second vial from the woman, stepping away and letting her get to work.

“Go,” Bruce growls, voice low. “I’m staying right here.”

Clark, expecting no less, hurtled away with the antidote clutched in his hands, throwing a final look back at Jason. He would be okay.

He would have to be okay. 

Jason was starting to feel the fatigue that was no doubt the last stage of the toxin, and could barely keep his eyes open. Nevertheless, Talia worked fast, taking his jacket off and cutting off the sleeve of his undershirt.

“Sorry,” he manages to whisper. “I didn’t mean to worry you.” 

Finally, Talia’s eyes warmed, and she offered him a crooked smile that he knew she reserved for those quiet moments she could steal from the League. Moments for her sons. “You never do, but I worry every time you are in your father’s city. He is the only one capable of truly hurting you.”

Jason quiets down at that, and somewhere above him he could hear Bruce take in a shaky breath, as if the realization had just dawned on him. He can see Dick, his hand on Bruce’s shoulder, and the rest of the crew behind them. The Demon Brat was staring at his mother, arms crossed and posture stiff. Batgirl and Spoiler were watching on, the latter wringing her hands in what his brain perceived as worry. Replacement stood beside them, shoulders tense but nonetheless waiting for the man to pull through. 

A family. 

Jason ignored the odd pang in his heart and turned his attention back to Talia, who was emptying the vial’s contents into a syringe. It was odd, the colour of the antidote, and seemed to catch in the light. In fact, it looked familiar…oh.

Oh no.

“I’m sorry, my son,” Talia murmured, voice strained. “It was the only way we could think to bypass the toxin’s gene structure. The normal antidote wouldn’t have worked on you, given your resistance to drugs, so we had to.”

With that, she emptied the Lazarus Pit-infused antidote into his veins, and everything went green. 

A weak gasp left his lips, and Jason arched his back off the ground as a jolt of current shot through his entire being. Talia stayed right there with him, as she always had, and watched on as Jason writhe on the ground, his body accepting the long forgone substance in a desperate attempt to heal itself.

“You pr-promised,” he managed to snarl through the pain, through the hazy nothingness that had enveloped him. “You sa-said…n-ne-never again. You said never again!”

“Talia!” Bruce all but roared, but before he could intervene, Dick stopped him with a solemn look. “Dick—”

“Stop, there’s obviously more to this than we know, and Talia…I hate to admit it, but she knows more than we know about Hood’s circumstances.” 

Bruce opened and closed his mouth, chest tightening as he was forced to accept defeat and watch his son suffer on the floor of a broken street, at the mercy of one of the deadliest assassins to ever walk the planet.

Jason, on the other hand, was having a hard time keeping his body complacent and staving off overheating his sensory muscles. Everything was louder, brighter, too much, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. It was eerily similar to the first time he had experience the Pit’s magic, had drowned in its glowing throes.

Had risen, born again, and collapsed into Talia’s awaiting arms with his cry for Bruce dying on his lips.

It took a total of five minutes and forty-five seconds for the tremors to settle down. They knew because all of them had been keeping count.

By the end of it, Jason looked even worse than he had looked to begin with, but he was breathing normally and his skin wasn’t as pale as before. Talia smoothed back his now dripping hair, and allowed herself a chaste kiss to his forehead.

“You’re okay,” she murmured, a small smile gracing her lips. He gave her a wolfish grin, but she could see the affection beneath the fake bravado. She stood, eyes still watching Jason’s shifting form, but her words were addressed to Bruce. 

“Get him into the jet, my beloved, he needs somewhere to rest, so I’m taking him back with me.”

“Absolutely not,” Bruce glared at her, eyes burning with sheer determination. “I am taking him back to Gotham where he belongs, and he will rest up in the Manor where we can monitor his status.”

“And throw him back into a cell as soon as he’s back on his feet?” Talia challenged, her own anger simmering just under the surface. “I thought we all decided you weren’t the best for him anymore, had we not?” 

“I am his father,” Bruce scowled, unwilling to lose this fight. He would not, not when Jason was watching him so intently. “He…doesn’t belong in a cell. But he is a son of Gotham, first and foremost, and I daresay he’d want to keep himself updated on the state of his sectors.”

There was a pause, in which Talia glanced back down at her son’s sprawling form. They locked eyes, and it pained Bruce to see them have a silent conversation. He and Jason had lost that ability long ago. 

(Had they ever had it? They had to have, for him to have heard Jason’s phantom goodbyes all those nights after Ethiopia.)

“Fine,” she finally replies after a hefty silence. She shoots Bruce a venomous look, coupled with a lethal smile. “I’ll be in touch with him, though, and at the first notice of anything going awry, I will bring the League’s entire wrath down upon you and your own.”

Bruce, acknowledging the weight of her promise, nodded. He bent down and picked up his wayward son, shifting him in his arms gently as he followed Talia towards the jet. Behind him, Dick herded the others together, quietly handing out instructions. Though the other leaguers were busy with handing out the antidote, Clark turned and watched them go, his eyes on Jason’s prone form the entire time.

Bruce only held him closer. 

Today had not been the day he had lost his son. That day would not come for a long, long time if he had anything to say about it.

Jason woke up in a bed, in a room somewhere in Wayne Manor. He also woke up with Bruce’s hulking form right beside the bed, the man slumped over and asleep. Once Jason let loose an instinctual groan, however, the man shot out of his seat, eyes frantically searching his son’s face for any sign of discomfort.

“Feels like someone ran me over with a truck, and made sure to back up over me,” Jason muttered, shooting Bruce a squinty glance. “What are you doing here?”

“I was waiting for you to wake up,” Bruce said it like it was obvious, and even if he had trained the reactions out of him, Jason still found himself flustered.

“For answers?”

“To make sure you were okay, Jason.”

They lapsed into a silence, neither knowing how to carry on with a conversation. Jason knew what the older man wanted to ask, wanted to know, but he didn’t…he didn’t know how he would word it. How to put it into words, his gratefulness for Talia. 

“You were brought back through the Lazarus Pit,” Bruce finally started, the question coming out as a statement.

Jason shook his head slowly, turning his head to look out the window. Though his memories of…then were hazy, he remembered enough. Too much, on those nights he woke up screaming and crying and sobbing for Batman, Bruce, to save him.

“No,” he finally manages to whisper. “I woke up in my coffin still screaming for you. I, erm, scratched and clawed my way out, and then it’s all a mess. I remember…I remember Talia finding me, I vaguely remember some time at the League…but not much before the Pit.” 

“They took your memories?” Bruce sounded angry. Jason would have to clarify, even if he didn’t want the man to know. For both their sakes, really, because the truth was not an easy pill to swallow.

“Nah, I…still had brain damage. From the Joker’s beating. When I was on the streets, I survived on muscle memory, but when Talia brought me back and hoped for me to regain all my senses, I…couldn’t. So she threw me into the Pit, while Ra’s was in there, and I came out crying and sobbing for you.” 

He could hear the small gasp Bruce took. He could feel it, almost as if it was a tangible thing. He could feel the despair, the pain, and uncontainable self-loathing…and, for some reason, he felt guilty. 

“But I’m here now, and I’m okay, thanks to Talia. She nursed me back to health, trained me, kept an eye on me while I traveled the world training…and she checked up on me after I came back to Gotham,” he felt the need to say. I’m okay. I’m okay.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce finally says, the words choked and strained and sounding nothing like the man Jason knew. “I’m sorry I failed you, I’m sorry I continued to fail you even after you came back.”

Jason was stunned into silence. Bruce…apologizing? 

“Hey, B, you only get like 10 apologies for your entire lifespan, don’t waste them on me,” he felt inclined to joke, even if it fell completely flat and came out stilted. “I ain’t worth it.”

“You are,” Bruce cuts in, voice still not sounding like himself. “God, Jason, you are. You’re worth an apology and so, so much more.”

Jason blinked. There was a familiar burning in his eyes, his throat closing. He swallowed down his sobs, his tears, and instead regarded the man who was now holding his hands tightly between his own.

“I’m glad you’re alive, Jay,” Bruce murmurs, a heartbreaking smile on his face. For him. Jason heard, and felt, a quiet whimper escaped him. “I’m glad I got a second chance to fix this.”

“You’ve…you’ve never said that before,” he sounded dazed, and he pretty much was. Maybe he had died. “You…I’m a mistake. I’m everything you never wanted to be, that was the entire gimmick I built my legacy on!”

“I know I haven’t, and I should have. And no, Jason, you are not a mistake. You were one of the best things to ever happen to me. You were my Robin, but above all else, you were my son. You are my son. And I am determined to fix things, if you give me the chance.”

He was floored. Bruce…oh, damn, the old man was asking for another chance. Could he…could he really? Did he want to? Jason stared hard at the man he once considered his father. Saw the hope, shining in those eyes of his. Those same eyes that had seen Gotham at her lowest, had seen his parents die. Had witnessed tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, and yet…had he done that? Put that light in Bruce’s eyes?

Did he want this?

(“You were always meant for great things, my son. Everyone you’ve ever met has known that.”

“I don’t…I didn’t ask for that. You know I didn’t. I just…”

“So what did you ask for?”)

“Okay,” Jason says. “Okay.”

Next thing he knew, he was in Bruce’s arms, a few tears slipping down his cheeks. He felt…fuck, he felt like he was finally home. He felt Bruce squeeze tightly, a shudder running through the Dark Knight’s body, and Jason pretended not to notice the rattling breath the man took. 

“Thank you, Jason,” he heard his father murmur into his hair. “And welcome home, lad.”

Home.

He was home.

Later that week, Bruce tossed a newspaper at him. Jason nearly dropped his cup of tea in his haste to catch it and shot Bruce an annoyed glare in response, but the man only smirked and gestured to the paper.

There he was on the front page, helmet on and facing down one of the Krux generals from the invasion. In the background was old Gotham, and the outer edges of Crime Alley. True Gotham as Gothamites knew it, and where he had been born and bred.

The article outlined the Red Hood’s heroism and his dedication to protecting his city, written by one Clark Kent.

Chapter Text

He punched the wall, a strangled, soundless yell falling from his lips and a steady stream of rubble bouncing off his helmet. The red headgear was in shambles, just barely holding together; he had put it on after the initial blast had brought down the building, despite its deteriorated state. 

He had willingly...Batman had...

"Fuck," the word came from Jason Todd's lips, sounding more like a sob than a curse. A dull reminder of the broken promise built on the holiest bond, somewhere a long, long time ago. Another life, really, if he were to be technical. "Fuck!"

His entire body was aching, and he probably had more broken bones and bruises than he could count. His neck and the top of his shirt, though...they were a warm, bloody mess, the incriminating liquid still pouring from the wound across the column of his throat. 

Batman had slit his throat, in an attempt to save the Joker. 

Bruce had chosen the Joker over his own...

When the first sob came, he let it out, trying and failing to not catalogue it as a dying sound. And then it was followed by another, and another, and suddenly Jason felt like the little boy who had died in that abandoned warehouse. Hot tears mixed with grime and blood, leaving him feeling dirtier than he had before. 

Wasn't even worth something as a person? A human? 

(But are you a human? Or are you a ghost, left to wander the world in a mortal body?

Let go, boy.

Let go.)

Here, on his knees in the ruins of the building he had led Batman to earlier on in the night, Jason considered turning the gun on himself and pulling the trigger.

He was a logical person; you had to be, to survived the streets of Gotham. With his goal unrecognized, the Joker gone, Batman...Batman turning his back on him, what was left for him? 

(Fight it, some distant voice begged him. Begged with steel in their voice, a firm edge that led him to believe they were a figure of authority.

Fight, win...thrive, and survive.)

"I'm tired," he murmured out loud, head bowed as shining droplets splattered onto the tarmac, water mixing with the blood. "I'm...I'm so tired. He fucking...I'm so tired!"

Only the wind whistled in return, a melancholic rhythm of apologies and memories. His only friend, in his desolate, pathetic second life. Maybe he deserved it.

Maybe this was karma. For being born, for ruining Catherine Todd's life, for...for disobeying orders. For being. Was that an act, punishable by death and betrayal? Was he not allowed to make mistakes? 

(Was he not allowed to be a child?)

A strangled hybrid of a sound left him, halfway between a sob and a scream, and the monstrous noise echoed through the dead of night. Whatever had been left of his barely beating heart, his shrewd consciousness...Bruce had cut it loose with his batarang. Had cut it loose and let it burn away into nothingness, leaving behind a worthless shell of a human.

This...this thing. A feeble excuse of a human being. 

(Fight, for you must.

I'm tired.)

The pain of death, the pain of knowing...suffering at the Joker's hands was a blessing in comparison to suffering at Bruce's hands. He would...fuck, he would choose the clown's beating over his fucking father's dismissal any day of the week. It had hurt less, being beaten with a crowbar. The physical act of the batarang slicing his throat, too, had hurt less than Bruce's actual decision. 

How fucked was that?

His gun was lost in the debris, but he had a few spare bullets on him still. Maybe if he...maybe if he could find the gun...he could finish what the Joker and Batman had started. Maybe taking himself out of the equation, letting Bruce believe he ended Jason's life...maybe it would compel the man to do something. To break, suffer, anything.

He just...he just wanted to mean something.

("This is the best day of my life!"

He's not here.

He's not coming. 

He's not coming.

I'm sorry, dad!)

His eyes shuttered close, fingers pressed up against his throat in a feeble attempt to stifle the blood loss. To prolong this mess of a life he had been given without asking, from a man who was to blame for his initial demise. 

(Cold steel broke through his scratched skin, sending rivulets of warm blood down the side of his face. His fingers, broken and bruised, shook as struggled to contain another scream. He was weak. A coward. Unworthy of the Robin mantle.

He screamed for the madman.

But where the Joker normally stood over him was now...Batman.)

Jason forced a shuddering breath through his lungs, feeling a burn echo throughout his entire body. Please, he wanted to say. Not here, not now.

But he knew the start of the a panic attack when he felt one; it was second nature now. He knew there was little he could do to prolong it, to stop it, other than to let it run its course. 

(A moment passed. 

Maybe that should've been Jason's warning. 

The next thing he knew, he felt the ice-cold touch of metal, a phantom slice across the exposed flesh of his neck.

He let a startled gasp slip past his lips; somewhere in the background, the Joker was cackling.

Then the world exploded in a blinding kaleidoscope of colour, but all Jason could feel was the broken rhythm of his heartbeat, and the tangible bitterness of betrayal in his mouth. The scalding heat coating his throat. 

A single thought cut through the static in his mind, broken enough to bring tears to his eyes under the domino mask that hid his emotions from the man now darting away.

Dad...?)

Somehow, he had his head pressed against the ground, tears still sliding down his cheeks as he choked back a sob. Followed by another, and another; soon, he reduced his outburst to a messy session of hiccups. 

He pictured himself, standing proud and wearing the Robin uniform, staring down at his failing, dying elder. Picture the younger boy scoffing, and offering him a hand.

In one variation of his hallucination, he doesn't take the hand offered to him. He instead lays on the ground, alabaster skin stained pink by his own blood and clothes tattered, as the obsidian skies melts away into dawn and Jason Peter Todd dies for a second and final time.

In the other variation...he takes his own hand, he helps himself onto his feet, and he gives Robin a small nod of gratitude. He pulls the ripped remains of his jacket closer, breathes deeply, and trudges back to a safehouse as light emerges from beyond the skyline. 

Choosing death was the coward's way out of a hard life. That was the unspoken motto that the impoverished streets lived by, and it was a code he promised to himself he would live by until his dying days. Nothing about his circumstances would change that, be it death or disappointment or soul-shattering betrayal thrown at him time and time again. 

He could die. He wanted to, really, wanted to give into the sweet temptation of falling asleep, of letting that all powerful dark consume him for the last time, but...but he wouldn't. 

Pain was temporary. A legacy was eternal.

And he promised himself, all those months ago when he had been named Robin, that he would become a legend. He had no intentions of letting himself down, even if he had managed to let down every other person to ever come in contact with him.

Love was a poison, and he was a curse.

A choked sob left him, but that was all he would allow the broken child inside of him. He locked up the pain, all that anguish and suffering, and he stared forward. A lesser man would have let it end him; he would have let the darkness choke the life from his lungs, let Gotham tear him to pieces. But Jason was a street rat. And if there was anything street rats could do...it was getting back up and living. 

Love was a poison, and he was a curse. He was death and suffering and the grime that covered Gotham's streets. He was every mistake, every regret, every heartbreak.

He was Jason Peter Todd, and he would live.

Chapter Text

Bruce is in his apartment, and it’s as awkward as ever.

Jason had been with the Outlaws, cleaning up the tail end of their mess in Qurac when the signal went out from Gotham; Alfred, calling a ‘all hands-on deck’ mission. Arkham was in ruins, and its horrors were loose.

The part of him that gave a shit won out. For all his existing disagreements with his family, he had hotwired the first plane he could get his hands on and arrived in Gotham as the sun was setting and its citizens were screaming, raving. Fear gas? Joker venom? 

That was only the start. 

It had taken most of the night to round up everyone, and in the end…Jason was the one racing through Arkham’s halls, the first to realize the root of the entire catastrophe was the fucking Joker. As most things were, but this…

Deep in the labyrinthine building, he had faced off against the formidable duo of Scarecrow and Joker, holding off the terror of his inner demons until Batman and the cavalry got there to finish things off. 

Just as the screams began to rip through his throat, Bruce and his batarang flashing in his mind, Cass found him. Despite being able to hear her, sense her, all he could see was a ratty apartment and Batman, a timer counting down and laughter in his ears. A phantom pain warmed the skin of his throat as she thankfully, blessedly, knocked him out.

He’d woken up in his bed, and by the time he’d managed to take a quick shower and eat some leftovers, the Bat came back. Back, because someone had to have dragged him here and given him the antidote to the fear toxin.

Not a word is spoken, and somehow, tonight, it hurts more than it usually does. Like an acid-covered batarang, entrenched in his bleeding heart, and Jason had to stop himself from clawing at the skin of his chest. Jason lounges in his favourite chair, utterly drained from both the night’s events and the mess in Qurac. It had dredged up too many memories, too many pains he thought he had buried. 

Maybe it was the drugs in his system. Maybe it was the light-headedness he’s feeling, an almost euphoric high enveloping his subconscious. 

Batman is ready to leave, and with final glance at Jason, he turns on his heel.

Jason interrupts his movement, staring out into the darkness of the night, listening to the sirens in the distance. "Do you ever think about how happy we were?"

Bruce pauses, gloved hand on the handle. This was a conversation they had never dared to have, outside their dreams and their quiet hours of contemplation just before dawn.

"You were the light of my life," he admits quietly, fearful of where Jason’s going with the conversation. These words…these words strip him bare of all his walls and his shields and defenses, leaving him vulnerable to attack. Jason could choose to laugh in his face, right now, and Bruce wasn’t sure how he would recover.

It would be humiliating, and shameful, but Bruce is resigned to that fate. Jason will never come home. Bruce has failed him one too many times. 

Jason closes his eyes, infinitely tired; he knows how Bruce feels. In the deepest parts of his heart, he knows his father loves him. Knows what he means to the Dark Knight. The grown-up part of him knows that much like how Bruce lost a part of himself with his parents that night in Crime Alley, Batman lost just as much in Qurac. 

"You were the light of my life, but no one hurt you the way I did," Bruce continues, and Jason would have thought his tone emotionless if not for the slight catch, a whisper of a tremor under the gravel. 

It only makes it worse.

"You loved me," Jason murmurs, voice cracking on the cursed word. His eyes travel skywards, watches the stars sparkle and blink out. He was hollowed out too, this night in Arkham heaving up too many destructive memories for him to censor what he was spilling to Bruce. He knows the sour taste of regret, of self-hatred. But now, his mouth is dry and he feels nothing. "You loved me, and I loved you, and how...how did we get like this?" 

Bruce feels a tremor echo through him, long and unforgiving; the truth, in its tangible form. It was...surprising, to realize that Jason didn't figure out what Bruce knew since the day he was confronted with Jason’s second life. Jason, normally so astute, hadn’t figured out the harsh reality they were fighting against, day in and day out. 

"You realized you deserved better than me." 

Silence. Jason is staring at him, and Bruce has a shaky smile on his face. It was just the corners of his mouth turned upwards, really; but for Batman…it was his equivalent of grinning. And it’s painful to look at. 

And true, Jason spent a long time trying to cause Bruce’s pain, but there was something undeniably uncharacteristic burning its way through his body, and it takes him a moment to recognize it. Guilt. 

“You realized there was nothing more I could give you. Nothing more that you wanted.” 

Suddenly, Jason is on his feet, striding towards Bruce; he’s soon standing right in front of his father, their noses brushing. Jason’s eyes are strangely bright, but the expression on his face is all fury. 

"Shut up," he snarls, his voice snagging on a long-forgone emotion. "Shut the fuck up."

Bruce drops his gaze. He might be Batman, but now, he can't look Jason in the eye. His truest fear, the most damning realization...watching all his boys, one by one, realize they deserved better than him. First Dick, all those years ago, then Tim and Jason. Stephanie, even; Damian would follow them soon enough, his hero worship of his father fading into nothingness. It was too much for Bruce Wayne, for the man who had lost everything but the family he had chosen, to stand by and watch all his children leave. 

Batman can take the sacrifice. Batman is infallible. So, Bruce tucks away the aching loss, under the cold metal of the suit, and pretends like it doesn’t bother him, seeing them go. 

"You don't get to...that's not...fuck!" Jason sounds dangerously close to tears as he runs his fingers through his tangled mess of dark curls. He’s falling apart. Somehow, stupidly, he had never looked past his own suffering to see Bruce’s, and now they were both paying for it in tears. "Bruce. Bruce." 

Bruce feels his eyes burning, and suddenly he is the child who had died in Crime Alley with his parents, as if he were being scolded for a mistake. He can’t do this again. How many times has he dreamed of Jason’s soft whisper, void of anger and bitterness, only to wake up to a world where his son couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him?

A sudden grip brought him out of his reverie, however; Jason was...grappling...him? No, he realized; Jason was hugging him. 

"You fucking idiot," Jason murmurs into the soft touch of the cape, forehead pressed into the junction between Bruce’s shoulder and neck. "Jesus Christ...you really have your head that far up your ass? All of us, me included, would be nothing without you, B." 

Bruce doesn't say anything; he just holds his son, the only one he had lost for good. He would cherish every moment he had with Jason, for every moment he lost. Every day he spent wondering if Jason was safe, uninjured, happy…every hug, every tender touch, was worth both of their weights combined in gold. It’s all he has left of his boy, apart from a cold case and a tattered uniform tucked away into a dark corner of both his heart and his home. 

"You're such an idiot," Jason mumbles, voice suspiciously tight and tone void of bite. "How could you not know..."

Bruce closes his eyes, lets the traitorous tears slide down his cheeks. Jason is warm against him, so alive. The last time they were this close, without the guns and the blood and the shouting, Jason had been 15 and growing colder by the second.

"I was happier with you," Jason Todd whispers, his eyes shining in the darkness of the room. Bruce is suddenly reminded of the first day Jason put on the Robin suit, remembers the glimmer of disbelief in the very same eyes he’s staring into right now. “The happiest days of my life were when I could call you dad.”

God. God.

Is he dreaming? 

“Jason…” Bruce tries, and fails, to find his words, rendered speechless by a true and real expression of…of what, exactly? 

“You gave all of us a fighting chance,” Jason soldiers on, though his voice has dropped to a quiet murmur. It’s almost as if he fears the words coming out of his mouth, the truth he sets out in the open for Bruce to see and feel. For years, he had denied them both a happy ending, had held onto his pain and rage and tragedy, had rubbed it into all their faces. And after years of it, years of running…there’s nothing left in his tank. “I mean, it kinda backfired on some of us, but…you were home, B. To all of us.” 

It sounds too much like the end of their age-old fight, and suddenly Bruce feels the weight of it hit him, feels it shake his bones. 

Jason watches Batman—his father—and feels the words bubble up from within him, damning and freeing in the same breath. 

“You’re still my dad, even if I…even if we…you’re dad. There’s no changing that, and I…I realize that now. Done trying to run away from it.” 

Bruce closes his eyes, a tender smile on his face and his son—his boy, his Jason—held tight within his arms. Home. 

Jason feels the burning batarang dissipate into nothingness. 

Dawn rises, and with it comes a new beginning. 

Chapter Text

i. death is a lover who never calls

He heaved, and spluttered, and spilled warm blood all over the bathroom floor, the red staining the alabaster tiles with a nasty pink. Jason could tell he had been hit, bad, but there was little he could do but manage to stitch up the wound and wait for Fate to play its hand.

Death could be coming and he wouldn’t be surprised.

A wet sigh fell from his lips as he pulled out the first aid kit with clumsy fingers, pulling out the spool of thread and a sterile needle. Painkillers didn’t mix well with the magic of the Pit, rendered him useless whenever he took them, so he ignored the small bottle and instead grabbed the rubbing alcohol.

Death could be hugging him, running her fingers through his hair and murmuring sweet promises of rest into his ears.

Jason poured the clear liquid out over the skin of his torso, barely feeling the sting as the alcohol washed over damaged skin. It was a clean wound, the bullet exiting out without any complications. It had clipped his side, so he wasn’t too concerned about internal damage; without thinking about it any further, he began to sew up the bullet holes.

Death is the warmth of a nice bed; death is the warmth of fresh blood, spilling down and staining alabaster red.

He finished cleaning himself up in under twenty minutes, managing to slap some gauze over the stitches and take a quick shower to rid himself of the blood and gore. For the first time in days, Jason wanted to sleep.

Death is the promise of a grand finale, but is also the promise of a soft epilogue. Death is everything anyone had ever wanted. 

Jason crawled into his bed, thoroughly exhausted, and collapsed into a fitful sleep. Dawn peeked out over the sprawling skyline, wisps of soft colours mixed into the sapphire of the night sky. Jason didn’t see the rare beauty, his back turned to the window and his eyes fixed on the bloodstains on the bathroom floor. 

Jason waits for the day Death comes back to take him home.

ii. you look happier and it hurts like a lonely death

Jason Todd was no fool.

He buried his hands deep in his pockets, watching from his vantage point as Alfred moved around the kitchen, putting platters of various sizes onto the table. The Bat Clan was seated among the table, Spoiler and Barbara included.

Everyone but him, really. Which was fine. He didn’t care.

Bruce smiled at Damian, a soft and cruel gesture of parental love.

He didn’t care.

Jason remembered Bruce’s anger, his desperation as he punched his second eldest across the face. His total lack of compassion, the burning skies of Ethiopia enveloping them as they fought, bitterly, over a truth Jason had no control over. 

He remembered walking away, angry tears spilling down his face.

He wasn’t jealous of a ten-year-old; hell, he agreed with the things Bruce had said. Damian did deserve the chance to live, and Bruce should want to give it to him.

He said those things to you as if you didn’t die a tragic death like Damian, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his fifteen-year-old self echoed through his mind. You weren’t worth those things. You weren’t his real son, were you? A pathetic street rat he pulled out of the gutter.

Bruce doesn’t love you.

Jason closed his eyes, turning his head and walking back towards his bike. He would disappear; he would leave Gotham to the Bats. For the first time in years, he truly felt like…he lost. Red Hood had finally bent to the self-imposed rules of the Dark Knight.

Batman would get his wish; it was clear what he thought. He would stop being a problem.

It was time for him to leave.

And with the cold winds of November blowing around him in a melancholic tune, Jason Todd rode off into the darkness, the painstaking image of Bruce’s smiling face burned onto the back of his eyelids.

iii. a mother who protects

Sometimes, it’s hard to believe how hard he’s fallen.

Jason’s hands are covered in blood, slick with the incriminating liquid as he ducks into the nearest alleyway, ignoring the shouts of both Nightwing and Robin.

They weren’t…he wasn’t supposed to see them. Not yet. Not while he was still recovering from his Arkham Asylum tenure, wounds so fresh he still couldn’t pull a trigger.

Selina was going to have his head for this. 

He raced through the winding darkness of the cracks between the buildings, pouncing up onto the fire escape and using it to vault over the fencing.

Dick had thrown him into Arkham. Dick had let him rot. 

Bruce had left him in Arkham.

Arkham had broken Jason.

Gritting his teeth to keep the ragged sob at bay, he continues weaving a path through the buildings, all too aware of the Batmobile and the Bats chasing after him. He had to shake them, lose them before heading home. If he led them to Selina, if he led them to who had broken him out of that hellhole… 

A familiar sound of rustling leaves broke through his reverie, and with all the wildness of a cornered animal, Jason twisted around. 

Ivy and Harley, blocking the Batmobile from coming any closer.

“Hey Kid!” Harley greeted, looking every inch a warrior, her rough grin only amplifying the sparkling promise of violence in her eyes. “You’re in a bit of a doozy, aren’t cha?”

For all of Harley’s feverishness, there existed an equal amount of Ivy’s fury, and Jason had never felt more grateful before in his life.

“They’ve done enough to you,” the botanist snarled, possessive in a nearly maternal way. She remembered, just as well as he did, the suffering he underwent at the hands of the Joker while locked up in Arkham. A few months was not enough to make any of them forget. “Get back to Selina, we’ll deal with them.” 

“This is my fight,” he tried to argue, even if he knew it was futile. This was not a war he was going to win; they simply wouldn’t allow it. All three of them knew he was in no condition to fight off an army of Bats.

“Ivy, Harley, do not get involved.”

Batman. He had gotten out of the car and moved closer, close enough for Jason to notice his jaw was clenched, but far enough that Ivy’s snapping vines couldn’t grab onto him. 

“We’re already involved, you sanctimonious asshole,” Harley pipes up, voice deceptively cheerful. “More involved than you, anyways.”

“He’s mine—”

“He’s ours,” a lithe figure lands in front of him. Selina Kyle rose to her feet, eyes blazing as she lay a gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Not yours. Not after what you did.”

Batman growled, low and foreboding; it was clear to everyone in the general vicinity that the caped crusader was furious. Nightwing moved closer, placing a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Hood was proclaimed dead. By you.”

“Wouldn’t the first time you let it happen, so stop acting like it matter, you fucking ass,” Jason scoffed, more to himself than anything. Harley and Ivy were already moving beyond him, Selina stepping forward to deal with Bruce. A distraction.

Jason turned without so much a glance, and slipped off with the Sirens that weren’t occupying a Bat. Behind him, he could hear Selina’s voice rising in volume, could pick out ‘torture’ and ‘shitty father’ from the curse words she was slinging at her on-again-off-again plaything.

He tried to ignore the stab of warmth that echoed through his chest as his mother clawed into Bat on his behalf, but it was impossible with Selina’s yelling still echoing from the distance, Harley and Ivy’s smirks coupled with his own. 

It was the first time in forever that someone had stepped up to shield him from harm, and it…it felt nice. 

It felt like love.

iv. and you stand on our burning bridge, a torch in your hands

Jason Todd closed his eyes, tears spilling down his cheeks and forehead pressed up against the bulletin board he had set up. Clippings of every size had been pinned to the brown corkboard, all concerning Batman and his newest toy. Of the Joker, who was still breathing and living and a success, really, the madness to Batman’s justice.

It was an all-consuming fire, the knowledge of worthlessness. To know the person holding your heart, your love, in their hands would willingly throw it away without a second thought…

A messy sob tore from his throat, and Jason couldn’t stop himself from banging his fist against the board, the world rattling as he slides off the bed and onto the floor. All the suffering, all the hard work, only to have it thrown in his face in the worst way possible.

The pinnacle of his journey, the climax…finding out about Timothy Drake. Robin, a better Robin, Bruce’s—

God. God.

Another scream ripped through him, battering past his defences and leaving him feeling bruised and broken. A familiar feeling, a welcomed feeling, and less painful than the knowledge he now possessed.

He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know that the memories he’d given Bruce, given Alfred, had been meaningless.

He wanted to mean something, to someone—his dad—family—fuck.

Jason Todd is in his second life and knows what death is. Death is a father turning his back, leaving his son in the shadows of a burning warehouse and engulfed in maniacal laughter.

Tears streamed down his face, and Jason stares up at the largest image—a smiling Batman and a cheerful Robin, swinging down from the skyscrapers of Gotham City. Saving people. Instilling hope.

The crowbar had hurt less than those smiles.

The truth of the matter burned its way through his soul, and all Jason can do is try and breath beyond the choking realization.

His father—no, Bruce—Batman—replaced him. 

Bruce Wayne killed Jason Todd.

Chapter Text

The first time Kyle witnesses Jason’s nightmares is two months, one week, and five days into their relationship. 

They are curled up next to each other, under the same sheets albeit not touching. Jason always cautions against touching, tersely explains all the ways he could hurt Kyle if he forgets he’s sharing the bed with his boyfriend and not an intruder. It’s a cumbersome rule only when Kyle comes home from space and wants nothing more than to curl up into his boyfriend and sleep for a week, but he would choose death over disrespecting Jason’s boundaries.

Which is why he’s only mildly surprised when he’s jolted awake by a sharp scream and the sound of the mattress protesting from too much movement. 

He doesn’t think much of it, instinctively rolling off the bed and rounding the entire thing to lean over the curled up body of his boyfriend. 

Kyle feels a part of his heart break at the agonized way those green eyes blink up at him, unshed tears glistening in the corner of his eyes. 

Jason, wild-eyed and feverish, pants as he stares up at the sight of his boyfriend looming over his body, moonlight painting his skin with soft light. 

“Jay,” Kyle whispers, voice barely audible over Jason’s harsh breathing. “Jay, it was just a dream.”

No, he wants to say, wants to sob, really. Bad memories. 

Instead, what comes out is “don’t leave.”

Kyle feels himself soften, reaching out to smooth out the ruffled curls stuck to Jason’s forehead. He shivers in response, stiffening against the touch before leaning in closer. 

“I’m right here,” he finds himself saying. “I know you’re scared, but I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere.”

Jason’s eyes flutter close, and Kyle takes it as a sign he can climb back into the bed. He carefully tucks Jason’s body against his side, noting how damp the bare skin of his torso felt and feels a spike of worry. The sweat, coupled with the harsh December weather, will inevitably lead to a cold down the road. But for now…there is more pressing matters at hand.

He returns his attention back to Jason, and finds him gazing at him with tired eyes. He knows this raw vulnerability isn’t something he was comfortable sharing, knows Jason thinks of it as a burden. 

Tonight, he is going to change that. 

“You’ll never be alone,” Kyle’s eyes are fierce, incandescent in the darkness. Jason finds himself drowning again, but it feels good; the loss of breath had nothing to do with death and torture, nothing to do with shitty memories that will not fade. 

Kyle is throwing out a lifeline, and Jason wants to grab it. Anchor himself back to reality, someone constant, someone here. 

They’re standing at the edge of something beautiful, and Jason leaps. 

He pulls Kyle down, steals a desperate kiss. He feels the wandering fingers, the gentle kiss of the silk sheets settling back over their tangled legs. He wonders if it’s normal, the perfect way their bodies fit together. 

He finds himself not caring. 

They break for air, Jason’s lungs burning as their heavy breaths warm up the air between them. He has no words to share, none of the witty remarks he knows Kyle is used to. But he is sure he got his point across, his silent plea and gratitude rolled up into one action. 

“I’ll be with you from now ‘till the end,” Kyle promises softly, carding his fingers through Jason’s damp curls. He leans down, slants his lips across Jason’s again, tries his hardest to drive out the demons. “Be here ‘till you’re sick of me.”

His heart wrenches at the way Jason melts into his touch, a shudder running through his body as he pressed upwards and into Kyle’s embrace. 

“I’ll never get sick of you,” Jason rasps, his first smile of the night making its way onto his face. “I might get sick of Gardner, but not you. Hell, you’ll get sick of me first.”

“I think not,” Kyle snorts, flopping down onto the pillows and turning his head to grin at his boyfriend. “And in Guy’s defense, he has nothing on Batman. I was sick of that dude before I met him.”

Jason lets loose a bark of laughter, shoulders shaking as they both remember Bruce’s reaction to them dating; more specifically, the sight of Hal Jordan himself in Bruce’s study, breaking the news.

Through peals of laughter, Hal had informed them that a hefty bottle of vodka was involved. 

“I bet you’ll get sick of me before I get sick of you,” Jason shoots Kyle a dangerous smile. “Winner gets to choose how to piss off Batman the next time we’re being stupid.” 

Kyle feels a spike of affection shoot through him like a burst of flame, all warmth and happiness, at the unspoken promise of ‘even when we’re sick of each other, we’ll be together’. It sounds like forever, and forever sounds perfectly fine to him. Even if it meant pissing off the scariest man on Earth every other week. 

“Deal,” he says just as the first streaks of dawn colour the midnight sky. 

Chapter Text

i. poor icarus, locked in a dirty cell in the darkness

He hates this, he decides.

With a rough swallow, Jason presses himself against the wall, eyes screwed shut and hands over his ears in a futile attempt to keep the laughter at bay. Still, it echoes, filling the dead silence of the wing with its wrongness and sheer volume.

He hates this.

He hates this so fucking much, hates Batman for doing this to him, hates Dickandhimselfandeverythinginbetween-

"Hey. Junior."

His eyes crack open immediately, searching the darkness for a few wild moments before settling on the hand stretching through the bars of his cell. Hands tinted green, sharp nails painted bloody red.

There is a pair of earplugs sitting snug in her palm.

"The asshole's loud and obnoxious because he knows you're here," Poison Ivy informs him, tone suggesting how unamused she truly is. He can barely make out her form in the darkness of the hall, nothing suggesting she, too, is a prisoner here. "I hate men."

He takes the earplugs from her with a wet look, and he is embarrassed by the tears in the corner of his eyes. She sees them anyways, sees how young the infamous Red Hood really is.

She swears. "Selina wasn't kidding. What are you, 16?"

He doesn't respond; Jason shoves the plugs into his ears and nearly sobs at the peace they offer, all noise dulled down to something akin to a gentle throb. Pamela feels some foregone part of her heart ache at the sight; such a powerhouse player, reduced to shambles.

No.

A kid, left to rot in Arkham, of all places.

Jason doesn't raise his head from the floor to offer her a 'thank you', and Pamela doesn't wait for one. After another moment of staring at his fallen form, she walks off, melting back into the darkness.

He sleeps for the first time that night.

ii. sweet little baby in a world full of pain

He needs to eat. He knows this, knows what it's like to starve, to be able to feel your ribs under paper thin layers of skin.

Yet he can't trust anything being put out by the kitchen staff, by the people waiting on the Joker's every beck and call. The man likes the hunt, likes bringing physical pain, but wasn't above petty things like poisoning.

Jason isn't going to give him the satisfaction.

Or, well, that's what he thinks, even as he lays motionless on his flimsy mattress, no energy to move. He hasn't felt like this since he was a child, fighting in the streets for table scraps and rotten leftovers. He resists the urge to cry.

He finds himself doing that a lot, lately.

"I'm going to kill him."

He doesn't have the strength to startle at the familiar voice, instead melting into the soft hand that's pushing his matted hair out of his face. Selina Kyle looms over him, eyebrows drawn together and a look of worry marring her features.

"Oh, Kitten ," her soft words propel him into her arms, and for the first time in a long time, Jason finds solace in another human being holding him close. He grits his teeth, ignores the dampness of his cheeks; it felt...good, to be held like a child.

Selina, for her part, is seeing the red glaze of anger, shaking fingers pressed against Jason's bruised skin with a tragic tenderness. She curses Bruce, and Dick, and the whole lot of them for doing this to Jason. Her soft spot for the second Robin has never faded, and it shows in the why she brings him close and presses a gentle kiss against the crown of his head.

"You...when did you get caught?" He asks, voice hoarse and cracking from disuse. "You weren't in here when they brought me in."

"Pamela made a call," she tells him, voice curt. "Said something about a kitten being locked up; figured it had to be you, so I came to see for myself. God, Jay, when was the last time you ate?"

"Can handle it," he mumbles, face pressed against the curve of her collarbone. "You know. Can't...can't eat anything here. Joker."

He speaks in broken phrases and muted syllables, but she hears what he's saying under the curt responses. The man who murdered me is here with me and he wants me dead again and I'm so, so scared.

Selina keeps her own tears at bay. There would be time for that later.

She reaches down and grabs at a bag that he hadn't seen earlier, pulling out a loaf of bread and a container of what seemed to be soup. His stomach reacted painfully to the sight of safe substance, and when she broke off a piece of the bread and dipped it into the soup for him, he didn't complain when she gently fed it to him.

"I heard about what happened between you lot," she starts, after a few minutes of her hand-feeding him soaked bread. "I can't say I approve, but...you don't deserve this. Did he even consider what he'd be doing to you, throwing you in here with that psychotic asshole?"

"Nah," Jason looks up at her, the bags under his eyes as dark as fresh bruises. "Not like...I. I deserve it, for...I shot, God, Selina..."

She pauses, observing in the violent shivering that had overtaken Jason's body. She would drop it for the night, she decides, pulling him impossibly close and shushing him.

He already understood, anyways.

iii. hero of my heart

Harley glances into the cell, sees the figure on the bed laying motionless. Selina had said he was young, but this …

She frowns. In the distance, the Joker laughs and laughs and laughs and she wishes she could bash his head in.

She could. She should. She would...but there was someone else to take care of first.

“Hey, Junior, get ya ass up.”

Jason startles, and glances over his shoulder to see the villain standing outside his cell. She’s dressed like a doctor, a stack of papers clutched in her hands.

Slowly, warily, he rises.

“Our mutual Cat friend gave me a call and cashed in like...six favours,” she explains, waving the papers around with one hand while opening the lock with the other. “These are your release papers, Hood! Congratulations!”

There is a pause.

“I’m...getting out?”

Harley thinks she feels pity at how childish the vigilante sounds. Like a kid about to see the light of day for the first time. But this is Gotham and it’s nighttime and cold and unforgiving in a way that makes you grow up.

“Yessir! Now get a move on,” she finally pulls the door open. The Clown isn’t laughing anymore.

Jason moves so fast he stumbles, and Harley catches his arm to keep him from tumbling to the ground. The relief is so strong it steals the breath from his lungs, and he forgets how to inhale for a few seconds.

“Thank you,” he manages to say as they walk through the corridors. “Tha...thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, thank your mom. Word on the street is she organized this whole thing.”

“Selina?” Jason asks, and his tone is coloured with gratefulness. “I figured.”

Harley smiles, and its a real thing. The clown is screaming, now.

“Wrong mom, Junior.”

iv. a prelude to war

Harley leads him out a side entrance and there, waiting by a small jet, are Selina and Talia al Ghul.

At the sound of the heavy door shutting, they both turn towards the two of them, and Talia’s mouth opens at the sight of the deteriorating boy in front of her. He’s pale, shivering, and covered in bruises; nothing like the son she had raised.

“Oh, my boy,” she breathes, and every syllable is wrapped in horror. “What have they done to you?”

“Mom,” he says, and its a knee-jerk response to the sight of the woman who saved his life. “Mom.”

She is a world-class assassin.

She’s the Demon’s Heir.

She’s a mother and she is rushing forward, drawing the boy into her arms and pressing him close. He crumples into the embrace, a soundless sob escaping his mouth.

He’s empty. He’s so empty . It’s something akin to the braindead state the car crash had left him in, and it’s terrifying to witness. A second time, in Talia’s case.

“You’re coming with me,” she whispers fiercely, carding her fingers through Jason’s curls. Tufts of hair come loose, and she fights the primal rage in her heart that screams at her to find Batman and make him suffer. “We’re going to go home and heal you.”

“Talia,” and Jason’s chin is wobbling, and he’s shaking, shaking, shaking. “Mom. I shot...I shot him.”

She knows. She aches.

“We’ll talk about it when you’re better,” she soothes, and together they move towards the jet. In the distance, the sun is rising; the sight of it puts a smile on Harley’s face.

“What?” Selina asks, surprised at the rare look on her friend’s face.

“Kid’s getting his new day,” Harley shrugs, and behind her, Pamela approaches. “Kinda makes you feel good, you know?”

Selina smiles as she walks to where Jason is being helped into the jet; she does know, the rewarding feeling of helping someone. It’s priceless.

“Take care,” she tells Jason, voice playfully stern. “Don’t get caught again, silly boy.”

Jason stares at her, gaze tearful. Her heart stops for a moment; it’s agony and heartbreak wrapped into a set of teal-coloured irises. She wants to cry.

“Selina,” he murmurs finally, voice cracking. “Thank you. Thank you. ”

She reaches out to place her hand over his heart; a simple gesture, one of love and fondness. He nods, and disappears into the shadows of the plane.

Talia lingers. “You know...there is an art form called kintsugi, which translates to golden joinery. It’s a Japanese technique of fixing broken pottery with lacquer, usually mixed with gold.”

Selina watches her, notes the affection in the other woman’s eyes. She feels safe in their mutual decision to send the boy off with the assassin. Especially now, after seeing her with Jason.

“Our boy is broken,” Talia continues, voice deceptively soft. “But I will find the gold to make him whole again, no matter what it takes. And I will succeed . This is a promise."

The sun casts a soft glow across the waters, casts a backlight on Talia; in this lighting, the woman looks ethereal.

Selina smiles. A new day indeed.

“I believe you.”

v. you are half a heart

The months pass.

A man once dead returns.

On a cold Wednesday night, he finds her standing on the edge of a rooftop, staring out across the bay. Towards Arkham.

Towards phantom memories.

"Selina," Bruce says, voice strained. "Where is he?"

She contemplates all the ways this could go wrong, all the ways it could blow up in her face if he ever finds out the truth. Thinks about what Bruce would do if he found out Jason was with his ex-lover, somewhere in far off lands. What he would do if he knew Jason may never return to Gotham.

She then remembers Jason's deathly pale skin, his dull eyes and broken spirit. Remembers all the way Arkham broke him.

"Dead," she spits, turning away. "He's dead."

With the wind howling around her, she jumps into the nothingness of the night and swings her way home, pretending she hadn't seen his tears.

Chapter Text

A fool would say Jason Todd’s strongest emotion is his anger.

Very few know the truth is Jason Todd’s strongest emotion is his empathy.

i. the chosen heir of gotham

His father’s eyes are dark, furious. Jason feels his gut tighten, a bolt of anxiety shooting through him, familiar, unwanted.

“You shot him,” Bruce is saying, but it sounds like they’re underwater, sounds like they’re back in the pier and Bruce is dying in front of him again. Maybe he is. Maybe something is dying tonight, something precious, loved, cherished .

It’s not him, though. It always feels like it’ll never be him again, despite how much he wants it sometimes.

“I did,” and his response is mechanical, cold, precise. He cuts Bruce exactly where he knows it’ll hurt, because it’s better to do this now than to drag it out. Their long arguments always left them cut open and bleeding. He loves the man in front of him too much to do that to him willingly; not tonight. Maybe not ever again. “I’d do it again.”

“I never should’ve believed in you,” Bruce sounds disappointed in him, and it’s the same old story, the same old hurts. Jason is tired of being too much for the one man who promised he’d always be enough.

I still am.

The words get stuck in his throat, and suddenly he’s fifteen and being benched and feels angry and tired and overwhelmed and it’s all too much, all over again. He’s fifteen and being beaten to death by a clown with a crowbar, trying to save a mother he wanted but who never wanted him. He’s fifteen and dead before seeing his father, crying and holding a body going cold.

He’s nineteen, and everything is very much the same.

He’s nineteen, and gives up the idea of going home. Instead, he throws a punch at his once father, tucking the gun away. He’s nineteen, barely grown, trading blows with his father in the darkest alley in Gotham.

“You don’t even hit the Joker this hard,” he finds himself saying, but Bruce ignores him and hits him harder. Bruce always ignores him, always ignore the cold empty space that sits between them. His vision momentarily blacks out.

He’s nineteen, tired, disappointed, and being thrown out of the city he was born and raised in by a father who’s been tired of him and his ghosts for years.

ii. they say “you’re a little much for me”

Roy gets him to Metropolis, and manages to spend a few days with him before being called away by Oliver for something important. Jason lets him go with a lingering kiss and a promise to return.

After that, it’s just silence.

He’s lost track of time, cooped up in the apartment. In the second week, Superman finds him, but at the sorry state Jason is in, the man only pulls a promise of weekly dinner before departing.

***

Dinner, predictably, becomes a weekly affair.

Lois and Clark welcome him into their home with open arms, and Jon takes a liking to him almost immediately. It’s like the exact opposite of his own family, the broken one left behind in Gotham, full of secrets and misery. The acceptance scares him, makes him meek and quiet; still, he plays with Jon and helps Lois with her articles, even if he knows she doesn’t need it.

It’s on one of these nights that Lois sits him down, his calloused hands between her own, slender pair, and offers him a tender smile.

“You have a real knack for giving a voice to the voiceless,” she says, and he could cry; in just a few months Lois Lane had figured out the truth about him, the truth not even his father could understand. “Have you ever considered journalism?”

“I, um...I never really…” now that he has to say it out loud, it seems so much worse. He knows how Lois will react. “I never really thought to rebuild a life for myself after, um...coming back.”

Her brow furrows. His anxiety grows. “Why not?”

He shrugs helplessly. “I didn’t...I lived and breathed my vigilantism, Lois. I just...I…”

And then he’s crying and he’s fifteen again, but instead of a burning warehouse and a dying mother there’s a guiding light and someone offering him a helping hand. Someone who wants him to get up.

“There was nothing else,” he whispers, as Lois shushes him and wipes his tears away. “Red Hood was all I had. It was all I needed . I just wanted to help my city, and now...I have nothing left.”

There is a pause, a silence broken only by the telltale sound of splintering wood. They look up find Clark standing in the doorway, broken pieces of wood on the floor, his fingers still tightly gripping the frame.

“Jason,” Clark says, and its fierce and protective and Jason can only cry harder, cry for all those nights he couldn’t cry. He’s still young and a ghost with nothing to his name, nothing but the phantom memories and a glass case. “Just say the word, and I’ll take you home and have a word with him. You just need to tell me, son, and I promise I’ll get you home.”

It’s more than anyone has ever offered; more than Dick, with his false bravado and the cold Arkham cell. More than Bruce, with his endless disappointments and morals and standards. More than heavy hits in a dark alleyway.

“You don’t even hit the Joker this hard.”

“Thank you,” he finally manages; in the time it’s taken him to calm down, Jon had come down the stairs and insisted on settling down in Jason’s lap. Clark had gone and changed out of his uniform. “All of you...thank you.”

***

“Clark, I need your help finding him, he...I don’t know where he went.”

“Well maybe you shouldn’t have let him go in the first place, Bruce.”

iii. you’re a liability

Stephanie and Duke come to him, one night, dressed in civvies and looking worse for wear. He lets them in, nervous, and it’s a solid five minutes before anyone speaks.

“You need to come home,” Stephanie begins with, calloused fingers clasped together tightly. He feels her anxiety like a tangible force, and reaches out to hold her hands. “You...Gotham misses you, Jay.”

His throat closes.

Duke jumps in. “There’s like...memorials everywhere for you. Um...Gotham Gazette caught wind of Batman chasing you out of town and he’s had to cut back on patrols because of angry Gothamites giving him hell.”

“So you both want me back because Batman’s in trouble,” his voice is flat, and for that he’s proud. It’s weird, he thinks, knowing people miss him. Knowing he gave them something to miss. Somedays...no, most days. Most days, he feels like nothing. Today is not one of those days.

Stephanie snorts, and its a familiar sound; Jason finds himself smiling. “Of course not. We want you back because it was wrong of Bruce to throw you out. We want you back because…”

She trails off, and both boys wait for her to find her courage.

“Because someone who’s been well off his whole life doesn’t...doesn’t get it. Sometimes prison and Arkham and beatings don’t work. And we...I get it. Even if Batman doesn’t.”

Street rats, the two of them. Robins that were mistakes, that died because they did something wrong. Not the man who dressed them up as heroes and gave up on them.

“I can’t come back,” he eventually says, pulling his hands away. The two watch him sadly, almost as if they had expected this. He’s grateful they tried anyways. “I...not yet. He doesn’t want me there, and I’m not...I’m not anything yet. I need some time.”

He doesn’t tell them how heavy Bruce’s blows were. He doesn’t tell them anything at all.

For what, exactly, he’s not sure. Outside his tiny apartment, the world continues to sleep; he suddenly misses Roy with something fierce.

“I need time,” he repeats.

iv. and even though I tried, it all fell apart

Months pass.

It happens while he’s making dinner.

The TV is on, background noise as he kneads dough. He pays no mind until he hears ‘Gotham’, and then his involuntary attention is on the news report.

“In other news, the crime rates in Gotham City have risen to record highs since the banishing of the Red Hood, and citizens have been crafting memorials in honour of their lost vigilante.”

His eyes burn.

The newscaster’s chin wobbles. “Red Hood...if you’re out there, we just want you to know...your city wants you to come home.”

Ah.

That’s right.

No matter what Bruce did, Gotham would never love him the same way it loves Jason. No matter how much Batman bleeds, dies, fights for the city...he belongs to the world. The universe. Gotham has no claim on him.

Jason, however, is wholly and unashamedly Gotham’s son. A goddamned prince. His mother’s heir.

How foolish he had been, letting Bruce convince him otherwise. How foolish he had been to leave his home in the hands of a man high on morals.

It’s an almost tangible thing, he thinks idly. Gotham had let him stray far, but the strings she had on him...not even Death had cut loose her hold. Not the mindless months, not the Pit, not the years of training.

Gotham was the mother who birthed him. Tragedy was the father who shaped him.

He would not falter ever again. The months of solitude, quiet time spent with the Kents, and the bitterness of the truth of his new scars...it is time for it all to come to a gentle end. Jason Todd takes a deep breath and reaches for the gun tucked into his couch.

And for the first time in a long time, he finds the weight comforting.

v. same old song but broken records glued together

Clark calls at the same time Roy bursts through the door. An alien invasion, starting with Gotham; an all hands on deck situation.

Though it’s obvious they don’t have time to spare, the duo steal a couple minutes to hold each other close, and Jason drinks up the tender silence before he’s throwing on his gear and his helmet and following Roy outside.

In the jet that awaits them are the Titans, many of most who startle at the sight of the long forgotten Red Hood.

Donna gives him a fierce hug.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says, and when she pulls back the plane is already moving and Dick is expressionless. Jason ignores him, instead settling in between Roy and Donna and letting the two of them carry the conversation.

They are in Gotham before he registers it.

“C’mon,” Dick says, gesturing at the group as a whole. “We’re with...Batman and Superman.”

It’s not his city , Jason thinks as the hangar door opens. And I am not his son.

The Titans walk out first; Roy goes with them, after squeezing Jason’s hand. He takes one breath, two breaths, and then puts on his helmet. A sense of tranquility washes over him at the familiarity, and it grounds him. Moves him.

Jason Todd steps out into Gotham for the first time in months to the sight of his city on fire.

Clark turns to him just as Batman does, the former offering him a warm smile that Jason waves for. Batman is staring, Jason knows he is, but it is startlingly easy to ignore the man he once considered his father.

“Thank you all for coming,” Clark then addresses the group, haste winning out over formalities and greetings. “We’re a bit swamped and have lost contact with Wonder Woman’s group. We need to clear out Park Row before anything else can get done, but…”

“But?” Dick prompts, as Clark trails off. The man’s eyes are on Jason, and he knows whatever comes next can’t be good.

“They hit Arkham Asylum first. The Joker is somewhere in the city; more specifically, Park Row.”

The Joker. On his stomping grounds. His Gotham, being burnt to the ground. His people being murdered and terrorized.

He’s running before he even knows it. Gotham, his mother, guides him through her wartorn streets, past the fallen civilians and the broken buildings. As he runs, people look up to him, and he can barely breathe at the hope in their eyes.

He did that. He gave it to them.

He grips his gun tighter. He’ll never abandon his people again. Closer to the heart of Park Row, he picks up on maniacal laughter; it’s a familiar noise. It’s a hated noise. The Lazarus in his veins sings and calls for bloodshed, and his heart does the same.

He can see the Joker, now. The man is ringed by aliens, but Jason only has eyes for him.

“Ohohoho! Look who it is! The lost babybird, finally home again!” The pasty bitch laughs, but instead of anger rising inside of him, Jason goes deathly calm. “Daddy let you back into his city?”

Jason thinks of all the people the man in front of him has hurt. Barbara, confined to a wheelchair. Gothamites, forced to live a life of fear, knowing the Joker will never die. Thousands of unmarked graves filled with victim after victim, all collateral in the war between Batman and his one, true foe.

The second Robin, in a warehouse far away.

The bond between a father and his son.

Too many victims. Too many deaths.

Never again.

“This is not his city,” Jason Todd, son of Gotham, says. “And I am not his son.”

He aims the gun. He pulls the trigger. The clown prince of Gotham falls to the ground, lifeless, a permanent grin on his face.

And Jason, for what may be the first time in his second life, feels a true sense of relief. He should’ve done that years ago; asking Bruce had been a mistake. Ending the Joker’s era with his own hands had been cathartic.

Behind him, Clark and Batman land, and there is silence.

“Batman,” he says, finally addressing the man who had all but killed him months ago. Maybe they were better like this, strangers guarding the same city. Maybe someday in the future they’ll mend the bridge they so desperately burn down every so often and leave it whole.

But today...today, Jason belongs to Gotham. Then, now, forever . Maybe someday he’ll be Bruce’s again. The child in him yearns for it, but the grown tragedy knows better.

He lets himself hope, though.

“Jason,” Batman... Bruce . Bruce says his name with reverence, like a man seeing the sun for the first time. A man seeing a ghost, or...maybe a living being. Seeing his son, for the first time in years.

Jason has a long way to go, he knows. He knows he’s broken, knows he glues together the pieces of two lives lived differently. But here, in his city, protecting the people who need a hero willing to go the distance…

It’s a start.

Chapter Text

It has been months since Batman had chased the Red Hood out of Gotham. Months since a mission gone awry, loved heroes lost. The world is still mourning, in a way, still struggling to get up in the morning.

Which is why when she gets the news that Red Hood is back in town and on a vengeful streak, she’s all too grateful for the distraction.

Kate Kane, known to Gotham as Batwoman, follows the trail mapped out by GCPD and finds herself entering a deserted parking level, high above ground. The eerie scene is punctuated by the telltale sounds of metal hitting flesh.

She moves.

There, in the back corner of the lot, is Jason Peter Todd himself, donning a new costume and a bloodied crowbar in his hand. Kate winces at the irony.

“Hood,” she says, and her voice is sharp. “What are you doing back in town?”

He stops. The henchman, who had been screaming on the ground, manages to evade the final swing and gets up running; in seconds, they are alone, with a few bodies.

“What, am I not allowed to come and check up on my flowers from time to time?” He asks, but there’s something...strange about his tone. This isn’t the snarky nephew she’d come to know in their short, overlapping stint with the other Bats, but rather…

“Aren’t you even slightly ashamed?” She asks, frowning. “People heroes knew died a few months ago. The community is still mourning; hell, you probably knew some of the names we lost!”

Jason turns to her then, and Kate nearly takes a startled step back at frenzied anger in his eyes.

“How dare you,” he says, and the temper in his voice is so controlled, so monotone, that Kate feels a flicker of apprehension. This is a Red Hood she doesn’t know how to deal with. “Of course I f ucking knew the people who died !”

“Then why are you doing this?”

"Because he's dead!" Jason screams, bloodied crowbar hitting the concrete with a deafening clatter. It's tactless, it's jarring, and it's nothing like what she had come to expect from the infamous Red Hood. "Because he's dead and I'm left with my worthless life!"

Kate stills.

These are words she is familiar with.

She knows that heartache, knows of the bone-deep loss that brings forth such primal rage; she lowers her fists. Love is a twisted thing, the very line between tranquility and madness, and it wouldn't take a genius to see how badly Jason careened off into the latter.

"He?" She asks, voice quiet.

"Roy Harper," Jason manages to say, his voice cracking so precariously, as if it pains him to say the name of his beloved. His hurt is palpable, is as fresh as it can be, and Kate aches along with him. This is the man that Bruce feared? This is no man; Jason is a boy. A child . "The best damn person to ever walk this Earth."

Oh, Kate thinks. Oh .

Jason lets himself hit the floor, head bowed as if in prayer and hands pressed to the cold floor. She resists the urge to wrap him in her cape, resists the urge to tuck this broken boy into a world that would stop hurting him. Outside, rain begins to fall, melancholic and cold and quiet.

She thinks it’s rather fitting.

"We were done wasting time," Jason whispers, so softly Kate barely catches it. "We were ready to move forward."

"Oh, kid," Kate murmurs, kneeling down next to him. "I'm so sorry."

For her efforts, she is rewarded a bitter smile edged with blood. "Yeah? So am I. You gonna spit that 'it gets better' rhetoric at me? Life never gets better. I've taken on the Joker, I’ve taken on Death, the Lazarus Pit, Ra's Al Ghul, and the Bats. And I'd do it all over again if it meant even five more minutes with him. Funny how that works, huh? All the worst things in my life, all the broken pieces that have cut me open time and time again, and I would...fuck, I'd do it all again for him. Down to that warehouse in Ethiopia. Down to loving Bruce to be let down. Down to drowning and rebirthing in that fucking Pit. For him. I'd do it for him. That’s what I’m sorry about, Batwoman; that I’d do all that and it still wouldn’t bring him home."

Kate stays silent. She isn't sure what she could even say, in the face of such a proclamation. Suddenly she wishes that Roy Harper could be here, if even as a ghost, to hear Jason speak about him. Love is as cruel as it is kind, and here is a broken boy willing to pay the ultimate price just for a final taste of it.

She has to help .

"I can't say it'll get better because...honestly? Your life is a tragedy and you...You didn't deserve this. Roy didn't deserve this. But...what's important is you take that love, that burning, fiery thing in your heart, and you use it to move forward. You keep living life not because you want to, or because you have a mission, but because it’s what he would want for you. To keep loving, because you can , not because you have to. It won’t get better but by God I hope it’ll get easier, Jason.”

There is a pause. Kate gets up to her feet and holds out a hand, inviting; a promise.

She waits.

Slowly, but surely, Jason lifts his head and eyes her. He takes one, two, three shuddering breaths, form rattling.

Still, she waits.

Jason Todd takes her hand, and rises to his feet.

Chapter Text

“No one’s going to hurt you.”

Getting dosed with Fear Toxin is something that is commonplace among the Bats, especially afters all their years of defending Gotham in the dead of night. It’s the reason why the Medbay cots have restraints attached to them, and indirect cause of so many scratches and indentations in the Cave. It’s the only thing other than sleep that can make them relive all their past traumas so viciously and wholly, be it falls, gunshots, deaths.

But for all its commonality, none of them have ever seen Jason Todd high on the toxin. And when they finally do, it’s not something they ever wish to experience again, for secrets have a funny way of bleeding out when there are tears in your eyes and your throat has gone raw. 

It begins as a normal Friday night: an Arkham breakout. 

Such a mess warrants an ‘all hands on deck’ response, which is how Jason finds himself hopping rooftops with Robin nipping at his heels. Batman and Nightwing are already on the scene, putting out proverbial fires as they come, and the rest of them have been tasked with rounding up all the missing convicts. 

“I have three here,” Spoiler chirps, oddly cheerful for someone dealing with escaped prisoners. Jason momentarily wonders how she does it, so consistently and with so much…emphasis. “All subdued, and waiting on cops.”

“I have six by Gina’s Pizzeria on Fifth Avenue, waiting on cops,” Red Robin reports, sounding sluggish. “They just had to pick an off day to break out of Arkham, huh?” 

“Everyday is an off day for you, RR,” Nightwing supplies helpfully, coupled with the background noises of a body hitting the ground. There is a shout somewhere. “At least today wasn’t an especiallyoff day.”

“Oh, you say that now, but you should’ve seen him this morning,” Signal mutters, and Jason’s lips quirk up at the disgruntled tone. He loves team-ups on Tim. “He put salt in my tea. What kind of heathen does that to a man’s tea?” 

“Blasphemy,” Steph fake-gasps. In her distance, they can all hear sirens approaching. 

“Electric chair for the not-so-baby bat,” Jason chimes in. “Salt infractions are punishable by death in good ol’ Gotham.”

“Got any pointers?” Tim asks, none too gently. They’re still working past their bloodied memories, and Jason can accept it for what it is. While he spent time with Damian and Duke, sometimes Steph and Cass, Tim isn’t in Gotham enough for them to try and mend bridges. 

And Jason, truth be told, isn’t sure if he’d want to. Dick and Tim are different from the others, a reminder of the dark stain in their family’s history that they all created together, willingly or not. And while some things can be put behind them, Jason is a sore reminder of everything they all so desperately tried to ignore in favour of the good. 

“Yeah. Cremation,” he veers to the left, finally spotting the man he and Damian had been chasing down for a solid seven blocks. “Very helpful in preventing zombies.”

“Hood,” Batman admonishes, but its softened around the edges in a way that indicates the old man is amused. Jason pretends to doesn’t warm him inside-out, to hear that soft adoration even now after years of fighting. To know he can still do that, pull that affection from the Dark Knight himself.  

“Eyes on Scarecrow,” Damian interrupts. “And if you intend on dying, Red Robin, do hurry. And make sure to make a spectacle of it.”

Jason lets loose a short laugh and cuts his comm before Tim can cuss them off, reaching over to ruffle Damian’s hair in appreciation. The two of them, surprisingly, have gotten closer since Damian’s unscheduled visit with his mother. After Damian had trailed Selina and Bruce, and Talia’s ‘duel’ with the Cat, the heiress had called Jason and pulled a promise to take care of Damian from him. 

And he intends to keep it.

Jason gets a half-smile as a reward for the ribbing of their mutually ‘disliked’ brother, and there is a few heartbeats of peace before all goes wrong.

In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have let their guards down so close to a recurring villain. And as the older brother in the equation, he definitely should’ve been on top of everything as soon as they touched down on the ground, but as it stands, Damian is in the direct path of a suddenly thrown canister and there’s no time to pull him out of the way. The motion itself would prove futile if and when the gas releases, which left only one option in Jason’s mind. 

Unthinkingly, he throws himself between the canister of Fear Toxin and Damian with his back to Scarecrow, shoving the boy backwards only a few seconds before he hears the telltale hiss of the gas infiltrating the air and, subsequently, his mask. 

To his credit, Damian doesn’t even hesitate before shielding his face, eyes wide behind the white-out lenses of the mask with what he thinks to be realization. Jason grits his teeth against the shivers already beginning to make their way up and down his spine, and is barely able to catch Damian calling for aid.

“…ood? Hood!” 

Somewhere behind them there is motion as Cassandra lands and sends Scarecrow flying into a pile of crates. How she got there so fast, Jason isn’t sure, but the world is beginning to spin and there are embers in the corners of his eyes and fuck. Everything begins to smell like ashes and blood, and he can somehow taste betrayal on his tongue. 

“Hood!” Damian shouts again, and when this is all over Jason will resent the clear fear in his voice. It’s so, so easy to forget how young the boy is, but in times like this…times like this, Jason wishes he could forget. Wishes Damian didn’t have to be out here with the rest of them.

His knees hit the ground the same moment he feels his fingers begin to bleed, callused skin splitting open in the face of persistent abuse. He thought he was sure that his hands were fine, but the panic inlaid in his mind overrides any sense of logic as he curls in on himself, deadly intent focused on not alarming Damian any further. 

“…Father! Father, he was hit with Fear T–” 

Father?

And just like that, Jason is fifteen all over again and screaming and locked in a coffin with nothing but the blood on his skin and the belt around his hips. He doesn’t register anything other than a concerned murmur before his mind breaks from the intense pressure of fragmented memories; already a fragile thing, the imposed trauma rips through him with the subtlety of a bomb going off. 

Shoulders bent, his fingers scrape against what he thinks to be the coffin’s lid in a desperate attempt to find purchase, instead only managing to amplify the pain in his fingers. The wet touch of fresh blood does nothing to deter him, and it’s with near inhuman strength that he pushes off whoever is trying to hold him down.

It was Cass, he’ll later find out, as Bruce looks through his pockets, desperately, for their latest strain of the antidote. Tim, Steph, Duke, and Dick had stayed behind to deal with the Arkham mess, and the comms were off for a thin veneer of privacy. 

(Nobody wants to know his demons, because his demons were so staunch with blood and sacrifice that it would horrify even the most seasoned of heroes.)

Someone manages to take off his leather jacket, he thinks, because he can feel the cool touch of a cape against the nape of his neck but all he can think is he’s trapped, he’s dead, he’s lost, he needs–

“Dad!” Jason sobs, voice cracking in panic. He’s trapped in a coffin. He’s stuck with the Joker and a traitor and in a foreign country. “Dad, Dad I’m here! I’m in here! Please, I’m scared, I’m scared…” 

Damian freezes in both shock and what he perceives to be dismay, and next to him Cass frowns in worry. But both of them have nothing on Bruce, who sucks in a breath so sharp it could slice his throat open, lips parting around a single utterance of ‘son’. 

Jason hasn’t called Bruce ‘dad’ since coming back from the grave. But this, right now…he’d somehow forgotten how many times he’d screamed ‘Dad’ between climbing out of that damned coffin and the fatal car crash that would steal his memories from him. 

“Please please please please,” Jason chants, and the syllables crash into each other like waves against an outcrop of rocks, so similar to the man himself. “B-Bruce where are you? I don’t wanna be stuck in here I don’t!” 

They jerk with the effort it takes to keep the second Robin stationary; Jason is nearly Bruce’s size, and it’s no easy feat, keeping him down. Not with the shock flowing through them over seeing their most steadfast so thoroughly dismantled. 

“I’m sorry about Shelia!” Jason yells, a vain effort to get someone, anyone, to listen. “I…I don’t…all I’ve ever needed was you, Dad, please, I’m sorry…”

“Jason,” Bruce whispers, so soft, so scared. This is a display of all the trauma that stood between them, an open sea of all the times Bruce has failed his second-born. A sea so violent that it drowns both of them whenever they brave it, takes them into its darkness before spitting out even hollower versions of the men who went down under.

But not this time. 

Bruce takes off his belt determinedly and hands it to Cass, a pointed look instructing her to keep searching for the antidote. Jason continues to thrash and cry so openly, carving whole pieces of Bruce out and setting them aflame right there at their feet. This is the closest he’s gotten to the truth about Jason’s rebirth in all their years, and so desperately he wishes it could be different. Wishes it was Jason sharing this willingly, in an effort to mend, an effort to move forward.

But wishes are for men who have time and right now, Bruce has none.

Ignoring the flailing limbs as best he could, Bruce gathers Jason in his arms, softly shushing the boy and beginning to rock him the same way he had done years ago, after every nightmare filled with memories of a broken home. Jason shudders against him, still sobbing brokenly about how badly he hurt, and Bruce…

Bruce feels a bloodlust so vicious he can feel it pushes against the seams of his skin, his soul, and if the Joker had been anywhere near him, Bruce would rip the flesh off his bones with nothing but his teeth and anger. Not even the Gods themselves could’ve stopped the man from tearing apart the Clown Prince limb from limb, from a death so brutal there would be nothing left for the Underworld to punish. 

“Bruce,” Jason whimpers, and somewhere in his toxin-addled brain, there is a pause in the onslaught. He recognizes the arms holding him close, recognizes the tenor of the voice humming to him, recognizes the lips that press a gentle kiss to his hairline. “B, you came. Papá…”

And through his own budding tears at the call in Jason’s mother-tongue, Bruce says, “always. I’ll always come. No one’s going to hurt you. Not anymore, chum.” 

“I was so scared,” Jason blubbers, but through the tears staining his cheeks, there is an attempt at a smile; it takes Bruce’s heart in its grasp and squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until he’s sure there’s nothing left in its hold. How dearly he loves this boy. “But I…I knew you’d come. I always knew.”

And there’s the flash of the Robin who thought Bruce held the world in his hands, is a God, is a good man. There is the Robin–the Jason–who believed in Bruce. In his father. 

Bruce aches with a fierce love, and a longing for a bridge that’s barely there. 

Suddenly, Jason goes slack, his eyes rolling back in his head as the boy is finally given the sweetness of unconsciousness. Bruce startles badly, and glances to the side to find Cassandra holding an empty syringe with a sympathetic smile on her face. 

“Can we…take him home now?” She asks, and he knows the two siblings have their differences but they are bonded by family and she loves him, in a way, and it shows by how softly she strokes his matted hair now. 

Bruce gives her a tired smile, arms full of his lost son. 

“Yes…yes, let’s get him home.”

Chapter Text

Every gala is a nightmare, after he buries his sunshine. 

How is he supposed to plaster a smile on his face for all this inconsequential assholes when Jason is gone, cold, in the ground? He isn’t sure what day it is, let alone what inane cause the banquet is for; the alcohol he’d consumed before the party leaving his mind muddled and blanketed with a thick fog, and he can't find it within himself to even try to care. 

Dick mulls about somewhere, and Bruce doesn’t have it in him to return his worried glances. He's long past reassuring his loved ones that he's okay, and they'll soon be long past asking. 

He sees Tim standing in the corner with Alfred, whispering something into the old man’s ear. Around them partygoers pay little mind to the twig of a boy and the butler, too focused on each other and the food to care. Only a few seconds later, a smile graces both of their faces, and Tim slips into the darkness of the exit unnoticed by those around them and Alfred turns his attention back to the crowds milling about, his pastry tray much lighter. 

The familiarity of the situation hits him like a freight train, and Bruce is forced to down another glass of champagne to rid himself of the proverbial knife that had lodged itself in his chest so quickly that it stole his breath.

Jason.

//

It startles him to the point of fear, how much this new Robin of his reminds him of his Jason. 

They both were so confident, passion in their blood and an extra bounce to their step when out on patrol. Two Robins who only wanted the best for their city, the stomping grounds that had bred them. 

He sees all the ways Stephanie mirrors Jason, and is scared at the similarities. He's too haggard, too old, too tired to lose another Robin; he doesn't think he could survive it, the failure, the loss of life. 

Not again.

Bruce shouldn’t have been so surprised, then, when he lost Stephanie, too. 

//

He’s too angry to tell off Cass for the stunt she just pulled, instead choosing to sit there in dark silence as they rode back towards the Mansion. She’s also quiet, but for a different reason; the tenseness of Bruce’s muscles isn’t caused by anger, but rather…the pain of memories. 

“I did what was right,” she sounds out, slow. “Their lives…they’re more important. That’s the mission.”

And Bruce…Bruce is thrown back some years, to a different child of his sitting in the passenger seat, stubborn legs kicking around in those ridiculous shorts and booties, a frown on his face as he rants about the importance of the lives of the people they’re meant to save.

Bruce, in the past, chuckles and leans over to pull his boy into a quick hug. Murmurs about how much his son means to him, and how he couldn’t bear to see him hurt. Apologizes for snapping, explains it was out of fear, not anger.

Bruce in the present veers the Batmobile to the right, sharp enough that Cass glances at him in confusion.

“Let’s go to the cemetery. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”  

//

Damian is…a whole different challenge than the rest of his kids. Woefully it is Dick who steps up to help with the boy, instincts sharpened over the years of being introduced to new kids taking on old mantles. This is the same old song and dance to them, by now, despite how poorly they may manage it. 

And that stubbornness…it’s nearly unparalleled. Nearly. 

But Bruce doesn’t think the newest addition to his family would take it very well if he’s compared to their chosen cautionary tale, because nobody but Bruce will ever know that he isn’t comparing them to a mistake, an accident, a tragedy.

He’s comparing them to a legacy that will remain untouched long after they have all died. 

//

He comes home one night from a gruelling argument with Jason, eyes burning with tiredness and heart empty. 

Fuck you, old man! Go home to your stupid glass case and your ghosts!

He opens the door to the living room, and finds nearly the entirety of his family seated inside. Alfred is tucked into the seat in front of the fireplace, a cup of tea placed next to him and a familiar book in his hands. He has given up the charade of reading in favour of openly watching the children bicker, a fond smile on his face. 

Speaking of the children…

Everyone is huddled around the coffee table, some of them on the sofa and some on the floor. There’s a board splayed out across the length of the marble slab, and…many, many dice.

Cass is perched on the armrest just behind Stephanie’s head, who is leaning back against the sofa. Next to her is Dick, on the ground, a look of intense concentration on his face. Barbara is tapping away on her laptop, occasionally chiming in to whatever it is the conversation is about.

Duke and Damian are shoulder to shoulder and locked in a fierce argument with Tim, who’s looking more and more put out by the second. Almost like he regrets being here, but there’s an amusement underneath the facade that proves to Bruce he’s having a good time. 

Dick is the first to notice him in the doorway; Cass is the first to notice how tired he is. 

Both come to the same conclusion of ‘Jason’. 

“Duke is teaching us about Dungeons and Dragons,” Dick explains with a gentle smile. “C’mon, it’s nerdy but cool.”

“Hey man, nothing with being nerdy, nerds get into university,” Duke defends himself with no real heat and a genuine smile on his face. Dick laughs it off and goes back to studying the game, and Bruce…

Bruce is reminded of the only son not in the room, and for once it's not painful.

Almost. 

He takes a seat next to Cass, who immediately melts into his side and presses her fingers against his heart. With a strained smile, he puts his own hand over hers and turns his head to press a chaste kiss to her cheek before tuning into the conversation. 

It’s a cold night in Gotham.

He hopes wherever Jason is, he’s warm and well-fed. 

//

When Jason comes over to discuss the finer details of a drug bust they’re collaborating on, Bruce can barely keep it together. His second son is a mere few feet away from him, sans helmet, for the first time in a long time; months, even. His hair has gotten longer, the ends curling as they did when he was young, and the green in his eyes has darkened his irises to an aquamarine. 

He’s staring. He know he is. But this is the baby he had buried, all grown and…no longer a baby, by all means. Regardless, Jason will always be his baby, no matter how tall he grew or how much he weighed or how much distance there is between them.

“Staring is creepy,” Jason deadpans, finally flipping the manilla folder shut and tossing it onto the table. He turns his full attention onto Bruce, quirking an eyebrow; this is the most relaxed Bruce has seen him, in this second life. “What’s on your mind, old man?” 

Bruce…there is so much on his mind, whenever Jason is around, but it always blanks to nothing when he needs his thoughts the most. He can think of a thousand ways to say ‘I love you’ to the boy in front of him and never has the nerve to say any of them, can never vocalize just how much the boy means to him. 

And here, again, he’s left dumbstruck in the face of their tentative bond; nothing like what it had been when Jason trusted him freely, but better than the ash and blood it had been made of when Jason had first returned to Gotham. 

“Nothing, Jason,” Bruce finally manages to say, wiping the thousand ‘I love you’s from his mind before he can embarrass himself. “I just really miss talking to you.”

Jason blinks.

Bruce blinks. 

Oh dear God almighty, what the hell did I say that for? 

Because for every I love you Bruce has left unsaid, Jason has left a piece of grief unsaid. Words that are sharp and dangerous, armed with only poison and bitterness; words that could send Bruce to his knees. 

You failed me.

I hate you. 

You ruined me.

“Well I’m right here, B,” Jason snarks, but there’s a…vulnerability to it that Bruce hasn’t heard since that fateful rooftop, since a cold, damp room and an even colder batarang slicing through the night. “You can talk.”

But what do you talk about with a son who has convinced himself you don’t love him? A son who doesn’t know of the way losing him had carved grief into his father’s very existence? No one who came after Jason will ever know of the man Bruce Wayne had been before losing his son, his Robin, his sunshine. 

But…Jason is standing here now, watching him almost expectantly. Almost like a boy depending on his father, even if they were way past it, way past the excellency they had back when Jason was 15, had stars in his eyes, and loved Bruce more than anything. 

Now Jason is 19, has blood on his hands, and believes Bruce never loved him; the realization is like a hammer slamming into his ribs. He never wanted this, never wanted this distance, these lies, the hesitance.

Bruce just wants his son, and the first step has to be taken by one of them. 

So he does.

“Have I ever told you how much Duke’s love for Dungeons and Dragons reminds me of you?” 

Chapter Text

There’s a sadness in the air choking the breath from Roy’s lungs, and he desperately keeps wiping at the red staining Jason’s chest. A stack of bloodied towels sits next to him, a solemn reminder of just how much the Gotham vigilante has already suffered tonight, and the pile only continues to grow and grow and grow as the night wears on.

The man in question is no longer coherent; jumping between calling out for his mother and calling out for his beloved, the blood spilling from him in rivulets is a foregone memory and Roy wishes he could say the same for himself. Instead, he’s tasked himself with the gruelling clean up, and though the Lazarus in Jason’s veins works fast, his blood is spilling much quicker.

Roy is covered in his boyfriend’s blood, and it is Batman’s fault. The pinnacle of justice and blind faith had perverted himself not to deal with the Joker, or Harvey Dent, or even any of the Gotham Rogues, but rather…

His own son.

Some part of Roy rages at the situation, hellbent on finding the man and making him pay for what he’s done. Another part wants to grab the man and make skin-to-skin contact, have him wear the blood of his second son, the blood he so desperately sought only hours ago. Wants to see Bruce Wayne dressed up in the blood he spilt so recklessly.

(Wants to throw Jason’s ashes in his eyes, if it comes down to it.

Look at him! He would scream.

You did this!)

There is no justice in Gotham for its damned, Roy knows; Jason falls into the category of tragedy, but so does most of Gotham. He knows most of the heroes will side with Batman, the dark side to Superman’s light, one-half of their leader duo. He knows Jason is but a concept to them, a cautionary tale; a nightmare to tell their kids about before they dress them up in bright colours and take them to war.

Jason had been that kid, once upon a time. Jason had worn those greens and reds and yellows, had smiled in the face of justice and held the city’s burdens up on his shoulders.

And Jason paid the price. Again and again and again.

Roy worries he has nothing left to give this time, worries that Batman has broken something fundamental and sacred in the man. Three people alive on this planet have the power to reach past Jason’s ribs and take hold of his bleeding heart: Roy will never abuse that gift, and the second is most likely already on her way.

That leaves an unrepentant Batman, and for the umpteeth time Roy wishes to rip the man’s flesh off his bones with nothing more than his teeth. For a man who preaches boundaries and unbiased justice, there are no strings on him to hold him back from anything more than the song and dance he holds with the Joker like clockwork.

Beneath his hands, Jason continues to bleed.

He’s already called Dinah, frantic over the phone and barely held together at the seams. Only for Jason does he manage to relay what they needed, and after extracting a promise of haste from his maternal figure, he hung up to get back to cleaning.

Now…the waiting game. The veins around Jason’s eyes are glowing a soft green, barely visible under the blood and grime caking his skin, but Roy takes it as a good sign.

“I’ve never felt stronger than when you’re with me,” Roy whispers into the darkness. Still, his quiet words seem like a shout into the quiet death of night, and he barely holds back a cringe. “Please, please, Jason…you can’t go. Not now.”

A pause. Roy shivers as the truth works its way through him, loud and burning and truthful.

“I love you, Jason, please…please…stay with me, darling.”

And there, with the truth laid bare—

Roy falls apart, teeth clenched around a dry sob, head bowed in prayer, in faith—

(They were stronger together. Two halves of a whole. Perfection incarnate.

Outlaws. Friends. Lovers.

Soulmates.)

In the cold darkness of Gotham, in the inky blackness just before dawn, time hiccups, and–

A red string pulled taut, taut, taut—

Two heartbeats sync up, beating in tandem, strong and hardened and weathered and resilient. Protected, the romantics and the legends and the myths would say, by the force of love.

—Their string relaxes, curling between their bodies, unseen but immortal. Unbreakable.

Jason opens his eyes, and reaches for Roy.

But there is no need; Roy is already there. 

Chapter Text

Somewhere beyond the edge of the greenery, the moon begins to creep into the sky, casting long shadows across the grass.

The cheeseburger wrapper hits the ground, all crumpled and small bits of cheese still clinging to the plastic. He watches it roll across the field, the breeze carrying it across the cracked dirt, until it hits the foot of the man approaching him.

“Jason,” Bruce Wayne says, and because he was carefully listening for it, Jason can hear the catch in his voice.

“Hey B,” he mumbles, shaking hands pressed deep into his pockets so the man in front of him can’t see them; it’s his tell, he knows. “Fancy seein’ you here.”

“Alfred would be disappointed in your littering,” Bruce gently chides, before bending low to pick up the wrapper Jason had discarded and shoving it into his jacket pocket. “How was your day?”

“How was my day? Seriously? You have nothing better to ask me? Nothing about the elephant in the room?” Jason frowns, forehead creasing. Bruce isn’t particularly known for his tact, but he knows the Gotham vigilante can do better than that.

He’s been pulled taut all day, a rubber band waiting to snap as soon as the other shoe drops; and now, it seems like the time has come. Jason isn’t sure if he’s itching for a fight, or something more vulnerable, more precious.

“I can’t ask about your day?” Bruce raises an eyebrow, and there’s a painfully tender smile on his face, as if he’s looking at the center of his entire universe. Jason knows, from varying recounts from his many family members, that the statement holds a dangerous amount of merit. “You spent it with Duke and Dami, yes?”

That’s right; in an endearingly, childish way, the duo had shown up at his apartment and taken him out for the day in an attempt to get his mind off of things. He had fun and it had been worth it to see so many smiles on Dami’s face, but now the night was dark and every fragmented memory was out in full force, pushing Jason to stumble his way to where father and son were now.

Jason’s grave.

“It was nice,” Jason shrugs, but his eyes are sharp and locked on Bruce in a way they haven’t been in a long, long time. Not since his crime boss days, since the void between the ex-partners was seemingly uncrossable. “Squirt had a blast, at least, which was nice, and we…we, uh...”

His breath hitches, and the cellphone in his hand falls as his grip goes slack. Bruce startles into movement, the telltale sound of a sob cleaving his heart in two.

Jason crumbles just as Bruce’s arms encircle him, and the two of them hit the ground hard. Bruce is...Bruce isn’t good with emotions, but this is one of the few days of the year where he’s allowed to hold his son. One of the few days where Jason needs him, unabashedly, desperately.

“It’s okay, chum,” Bruce murmurs into his hair, pressing a gentle kiss against his forehead. Jason heaves, his entire frame shaking as he battles with invisible demons, the kind Bruce can’t beat bloody and throw into a dark cell in Blackgate or Arkham or whatever fresh hell Batman reigns triumphant over. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Beside them, the forgotten phone flashes with unread texts.

The date on the screen reads April 27th.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, he and Jason feel like roads that run parallel to each other, never meant to cross. 

Bruce knows it’s not true; this is his child, that he raised, loved, protected until he couldn’t. That he’d lost and found again, through a myriad of painful circumstances that set his blood aflame if he thought about it for more than a few minutes. 

But when they’re standing side by side on a rooftop deep in the heart of Gotham with nothing but silence between them, an intangible chasm opened so wide the other side is unimaginable, he can’t help but feel like this is a derivative of what they were. Made up of everything but the love and trust and understanding that once had them so in sync with each other. 

It’s hard to comprehend, Bruce thinks, how this boy who came home to kill him still echoes his sweet angel so clearly. It’s in the way he sees Jason take care of children, all soft spoken words and gentle, slow touches, little jokes and sleight of hands that pull smiles and giggles without fail. It’s how quickly he appears whenever Damian is in trouble, or hurt, all Lazarus fury and righteous anger; even when he’s spewing venom at Bruce, he can only see the steadfast hero in the boy, like a well-worn cape settled around him like a guard against the world. 

“He could’ve been the best of us,” Clark once said, while he, Bruce, and Diana were sharing a cup of coffee somewhere in Metropolis. Diana had made a sound of agreement. “Jason was...well. He had an eye for our type of work.”

“He still does,” Bruce remembers snapping, all vicious and protective of his second son. “Don’t you dare discount what he’s done to protect innocent lives like that, Clark. He’s done his best with the hand life gave him.”

His friends had shared a look.

“Do you mean the hand Talia Al Ghul had given him?” Diana asks, gently. And thus Bruce had been forced to confront the fact that here, in this second life of his, Jason is more Talia’s than he is Bruce’s. 

That’s how he finds himself at her doorstep, waiting for her to open the door. And when she does, he’s quick to catalogue the small flicker of surprise that crosses her features before she manages to school them into a more neutral look.

“Beloved,” Talia says, an eyebrow raised. “I can’t say I was expecting you, because for the life of me I’m not quite sure what I’ve done recently to warrant a visit from the Bat himself.” 

Bruce allows that, considering it is the truth. “I’m here about...something else.” 

A languid smile crosses her face and she finally opens the door wide enough for him to slip through. He takes in the tasteful interior and the permanence of the residence; the bookshelves lined with first editions, the precariously framed photographs hung up on the walls. His stomach does a quick and violent twist at the sight of so many pictures of Jason smiling, arm in arm with Talia in various countries around the world. There are even pictures with Damian, the three of them looking more like a family than Bruce and the kids ever have. 

Jealousy is a dark and dangerous thing, and it sits heavy on his heart. 

“Jason enjoys travelling,” Talia explains once she catches sight of Bruce looking at the pictures with an air of longing. “Back after the Lazarus Pit, we visited anywhere he wanted to go; I had hoped it would help his heart heal, from the betrayal it had been pierced with.”

The new Robin. The Joker, free and at large. Bruce, a failure as a parent and as a hero. 

He closes his eyes for a moment, the self-hatred too much to bear. Talia doesn’t call him out on it, but rather grabs his arm and leads him into what seems to be the living room. On the table there are a handful of books, and three empty cups. 

“Did I interrupt your night?” He asks, trying for teasing. It probably falls flat, too heavy with curiosity over the prospect of her spending time with another, but he enjoys the laughter it pulls from his ex-lover nonetheless. 

“No, not at all,” Talia smiles, seemingly warm at the memories. “The little ones had stopped by for some time, and had left a few minutes ago when Jason had insisted it was nearing Dami’s bedtime. I agreed, of course; a growing boy needs his sleep, hm?” 

“Oh,” his voice comes out distorted, thrown by the fact that Dami and Jay were spending time together. With Talia. Together. Without telling Bruce. “Ah. Yes.” 

“Our little boy is in his school’s play this year,” she hums, taking a seat and gesturing for Bruce to sit opposite to her; he settles in, watching how comfortable Talia is in her parental role. How badly he wishes to be the same. “He’s very excited, even if he claims otherwise. I trust you’ll be there, opening night?” 

She pairs her question with a razor-sharp smile, and he has to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the obvious threat. “Of course. We’ve already bought our tickets because Dami said they don’t give any out to—well. If the smile on your face is anything to go by, I’m guessing that was a bold faced lie and he gave the tickets to you?” 

Talia’s eyes twinkle. “He was very shy when doing so, but yes, two of those tickets were handed to Jason and I, and the third to Duke.” 

“The proceeds go to charity,” Bruce tries miserably, if just to save face. 

“I’m aware, and have already made a donation in his name.”

Damn her. 

“Meanwhile,” Talia carries on, smug in her victory. “Our eldest just completed his GED the other day. I’ve been told he and Roy had a very... excitable celebration.”

Bruce blinks, slowly and—quite frankly—stupidly. Eldest...not his first one but Jason...GED? Jason had been prepping for his GED? He had gotten his GED? Well that’s no surprise, Jason was and is one of the most intelligent people he knows, but he hadn’t mentioned it at all to Bruce? Not even in passing?

Wait.

Roy?

Harper?

“I seem to have broken the World’s Greatest Detective,” Talia interrupts his meltdown, leaning back and crossing her legs over each other. Some feral part of his brain registers the pang of exhilaration that the familiar gesture sends through him, but it was drowned out by the parental fury running through his veins. “How exciting.”

“He...and Roy...Jason...and Roy...my Jaylad...Harper…” Bruce stands abruptly. “I see.” 

“Where, exactly, are you going?” Talia asks, watching with only mild surprise as Bruce mulls between jumping out the window and going out the front door. 

“To Oliver, first,” Bruce explains, tone robotic. “Going to kill him for not teaching that boy of his some manners. Then to Harper. For...fornicating with my son. Without marriage.”

A soft hand against his heart has him stilling; Bruce comes out of his reverie to find Talia looking up at him with a fond exasperation that reminds him that he never truly fell out of love with her. 

“Silly man,” she seems amused, at least. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her he’s being serious. “What did you come here for, exactly?”

Right. Yes. Bruce had something in mind, when he had all but stormed to Talia’s apartment. And the reminder brings him crashing back into reality, out of his dreams where he is the overprotective father who will forever disappear the boys and girls his kids bring home.

“I…” he falters, but manages to pick himself up in record time. “I wanted to get closer to Jason.”

Now, all traces of amusement leave Talia’s face; she watches him with something close to suspicion, and Bruce is forced to pretend like it doesn’t hurt. As if the prospect of him wanting to connect with his son isn’t something to bring about tension, so unheard of that Talia has chosen to put on her assassin mindset. 

“And why is that?” Talia finally asks, moving closer to him and circling around, arms behind her back. It would be foolish to think she’s unarmed; the warrioress is known for her skills with daggers. It doesn’t take much for Bruce to imagine her slitting his throat open at the first misstep, especially when it comes to her children. “Do you need something from him?”

“What? No!” Bruce snaps, the tight leash he’s keeping on his anger loosening enough to put some bite into his tone. “Of course not! I just...I realized I haven’t...put in the effort. To let him know that I lo...want him home. That I am happy he’s here.” 

Talia watches him with rapt attention for nearly a minute; Bruce can see the wheels turning in her head, a mastermind playing through her scenarios and chances. He hates the thought that she has to think of so many factors when it comes to him and Jason but...admittedly, their track record is not the best. 

“I have done many things to protect Jason,” Talia finally speaks up, tearing her gaze away to instead glance out the window; Gotham is bathed in neon light, the entire district lit up by various signs and billboards. Bruce can’t help but feel like there is much he doesn’t know, when it comes to his once beloved and his second son. A lifetime forfeited in favour of a worthless grudge. “There is...much blood on my hands, from years of safeguarding him from those who wish him harm. You were on that list, for a long time; nobody could hurt Jason like you could, whether it was your words or your fists or your actions.”

Bruce closes his eyes. The truth hits him like the memory of a dark alley from decades ago, tearing into the scarred flesh of his heart with furious strength. 

“But…” she pauses, turning her attention back to him. “It’s been quite some time since I saw you as a threat. I’ll help you, but you need to know...there are dangerous people, unseen forces, in this world who seek out our son for the things he has seen. The things he is and can do. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to get their hands on Jason.”

Bruce nods in understanding, even if it confuses him; Jason is in constant danger? Unseen forces? 

“I won’t let anything happen to him,” he vows, reaching out to grab Talia’s hands. “Not ever again.”

She smiles. Relents, if just slightly. “Well then, beloved, he lives in a little apartment tucked into his territory. I’ll write the address down for you.” 

//

The sun shines bright, casting a warmth across the expanse of the stadium beyond and illuminating the vibrant greens of the grass lining the playing field. Bruce has Jason on his shoulders, is holding their food and being extra cautious of the boy happily shouting from above. 

“B! Look! It’s gonna be a home-run!” Jason cheers, excitement raising the pitch of his voice. Bruce smiles widely in response, tightening his grip on his son’s knees in case the boy swings forward. All around them the crowd explodes in celebration, and yet Bruce only has eyes for how happy Jason is in this moment. 

It’s a good memory. A beautiful one, even, picturesque and a reminder of how much love exists between the two of them. A snapshot of a quiet moment stolen between the long nights of crime-fighting and being connected to the Wayne legacy.

A good memory.

Bruce hasn’t thought about it since Jason died.

A painful memory. 

//

In the end, he decides to take Jason to a baseball game. 

Bruce spills the truth of his ambitions to Alfred late one Wednesday night, in the comforting darkness of the kitchen with two steaming cups of cocoa between them; a throwback to when Bruce would divulge all his nightmares to his father figure after a long night of tossing and turning. 

“I’m scared,” he admits, clutching his cup and relishing the grounding feeling of searing heat. “I’m scared that in the end, not even my best will be enough for him anymore. That...that I, as I am right now, will never be able to tell Jason just how much I love him. That I won’t be able to convey how if I was a strong enough man, I would carve the flesh off of the Joker’s bones and throw it into the deepest chasm I could find.” 

He pauses, inhaling deeply and struggling to move past the sheer hatred in his bones. It takes a few minutes, but he manages to get a handle on it well enough to carry on. “I just...I want to be enough for him, Alfred. I want him...I want him to choose me. I want him to know I choose him , even if it doesn’t always seem that way.”

“Oh, Master Bruce,” Alfred murmurs, and there’s a quiet strength to his tone. “It amazes me how blinded you two are when it comes to each other.” 

Bruce blinks, feels a few tears trace a path down his cheeks. 

“That boy loves you,” he continues, pushing his cup aside. “He loves you as he always has, but is blindsided by the elephant in the room: the Joker, and everything that came after his return. Working past that...that is something you must do together. You will, however, need to be the one to take the first step. To reach out and bring him to you long enough to start healing.”

The sun lifts up above the city skyline, casting soft light across all of Gotham. Bruce feels his resolve harden, from glass to steel. 

“I have no doubt in my heart that you’ll be able to do it,” Alfred says.

Bruce believes him.

//

“Bruce, look,” Jason whispers, pointing up at the sea of stars above them, spilled out across the inky blackness of the night sky. “Which constellation is that?” 

Bruce shifts, adjusting his hold on Jason and making sure the boy’s head is tucked into the curve of Bruce’s shoulder. His expansive cape covers both of them in an effort to ward off the cold, and the Batmobile is parked just a few ways away, a quick getaway for when the frigid air becomes too much. 

“That’s the Big Dipper,” he explains, voice warm and full of something he cannot explain. Jason makes a noise of wonder, and Bruce can’t even begin to fathom how he had come to deserve such a precious child. 

The stars shine on, regardless of the humans beneath them. 

They shine on as a father mourns the loss of his son.

They shine on when they bury the boy, not even 16. 

They shine on when the son returns, broken and bloodied, from the depths of his own grave, unseen by those who deserved it the most. 

//

Bruce decides to forego his usual ‘break in through a window and sit in the dark’ routine in favour of knocking on the front door, as per Alfred’s instructions. Something about an exercise in trust and respecting privacy, he thinks, but the sound of a door opening knocks him straight out of his reverie. 

“B?” Jason stares at him, hair mussed and wearing nothing but a threadbare shirt and a pair of shorts. “What the f...what are you doing here?” 

“Hello, Jason,” he sticks with formal for now, not wanting to raise any suspicions. “May I come in?” 

Jason blinks once, and then opens his mouth—presumably to say ‘hell no’, Bruce reckons—before thinking twice about it and instead stepping aside and gesturing for him to get inside. 

Bruce wastes no time in doing so, fearing a slammed door if he doesn’t hurry; Jason watches him shuck his shoes off with a furrowed brow, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms across his chest. 

“How are you?” Bruce asks, once he’s straightened up and Jason begins to lead them into the living room. It’s a homey looking apartment, decorated tastefully and complete with small trinkets all over: souvenirs, framed pictures, books. Quite similar to Talia’s own apartment, but much smaller and less lavish.

Very...Jason, perhaps. Bruce doesn’t know enough to be able to make the claim, and it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. 

“I’m...okay, I guess. What’s going on?” Jason raises an eyebrow, arms flung out across the expanse of the couch. His son, all grown and nearly as big as Bruce himself, and he didn’t get to see any of it. Ignorant at first, and then too damn hyper-focused on his own struggles to reach out and bring Jason home as soon as he returned to Gotham.

So many mistakes. 

Bruce shakes his head. Now isn’t the time to reflect on past demons, not when Jason is giving him the time of day. 

“Nothing, nothing, I just...I have tickets.” 

Jason nods, slowly. “O...kay? Tickets to Dami’s play? Newsflash: we all do, Bruce. I know you like to pretend I don’t exist, but I was there when Damian made you buy a bunch of extra tickets.”

“Don’t do that,” Bruce says, automatically and perhaps a bit too harshly. “Don’t...don’t act like I don’t see you. I do. Always.” 

He needs Jason to know. He needs him to know that every time they’re in the same room, Bruce aches to say something, anything, to the boy to make him smile, laugh, stay a bit longer. But he’s a coward, always a damn coward, and never opens his mouth to say the right things. 

( “You killed again!” Bruce yells, throwing the cowl across the cave in a fit of rage. “What will it take for you to stop?” 

“That’s all you ever see, Batman,” Jason snarls, and if Bruce had looked closely enough maybe he would’ve seen the glassy look in his eyes. “Maybe someday you’ll see me. Or will I have to be dead again for that to happen?” 

They hadn’t spoken for weeks after Jason had stormed out.

Jason hadn’t killed anyone in those weeks, either. )

“Er...alright, Big Guy, take it easy,” Jason mumbles, tilting his head to a side to continue watching Bruce with wary eyes. The gesture delights the Dark Knight, a remainder from Jason’s childhood; a tell that never went away. “Tickets to what?”

“A Gotham Knights game. I thought maybe you’d like to go with me,” Bruce offers, pairing the question with a tight smile. 

Jason stares at him for a beat. Then two. Then three. Then, finally, he makes an aborted motion; almost as if he wanted to reach out and pinch Bruce, to presumably check if this is real life. 

“Are you being serious?” He eventually asks, and there’s…something, in his voice. Not quite disbelief, not quite suspicion, but it is enough to hurt Bruce like a dull knife to the heart. 

“Yes, I am being serious.” Why wouldn’t I be, he wants to ask, but manages to refrain. “Is that a yes?”

“It’s a hell no,” Jason scoffs, and Bruce is dismayed to see the beginnings of a drawn out fight between them. “Is this a psychological tactic or some shit? You bringing me in again as if you care so when you kick me out the next time, it’ll hurt more?” 

Bruce doesn’t get a chance to dispute the accusation; Jason is on his feet and imposing his size, a firm reminder of how well-matched the two of them are. 

“Get out,” Jason says, his voice cold. His eyes are glowing, incandescent in the poor lighting of the room. 

Bruce leaves. 

He’s always been a coward, when it comes to Jason. 

//

“You know why you’re benched,” Bruce says, trying to keep his tone stern. “I can’t have you out there injured, chum. You might get hurt worse.”

“You’re just babying me!” Jason snarls, his face an angry red from all the yelling he’d been doing in the last hour since Bruce had officially declared the boy unfit to come out on patrol. 

“And maybe I am!” Bruce throws back, his voice increasing in volume. “You’re my son, and you are my baby, and I’m saying you can’t come out on patrol. End of discussion!” 

“Get out! I hate you!” Jason screams, voice warbling with his herculean effort to keep the tears at bay. Bruce is shocked into stumbling out of his son’s bedroom, his mind a mess of static noise at the bold declaration. 

“Don’t mind him, Master Bruce, he’s just in a bit of a mood,” Alfred says from his spot next to Bruce, a crease between his brows; the only outward sign of concern. “I’ll speak with the young master while you’re out on patrol.”

He nods his thanks listlessly, making his way down to the Cave; lost in thought, Bruce wonders if he’ll get used to the acid burning in his gut at the thought of yet another son proclaiming his hatred for Bruce. 

//

The icy interaction is made public among the family in the coming weeks, no doubt the result of Jason divulging the oddity of Bruce’s request to a knowing Talia in the presence of Damian. Damian, who most likely shared the info with Duke, Cass, and simultaneously the rest of his children. 

It becomes crystal clear when he decides to join everyone for patrol tonight, Barbara quickly changing comm lines with what she thinks is total unawareness. He decides not to comment on her protection of Jason, instead being grateful so many of them would go to great lengths for Jason’s comfort, even if it is against him. 

“Where do you want us, Batman?” Duke asks, forever the obedient son. Bruce tilts his head in the direction of Diamond District, and the duo sets off; Damian is paired with Jason, Dick with Kate, and Stephanie with Cass. 

“Well...how was everyone’s week?” Dick asks, after a few minutes of radio silence over the comms. Bruce finds himself yearning to hear Jason’s voice, a tiny, fragile ember of hope tucked away behind the titanium plates of his suit. 

“I passed my business midterm,” Stephanie crows, and a chorus of happy congratulations rings out. “All ‘cause Hood explained B2B sell-side marketplaces to me.”

Stephanie passes by Bruce, throwing the man a wink over her shoulder as she increases her pace to match Cass. He doesn’t understand the gesture until—

“Well, congrats, Spoiler,” Jason speaks up, snarky tone undercut by the warmth in his voice. “All it took was invading my place for a couple of days and eating all my fuckin’ food.” 

“Language,” Bruce interrupts immediately. Someone (Dick? Duke?) immediately boos him, and he resists the urge to wince. 

Jason is silent for a moment, and Bruce curses his incompetence but then—

“And what are you gonna do about it old man? Make me put a dollar in the ol’ swear jar?”

Think, think, think—

“No, but maybe I could force you to come to the ball game.”

Up ahead, he can hear Stephanie’s yelp as she presumably trips over a rooftop ledge, saved only by Cass managing to grab her cape at the very last second. Everyone else is relatively silent, and he can’t see any of them to be able to gauge their physical reactions to his (not so) obvious teasing, least of all Jason.

“In your dreams, old man,” his son finally responds. 

Bruce spends the rest of the night with a smile on his face. 

//

“I’m sorry,” Jason sniffles from where his face is buried in Bruce’s shoulder, his legs tucked underneath him and his entire body in Bruce’s embrace. “I didn’t mean it.”

Bruce presses a soft kiss to the crown of Jason’s head, eyes closed and a gentle smile pulling at his lips. “I know, chum.” 

“I was just...mad, I promise, I could never…” Jason trails off, pulling himself even closer to his father. “I could never hate you. You know that, right?” 

“Of course I do, Jaylad.”

//

He finds Jason and Alfred in the kitchen one morning, the former cracking eggs into a mixing bowl with a large grin on his face, presumably while he chatters on about something trivial with his grandfather. Alfred is nodding along attentively, a gentle smile on his face as the elderly man ladles batter into trays and fiddles with the stove settings. 

Bruce is awestruck by the picture in front of him, a scene so rare it leaves him in some form of shock. Sunlight strikes his son from the back, illuminating a sharp profile; all his baby fat gone, Jason is a collection of rough edges and muscle. But here, in the sun, laughing at something Alfred said...he looks like an angel, a light in his eyes that Bruce hasn’t seen since...well. He’d been aware of Jason’s constant trips to the Manor to see nearly everyone but him, yet had never caught him in the act (something he had his suspicions about, but had let the boy have his fun). 

Jason finally notices him lingering in the doorway, and abruptly pauses mid-sentence. Alfred carries on unbidden, nonchalant in the face of potential disaster.

“B,” Jason greets him, rather cautiously. “Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Just had to help Alfie roll out the dough.” 

“You don’t have to go,” Bruce immediately interjects, and even to his ears he sounds desperate. 

The emotion seems to surprise Jason, who takes an instinctive step back as he observes the man in front of him. Alfred carries on, used to the theatrics, but Bruce makes no move into the kitchen, too scared of setting Jason off. 

“That’s cool ‘n all, but I’m meeting Roy for lunch,” Jason raises an eyebrow, before turning abruptly and returning to the dough. Not necessarily a cold shoulder, but as close as they could get to it. “Thanks, though, I guess.” 

Bruce opens his mouth again, but—

He’s a coward, a damn coward—

Bruce turns and exits the room. 

//

“Can you sing me a lullaby?”

Bruce raises an eyebrow at the too-innocent look on Jason’s face, the boy tucked into his side and wrapped in at least a few thousand blankets. The late night storm had sidetracked their patrol plans and had frightened Jason enough to make the boy demand to sleep with his father; still it rages on, battering the windows with monstrous winds and pellets of rain. 

“Did Dick put you up to this?” Bruce asks, tickling Jason’s sides and drawing frenzied giggles from the little boy. “I don’t sing, chum.” 

“But you hum,” Jason points out, a mischievous grin on his face; Bruce notices he doesn’t answer the question, but lets it go, just this once. He’s too relieved to see a smile on his son’s face after the earlier flurry of panicked tears at the sound of booming thunder. “Isn’t that just a step away from singing?” 

“Always so quick with the questions,” Bruce sighs, but the smile on his face ruins the facade of ire. “Alright, then. Head on your pillow, and you’re not allowed to mention this to anyone.”

Jason eagerly flops down onto the pillows, shining eyes watching his father with no small amount of excitement. Bruce smiles down at him, a gentle thing, reaching out to push his thick curls away before pressing a chaste kiss to Jason’s forehead. 

Leaning back, he begins to sing Phil Collins’ You’ll Always be in My Heart , a familiar tune from one of Jason’s favourite films. The recognition is instant, and Bruce carries the tune through Jason’s awed gasp. The smooth baritone of his voice seemingly does it for his son; within a few minutes, the boy is out like a light, and after a few minutes of staring down at Jason’s slumbering form with a soft smile on his face, Bruce also falls asleep, at peace.

Neither of them are plagued by nightmares for the first time in a long time. 

//

“Have you met Bear yet?” Duke asks one morning, glancing up from the schoolwork scattered around the table. Damian is seated next to him with a sketchbook and his breakfast, curled up in his seat in a way that makes him seem much smaller, younger, than he really is. Bruce raises an eyebrow, and Duke takes it upon himself to clarify. “Jason’s dog?”

“Jason...has a dog? And he named it Bear?”

“Yeah, we had to talk him out of naming him Macbeth. Something about a self-fulfilling prophecy and all that.” 

Bruce has to refrain from smiling; that sounds like Jason, his Jason, the boy who grew up fascinated by literature and everything to do with it. He makes a mental note to have some first editions delivered to the boy at some point in the week. 

“You’re confusing him, you know,” Duke tells him matter-of-factly. “He doesn’t get way you’re suddenly reaching out...he thinks it’s a trick.”

The revelation stings. He’s become the type of father he never wanted to be. 

“I just want him home,” he whispers, and Duke offers him mercy in the form of ignoring him.  

//

A sickly Jason rubs at his nose, doesn’t even sense Bruce approaching him until the man is leaning over the couch with a small smile.

“What are we watching?” Bruce asks, heart warm at the happiness that flashes across Jason’s face.

“The Lion King?” Jason proposes, and but a few minutes later, the opening sequence of one of Jason’s beloved Disney movies is on the screen in front of them, his son leaning against his shoulder and a bowl of popcorn between the two of them.

They fall asleep in that exact position, victims to Alfred’s camera; pictures that would survive even Jason. 

To this day, it remains one of Bruce’s most cherished memories. 

//

“I am not immune to bribery,” Jason says, storming into the study where Bruce has been going over a stack of analyst reports for WE. His second son’s sudden appearance is a surprise, but a pleasant one. “But I thought you were above it, old man.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, chum,” Bruce steeples his fingers together and leans his chin atop of them, hiding a grin. Jason plops down into a chair across from him with something dangerously close to a pout on his face, and for a moment Bruce is struck by the normalcy of it all. Just a boy and his father on a normal Sunday afternoon, not burdened by the death and bloodshed of the expansive legacy between the two heroes. 

“The books!” Jason exclaims, his hands punctuating his words; a gesture carried on from his first life. Bruce delights at the fact that this is something else he can say he knows about his son, even now. “Why are you sending me books? Expensive ass books, at that?” 

“When can I meet Bear?” Bruce counters, rather teasingly. It’s a rewarding experience, watching Jason splutter in surprise. “Duke told me about the Macbeth discussion. You didn’t consider Macbear?”

Jason stares at him now, ire melting away and leaving an indescribable expression on the boy’s face. Bruce has the distinct feeling he’s being scrutinized, and he does his best not to fold under the pressure. 

A few minutes passed. Jason finally stands, hands buried deep in his pockets as he continues to watch Bruce almost...almost as if he’s seeing the man in a new light, for the first time since he came out of the Lazarus Pit crying for a father who did not know to be there. 

“I call him Macbear when nobody’s looking,” Jason says, voice quiet. There’s still a look of contemplation on his face, and Bruce prays he’s not imagining the sudden warmth in his son’s voice. “It’s what ‘Bear’ is short for.”

“Come with me to the game,” Bruce asks—begs, really—and he knows Jason knows the words have an entirely different meaning than at face value, they always did. Come home. Come back to me. 

Jason pauses, wavers, and almost tangibly teeters on an invisible ledge of sorts, answer stuck in his throat. 

“I can’t, Bruce,” his son whispers, and leaves without so much as a fuss. 

The day seems so much brighter, all of a sudden, because the quiet admission, the lack of anger—

There’s hope.

There’s light, at the end of their tunnel. 

//

“He’s...an angry kid, Bruce.”

Bruce, for the first time in a long time, has no response. 

//

There’s a change in them, after that. 

They’re less like broken cogs grinding against each other and closer to...well, they are the closest they have been in years. Jason no longer jets out of the room once Bruce arrives, and Bruce finds it easier to breathe normally in Jason’s presence. 

Maybe he should’ve known better than to expect it to last; it all comes to head one Wednesday night, hot on the tails of a brutal patrol. Stephanie had been shot while protecting a prone Damian, and Jason had reacted with vicious intent; none of the gangbangers had stood a chance against the Red Hood’s ire.

“What the hell were you thinking, Jason!” Bruce snaps, as soon as both Damian and Stephanie are situated in the medbay. “You know better than to—”

“Do I now?” Jason interrupts, snide. Bruce doesn’t even notice he’s still wearing the shattered remains of his helmet, the sharp edges digging into his face. “Do I know better, Batman?” 

“You do,” Bruce replies, as neutral as possible despite the rage making his skin itch. “I know you do, because you’ve been doing better.”

“Have I? By whose standards, huh? Yours ?” Jason spits, moving in the direction of his bike. When Bruce reaches out for him with an uneasy frown, the boy throws off his tenuous hold with a rough cuss. “Fuck you, Bruce! You’ve never understood. Go play family with someone else, I’m sick of you.” 

Bruce would’ve rather taken a punch to the face. 

With that venomous declaration, despite the calls from the others, Jason hops onto his bike and disappears into the darkness of the night. 

And like always when it comes to Jason, Bruce wishes he had done things differently.  

//

“Did you push him?!” 

//

Jason goes missing on a Sunday. 

Bruce is losing his mind; the entirety of Gotham’s Batman Inc. is assembled in the Cave, all varying degrees of worried and frustrated. Even Alfred is milling around the edges, topping off cups of coffee and offering a quick bite to those who would take it. 

“I don’t understand,” Barbara all but snarls, throwing her headset onto the keyboard and spinning her chair around to face the others. They all look up at the commotion, half expecting good news, half dreading bad. “His comms were fully operational, he was chatting with Duke when they cut, and then...everything just. Disappears? How?” 

“Is there anybody he’s pissed off recently?” Stephanie asks, glancing around the room with no small amount of uncertainty. “Anybody who could organize a hit on the freakin’ Red Hood?” 

Bruce can’t think of anything, can’t see beyond the white noise in his head, the visceral fear of impending doom choking him—

“Mother?!” 

He turns. There, coming down the steps, is Talia Al Ghul, eldest daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, the demon’s heiress, and mother of two.

She is furious. 

“I told you to keep him safe ,” she snarls as soon as she’s close enough for Bruce to hear her. The vicious accusation echoes through the cave, startling everyone into silence. “Care to explain why my father has him?”

Ra’s. 

Ra’s took Jason. 

“Where,” Bruce manages to ask, forcing the words beyond his clogged throat. “Which fortress.”

“Nanda Parbat,” Talia’s brows furrow, and he sees the warrior in her rising to the occasion, to the scenario of a son lost to a maniac. “I have my forces descending on it already but it’s...well-guarded. He knows we’ll come. Both of us.”

He expects the Bats, and Talia’s men, but…

“He won’t be expecting them.”

//

The silence is stifling. 

Jason studiously ignores both Bruce and Alfred, choosing to instead stab at the peas on his plate viciously. Bruce cuts a glance at him worriedly, but otherwise decides to stay quiet; there isn’t much he can say, when Jason doesn’t want to speak to him. 

“And how was school today, Master Jason?” Alfred asks, placing a bite of steak into his mouth. Jason shrugs in response, not elaborating, and Alfred shoots Bruce a scathing look. But there isn’t anything Bruce can say; ever since Felipe, there’s been…not quite tension, but a tangible shift. 

There’s a chasm between them. 

And Bruce isn’t sure if he can cross it anymore. 

//

“How do you want to do this?” Clark asks, touching down on the ground beside Bruce. On his right are Diana and Hal, Arthur in the distance with J’onn. 

The League, in all its entirety, here at Bruce’s call without question. If he had the time, he would be grateful, but all his focus is on Jason and the man who dared to steal him away. With a cursory glance around at the team he’s gathered (he can see the Titans, most likely at Roy’s call, and Damian’s Teen Titans, and even the Outlaws; all these people Jason has touched in some way), he tilts his head in the direction of the looming direction of the doorway where Ra’s men are starting to group together.

“He knows we’re here,” Bruce says. “We’re going straight in.”  

And that’s how they find themselves rushing the fortress, a myriad of superheroes—old and new—lifting into the skies, across the fields, flanking Bruce from both sides. For a moment, he thinks about what a sight it must be, to see a wave of superheroes moments away from crashing against the walls of Nanda Parbat. 

Kyle Rayner is the first to make contact; supported by a wave of arrows from— is that Connor Hawke? Bruce wonders—a Green Arrow, he smashes a ghastly green construct of a giant hammer into the side of the building, sending bricks and support beams crashing down and disrupting the enemy archers. 

Next is Starfire, who sets the world aflame with a series of glowing blasts in quick succession, and Bruce’s chest tightens with the realization that Jason’s friends were clearing a path for him. So he could reach his son on time. 

He won’t let them down. He won’t let Jason down.

Bruce leaps beyond the armed soldiers and races for the entrance, Diana guarding his back with a fierce battle cry that is echoed by both Donna and Cassie. Her sword glints in the dying sunlight, a brilliant flash of white blinding her adversaries, and Bruce takes the opportunity to slip away from the battle entirely. Soon he is racing through the shadowed tunnel leading into the main base of operations, only outpaced by one man: Roy Harper.

The archer doesn’t even spare Bruce a glance and that’s fine by him; they’re both focused on the same goal, and that’s good enough for Bruce. 

It takes a few minutes, but they find Jason.  

And Ra’s.

“Well, well,” the immortal muses, moving his curious gaze from Roy to Bruce. “I can’t say I was expecting you to have company, Detective.”

Bruce doesn’t respond; he’s too busy staring at Jason’s wounded form, gagged and bound to a post hanging him over the frothing Lazarus Pit. The cursed waters are more violent than he’s ever seen them, almost as if they were reacting to the prospect of a lost boy returning home. 

Like hell , he swears to himself vehemently. Over my dead body. 

“Give me my son back,” Bruce snarls, eyes cutting from Jason’s unresponsive form to the man responsible. “Or so help me God, I will tear you apart so thoroughly there won’t be a force left in the entire goddamn universe to put you back together.” 

“Did you know,” Ra’s carries on as if he hadn’t even heard the threat. “That Jason is...special? That’s why my daughter went through so much trouble to keep him away from me. He came back before the Pit, and then after the Pit...he was different. A figure of nightmares, you could say, born of an ancient power and a restless hatred that you fed into by taking another Robin under your wing and allowing Jason’s murderer to roam the streets.” 

A bolt of fear shoots through Bruce, a familiar pain at the mention of the hurt he’d caused Jason, however unintentionally. He has had many regrets in his lifetime, but none greater than those related to his second son. 

“I’ve had my people tell me that they cannot recall what the boy looks like, have told tales about the poison that glows in his eyes when anger consumes him. I must give credit where credit is due; Talia did a formidable job training it out of him, but demons are demons no matter the face they wear.” 

“My son is not a demon!” Bruce roars, finally breaking out of his reverie to take a menacing step forward in the direction of both the old man and the Pit. Ra’s raises an eyebrow at the sudden outburst, but instead of retaliating he turns with a quiet rustle and moves closer to Jason, reaching out to cup the boy’s chin. Jason moans in response, trying to get away from the touch, but Ra’s tightens his grip in a way that has the blood in Bruce’s body chilling. 

“Jason Todd is in every way a cosmic mistake,” Ra’s murmurs, barely audible over the rush of water at his feet. “I am curious to see what the Pit will answer with once I return him to where he came from. I daresay the universe would reward him with a third chance at life, after he squandered the first two away so recklessly—” 

“You fear him!” 

Talia. 

They both turn to see the woman in question storming into the cavern, a vicious look on her face. There is blood splattered across her cheeks and staining the front of her shirt, but she only has eyes for her father and the child he has in his grasp. 

“You fear him,” she repeats, tone frigid, “because of the power granted to him by the Pit. Power not even you have achieved in your many years of living, Father. Power he doesn’t want and keeps locked away. You hate it.”

“Lies—”

“I’m tired of playing your games! The cursed powers of Lazarus that runs through his veins is something Jason has denounced from the day I revealed to him what they were. Though they may be transferable, I will never give you the chance to find out.”

An arrow sings through the air, shot by the man who had melted into the shadows, forgotten by the other occupants. Ra’s yells in pain as it cuts across his face, deep enough to draw blood, and Roy Harper takes the opportunity to leap forward and cut at the ropes binding Jason with a familiar dagger. 

Ra’s unsheathes his sword, fully intent on cutting down the archer, but Talia and Bruce are on him in a second, moving so fluidly they could’ve rehearsed this. As they work in tandem to keep the man preoccupied, Roy manages to get Jason free and carries his broken form in the direction of the exit. 

“No!” Ra’s screams, the gravity of the situation hitting him full-force. “Bring him b—” 

His head rolls. 

Bruce stares at the scene in front of him for a few seconds, before turning his attention to a panting Talia, her sword still poised mid-swing. 

“You will never touch either of my sons again,” she spits at her father’s corpse. It is a sentiment Bruce echoes wholeheartedly, and when she throws a hidden pack of dynamite into the Lazarus Pit, he doesn’t dare question her.

“Well, beloved,” she says, fingering the detonator rather aggressively. “Shall we go check on our son?” 

Bruce nods. And when the entire empire goes up in ghostly green flames after they clear the premises, he can’t fight the relief that has his knees shaking and bones aching underneath his too-tight skin.

Never again , he vows.

//

Jason is nowhere to be found. 

Bruce shrugs it off, despite his unease, assuming the boy had gotten caught up at school working on his homework or joining another extra-curricular. 

“Sir...it seems Jason has gone in search of Catherine Todd,” Alfred informs him worriedly. 

Bruce frowns, the weight of the realization hitting him moments later; Jason is in a foreign country, searching for a stranger, all by himself. With no backup whatsoever, considering he and Dick weren’t on the best of terms and Bruce is in Gotham, still. 

“I see...I’ll have Clark fly me over. Thank you, Alfred; I’ll bring him home.”

//

When they finally make it to the medbay, Jason is screaming. 

Roy is at his side, pressing the larger man down into the bed while frantically whispering things into Jason’s ear, but it’s barely helping; Jason is intent on thrashing around, making inserting an IV impossible and making the task of medical attention in itself daunting. 

“Jason,” Bruce whispers, horrified at the sight. Kyle and Connor (so it was Connor Hawke out on the battlefield), each have a leg pinned down, and a worried Koriand’r is holding down the arm Roy isn’t. “Jaylad, you gotta calm down.”

“NO!” Jason roars, and everyone in the room—save for Roy and Talia—is momentarily stunned by the sheer volume and the depth to the scream, almost as if it was echoed by a thousand spirits. 

The cursed powers of Lazarus that runs through his veins. 

Is this what Talia had meant?

“He needs anesthesia!” Dick yells, but Roy is shouting back about how Jason doesn’t handle it well and Talia is trying to calm their eldest son down while Kyle and Connor struggle to hold the boy down and—

“Come stop your crying, it will be alright. Just take my hand, and hold it tight.”

Jason stops struggling; when his head turns in Bruce’s direction, the Dark Knight can see the recognition in the boy’s eyes, cloaked by a veil of burning green. 

“I will protect you from all around you...I will be here, don't you cry.” 

Nobody dares to interrupt; if this was anyone else, Bruce wonders if he would be singing as he is now, a lullaby from all those nights ago. He takes a step closer, and another, and another, all the way to where Jason’s splayed out on a gurney, watching Bruce’s approach with an animalistic caution. For a mortifying second, Bruce is worried Jason won’t break out of his rage, even with the gentle memory. 

But when Bruce reaches out, gentle fingers curling around Jason’s cheek, the boy leans into the touch. The green fades away. He keeps singing, all the way through. No one interrupts. No one laughs. 

And when Bruce finishes singing, Jason is quiet, no longer straining against his friends’ grasps; without much fanfare, Roy gets the IV in, and begins to make quick work of the lacerations on Jason’s torso.

His son is watching him. 

“I can’t give you what you want,” Jason whispers, throat raw from hours of screaming and pain much older, reminiscent of broken fingernails and a wooden grave. “I...it was taken from me. I can’t.”

Bruce leans forward, Jason’s freezing fingers clasped between his own. His son, dead and returned to him by some miracle, so far gone at sea that he doesn’t think he can see the shore anymore. 

“I will gladly take whatever you are willing to give me, and I will cherish it until the day I die,” he declares fiercely, still covered in Ra’s blood. 

“Why? Why would you put yourself out there like that, when you know you’re going to get hurt?” Jason moans, and Bruce is almost startled by the tears beginning to streak down his dusty cheeks. “That’s all I’m good for, Da-Bruce. Hurting people. Taking what I want with brute power.” 

Oh, my darling , he thinks, the truth strikingly clear. He knows there are many things he can say to such a declaration. Could wax poetry about the legacy Jason has built with his own two hands, making something out of nothing. All the people who love the boy in front of him, from family and parents to friends and lovers. 

Instead—

“Why do any of us do anything, chum?” Bruce smiles sadly, and Jason—Jason registers it for what it is, he thinks, a sudden clarity in the boy’s eyes before the machines are beeping urgently and his eyes slide shut. 

Bruce is forced to let go and leave the room, after that. 

//

The warehouse is on fire, when Bruce finally, finally, reaches the destination. 

He’s running through the broken rubble, pushing concrete and fallen foundations aside, heart in his throat, a thin film of tears over his eyes. He has never known fear like this, so tight in its hold that he can barely breathe, can barely see. 

“Jason?” He screams, voice raw. “Jason!” 

There’s no response. Bruce falls to his knees and starts digging, flames licking up his gauntlets and burning through the mesh layer; he pays the heat no mind. All that is on his mind is his son, his little boy, buried beneath the flaming remains of what was once a warehouse.

His searching fingers snag a cape. 

“No,” Bruce whispers, everything coming to a screeching halt. “No, no, no...no, please, God…” 

He pushes with a ferocity he hasn’t felt before, and finally, he frees his son’s body and pulls him into his arms, pulling off a glove to press shaking fingers against his pulse points. 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

Jason’s eyes are closed. 

“Please, God, not him,” Bruce snarls, desperate, hurting, breaking. Jason doesn’t open his eyes. 

He’s getting colder by the minute. 

He’s gone.

Bruce has lost his son. 

//

Sunshine streams through the windows, thin curtains doing little to keep out the morning sun. Bruce sits in a chair next to the occupied bed, laptop in hand and a cup of coffee on the nightstand to his right. 

For the first time in three days, Jason opens his eyes with full clarity and squints up in Bruce’s direction. The boy’s sharp edges have seemingly softened into something more akin to his actual age, and Bruce resists the urge to reach out and smooth a hand across his son’s face; he doesn’t think the gesture would be welcomed, outside of delirium. 

“Dad?” Jason asks, voice groggy and heavy with sleep. Bruce smiles, a light and weightless thing, finally gathering the courage to reach out and run a gentle hand through the boy’s thick curls, humming in response. 

“Do you still have those tickets?” 

The world seems brighter; effervescent, even. The last time Bruce has felt this euphoric was before Jason had been lost to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. 

“I do, chum.”

“Cool. Can we go?” 

“Of course we can, son.”

// 

The storm rages on in a way only a Gotham thunderstorm can. Everyone who can be is indoors, too experienced in wild weather to chance a trip outside for whatever reason. 

Deep in the heart of one of Gotham’s many cemeteries, a grave shakes. Stirs. Awakens. 

The wet mud is pushed aside. With ragged, broken breathes, a boy crawls out of his grave; he is covered in lacerations and bruises, and there is blood caked across the crown of his head. 

“Bruce,” Jason Todd cries out into the murderous night.

Chapter Text

The first birthday Jason ever celebrated at the Manor, he had a cold.

He remembers, vaguely, being bundled up and hold against Bruce’s chest the night before, the man paying no mind to the miserable sniffles and hacking coughs that kept them both up all night. Even Alfred comes into the room from time to time, sitting on the edge of the bed and watching Bruce carefully ladle medicine and warm tea into the boy’s mouth.

“It’s his immune system,” Leslie had explained earlier the same night, a sympathetic smile on her face as she rubs a gentle hand across Jason’s back. Bruce is wringing his hands together, out of his element, hanging onto every word out of her mouth. “You didn’t have this problem with Richard because he was a generally healthy boy. Jason, however, isn’t as lucky in that regard...you’re going to need to keep an eye on him, and make sure he takes his medicine at the correct times. Lots of fluids. If we’re careful, he’ll be fine in roughly a week.” 

As soon as they’d come home, Bruce had picked up Jason out of the passenger’s seat as if he weighed nothing (to murmured protests, but he pretends not to notice the way Jason immediately tucks his head into the crook of his father’s neck), and had deposited the boy into his own bed. Jason’s tiny frame is immediately swallowed by the plush comforter and the many pillows, looking like a discomfort, but the look of relief on his son’s face at the thought of spending the night with company tells him he’s made the right decision.

“Don’t worry, Jay,” Bruce says, a quiet smile on his face as he returns to the room a few minutes later with some comfier clothing. “You’ll be better by the end of the week, just like Dr. Thompson said.”

“But not before tomorrow?” Jason asks, tone annoyed bordering petulant. It takes Bruce a second, but he remembers the date and realizes just why Jason is upset over his current state.

He vows to make tomorrow as a good day as any, right then and there. 

“Probably not, but we can improvise,” Bruce promises, with all the conviction he can come up with. It is enough for the child, apparently, as Jason gives him a sleepy smile before promptly falling asleep against a backdrop of pillows.

Bruce takes a seat next to him, stretching out languidly and shifting close enough for him to run his fingers through Jason’s hair every so often. Phone in hand, he spends the next few hours making arrangements, and when Alfred enters the room with a bowl of soup and a side of crackers, he gently rouses his boy. 

“Mmm,” Jason groans, and Bruce frowns at how scratchy his voice is. “Not hungry.”

“You heard Leslie, chum,” Bruce murmurs, carefully maneuvering his son into his arms, upright in a way that makes it easier for Alfred to gently start feeding the boy. He's sure that if Jason wanted to, he could feed himself, but having him in his arms physically is helping Bruce control his anxiety. Already he's planning on getting in touch with Leslie again to map out a daily schedule of vitamins and foods to help build up Jason's immunity, not at all happy with his compromised health. “Lots of fluids, and medicine. You want to be better by next week, right?” 

Jason grumbles at that, but obediently eats the soup, crackers, and takes down the medicine like a champ. They continue that routine late into the night, Alfred feeding a sluggish Jason while murmuring soft words of comfort while Bruce holds him upright, and finally by morning sunrise Jason is sleeping soundly enough for Bruce to sneak off and get things ready for when the boy wakes up. 

Dick shows up just a quarter past six, armed with some presents, and dutifully takes up watch over Jason as Alfred heads into the kitchen to start breakfast for everyone. Bruce sets up the dining room to the best of his ability, carefully lacing up ribbons and banners, and in about an hour he’s done with it; the 'Happy Birthday, Jason!' banner is a touch crooked, but he knows that's how Jason likes it. 

Diana and Clark both arrive together, the former holding a bakery box and a few gift bags, and Clark holding a few wrapped boxes and a box of what looks to be apple pie.

“From Ma,” he explains with a quick smile as Bruce ushers them into the house, grateful Diana had time to grab the cake he had ordered. “She’ll be here later, but wanted me to give this to y’all now in case Jason wants pie for breakfast.” 

“He’s a good boy, he’ll wait for her to come before eating the pie,” Bruce chuckles, shaking his head. “He’ll do it out of sight and earshot of Alfred, though.” 

“A sweet, considerate baby,” Diana agrees without preamble, a blinding smile on her face as she takes in the birthday decor. “Thank you for extending your invitation to me, Bruce. I am delighted to spend the day with the little one. How is his cold faring?”

“He’s finally getting some sleep after fussing all night,” Bruce sighs, rubbing at his eyes. The late night hadn’t tired him out, no, but spending the last few days worried sick over his son had been enough to push him over the edge of exhaustion. He’s grateful for Barbara and Detective Gordon, both whom agreed to cover for the crime fighting duo for the week while Jason got better. “Dick is keeping an eye on him right now.”

“Mm, hopefully Jason doesn’t accuse Dick of trying to strangle him in his sleep,” Clark smiles, eyes unfocused as he recalls some prior discussion. The Gotham native winces, knowing exactly what his best friend is referring to, and tries to keep on a poker face. “Lord knows you’d believe him and throw Dick out for good.”

Bruce rolls his eyes at the ribbing, begrudgingly knowing its true; Jason has a history of pinning the blame for the most ridiculous things on his older brother, and Bruce...Bruce has an unfortunate habit of believing him without doubt. 

“Bruce!” 

The conversation is cut short by a happy chirp from the boy in question, and all three Leaguers turn to see Dick carrying Jason on his back into the room, a blanket draped around the younger boy like a cocoon. Both of them are smiling, and it warms Bruce’s heart to see them together, happy, at peace. 

“Jason tried to cough on me,” Dick announces, as soon as he’s close enough. Jason rolls his eyes dramatically and sticks a finger in his brother’s ear in retaliation; the Bludhaven resident yelps in protest, nearly dropping the boy in alarm, but Bruce is pleased to see he refrains from doing so. 

“You probably deserved it,” Bruce replies, solemnly, much to Dick’s dismay and the amusement of everyone in the room. They know he’s joking, mostly, and the good mood is enough to brighten Jason’s spirits to the point where the boy almost looks like he’s forgotten his cold.

Diana, apparently no longer able to hold out, coos gently and takes the boy from Dick, pressing a soft kiss to Jason’s forehead and smiling down at him with tender eyes. “Hello, little bird, how are you feeling?”

Jason grins, bashfully (because he’s always been awestruck by Diana, no matter how close they’ve gotten), and gives her as best a shrug as he can. “I’m okay, Auntie D. Just a cold, is all.” 

“Well, we will not let your silly cold ruin your big day!” She exclaims, and with a last, chaste kiss to his cheek, she hands him to a waiting Bruce, who accepts the weight of his son with a gentle smile and a readiness that is unparalleled. Jason, for his part, melts into Bruce’s embrace without fuss, offering the man a quick—albeit sleepy—smile. 

“Happy Birthday, Jason,” Bruce murmurs, pressing a gentle kiss to the crown of his son’s head. “I love you.”

“Love you too, B,” Jason mumbles back, his cheeks a bright red at all the attention, offering Clark a shy wave that’s returned immediately. Though he and Diana had gotten close almost immediately, Jason and Clark have been slower in getting to know one another. Bruce knows it’s easier for the boy to form connections with people like Diana, and he’s glad Clark is being so patient. 

“Breakfast is ready, if Master Richard would be so inclined to help set the table,” Alfred interrupts, and at the gentle chastisement the teen in question jumps into action, a slightly guilty look on his face.  

Jason is excited by the large array of food being put out on the table: pancakes, bacon, eggs, and waffles only a few of the options. Last year, the offered food had driven Jason straight into a panic, and most of the morning had been spent trying to reassure the boy that they could give out anything left over. This year, Alfred has scaled it down into a manageable amount for the people present, and Bruce can see the gratitude in Jason’s eyes. 

They eat at a languid pace, Jason happy to indulge both Diana and Clark with details about his school activities and his training as Robin; Dick watches the fanfare with a loose smile on his face, the closest thing to relaxed he’s been in Bruce’s presence in a long time. 

When it comes time to cut the cake after a quick dose of medicine, Jason climbs back into Bruce’s lap and insists the cake be set in front of them instead of at the head of the table like they traditionally did. Alfred has no qualms with doing so, sticking in the appropriate amount of candles and lighting them as the others gathered around the boy. 

“Make a wish,” Bruce whispers into his son’s ear, voice chock full of tenderness. Jason giggles, nodding, and moves along to the upbeat rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ that fills the air just a few seconds later. 

Which as much energy as he can muster, he blows the candles out at the right moment, cheers breaking out around them as Jason leans back with a satisfied smile. Bruce hums, pressing his lips to the side of Jason’s head, who thinks for a moment that if he could pick moment to stay suspended in, this would be the one.

Surrounded by friends and his family, bathed in the warmth of the morning sunlight; his father’s arms around him, safe and loving and strong in a way that nobody else can replicate.

It was a good day. 

The warmth of the memory stays with him throughout the years. Throughout the death, the rebirth, the burning waters of the Lazarus Pit. The training era, his anger that shakes Gotham down to its roots. Through it all, that first birthday sticks with him relentlessly, a firm reminder of just how much love he had been surrounded by. 

And now, at his 21st birthday, surrounded by new friends, new family, and yet with Bruce and Alfred still at his side...Jason smiles, and blows out his candles.

There are no wishes, this time; Bruce has a delighted smile on his face, out of character to those who don’t know him well enough, and Roy swoops in with an excited yell to steal a kiss under the guise of pressing cake into Jason’s mouth. 

He has everything he needs. 

Chapter Text

i. oh, won’t you bring me back to the start?

It’s cold. 

Jason shifts, barely conscious, barely alive; his blood, slick and heated beyond belief, burns a damning path down the curve of his neck. He can feel it beneath his jacket, under his gloves, in his hair, in places where bruises colour his skin and his skin is flayed, bone visible through the flashes of pink.

He opens his mouth, and wonders if Death awaits him.

(Again.)

Instead, he’s met with a slap of gusty November wind, sharp enough to draw a wince and icy enough to cool his still dripping blood. What a gruesome picture he must paint, Jason thinks. A forgotten son, left to burn. No one’s son. 

He’s always been so dramatic, at the end of it all. If anybody deserves to be, it's him, if only because he has triumphed over death and legacies and failure. 

But this...this is something else entirely. He tries not to think about how easily Bruce had made his choice, despite all his preaching of love and family. All of that had burned away in the face of a decision, a flick of his wrist, and the steel kiss of a Batarang. 

He moves again, aware of the rubble collapsing around him. Jason considers the mess of broken stone and support beams, and hopes to God something will smash into him and just end his misery. 

Between him and the Joker, Bruce had...his choice had been…

Jason closes his eyes. It’s easier to give up than to hold out hope for a man who no longer deserves it, and he thinks it’s time for him to finally try. 

“Oh, sweet boy, look at you.” 

His eyes snap open.

There, standing at the edge of all the destruction looking every inch a Goddess, every inch a Queen, is none other than Talia Al Ghul.

The horror on her face is enough to give him a good idea of what he looks like: bloodied, broken, dying. He wonders if she, too, will leave, because in the end everyone always leaves--

But no, she’s climbing down through the wreckage and reaching for him, warm, calloused hands grasping onto his, pulling him into an embrace far too gentle for people like them. 

Perhaps...perhaps he can hold out hope a little while longer.

ii. how much of you survives?

We can’t trust you!

Jason’s teeth click together, the harsh sound nearly deafening in the silence of his apartment. Fresh off a vicious verbal spar with Dick, he is exhausted down to the marrow of his bones. 

It is odd, he thinks, how quick his soul can prepare itself for the inevitable choice of cutting a sibling out of his life. He is a kaleidoscope of jagged pieces, and yet...some small part of him had hoped he was past the anger. The pragmatic, clinical fury that wanted him to stay alone, in the darkness, dependent on nothing but the Lazarus fire in his blood. 

He doesn’t want his first choice to be isolation, doesn’t want to take everyone’s righteous fury and throw it back in a way that’ll hurt. He wants to stay and fix things, because despite it all, he is still a boy, and all he wants some nights is the choice of going home.  

(Death, his mind sings. Sometimes he wonders if he ever even came back.

He wonders if going home is just returning to the dirt he crawled out of, all those years ago.)

Under the refuge of the night, Jason stares into nothing, eyes glowing neon green. 

We can’t trust you!

We can’t trust you!

Monster!

Monster.

iii. how much of you can he love?

Jason licks into Roy’s mouth, drowning in the warmth of having his lover wrapped around him like a shroud, skin on skin, so tangled it’s impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. 

“Jason,” Roy gasps, and the Gotham native focuses on the reverence, the adoration that which the archer looks at him with. Drowns in calm it brings him, a beacon guiding him home through the darkest of nights. “Jay.” 

Jason ignores the undercurrent of a question, and hours later, bathed in moonlight, he lets Roy ask it again. 

“I’m always lost,” he whispers into the softness of Roy’s nape. “Always waiting for it to end, for the other shoe to drop. Not with you. Never with you.”

But everything is quick and fleeting, with him; nothing to keep, nothing to last. The monster that had climbed out of the Pit, that had worn Jason’s skin for the first few years and had torn him limb from limb with its razor-sharp horrors, surfaces to whisper chilling words into the back of his mind, where not even Roy’s love can reach.

How long will he stay?

How long until you’re too much?

Jason screws his eyes shut, and lets Roy lull him to sleep.

iv. thank you for this, however short, however fleeting.

His dreams, as always, go something like this. 

“Hey, Jaybird,” Roy says, beautiful and painted gold in the dying sunlight. “It’s been a while.” 

Jason always knocks him to the ground in response, needy and clingy and desperate. God, he’s always so damn desperate.  

“Oh you asshole,” he hears himself saying, kneeling in the too-hot sand and pressing his forehead into the curve of Roy’s neck. He feels a gentle hand card through his hair, trail along his jaw, curl into the nape of his neck. “God...you fucking asshole...I missed you.”

Roy presses a kiss to the underside of Jason’s jaw, feather light and chaste, and it still sends a violent shiver through Jason’s body. The knee-jerk response elicits a ghost of a smile from the archer, who follows through with a firmer kiss against Jason’s pulse point. 

“Roy,” Jason mumbles, and it takes a great bout of self-restraint to push away from the man’s searching lips, warm hands pressed against his shoulders to keep him at bay. He...he wants something different this time, wants time to talk, to simply coexist with the love of his life, but--

Roy follows him up, chasing his lips with herculean effort; and Jason, forever weak for the man beneath him, gives in to the pressure. They stay like that for an hour, two, three, an eternity, and then--

Jason's eyes snap open to the inky darkness of yet another motel room.

The dredges of the dream fade away into nothingness as he struggles to sit up, bruises covering the expanse of his torso. The other end of the bed is cold to the touch, and yet Roy’s touch lingers even here. 

He closes his eyes. 

Just a second longer.

iiv. a mother's rage cuts like no other. 

When he floats back into consciousness, his head is pillowed in someone's lap, familiar fingers combing through his hair and untangling the knots caught through the thick locks. 

"Ah, you're awake," Talia says, a somewhat bitter smile on her face. He blinks up at her, vision still blurry, and is vaguely aware of the aches in his body. Can feel the stitches, the gauze, the familiar feeling of blood drying on skin. "You were out for...much longer, this time. Roy just departed to finish some business but I was told he'll be back as soon as he can." 

"Did...how..."

How did she know to come?

In the aftermath of his fight with Bruce, it had been Roy who had come to save him, so when...

"Roy called me," she tells him, knowingly. "He feared we would...need more than crude first aid." 

He had nearly died, then; part of him viciously decides they should've let him, should've let Batman live with it, but the more rational part of his mind would never put Roy and Duke and Talia and Dami through all that. 

(Some days he's thankful, for all the people he lives to protect. Some days, some dark part of him resents them all, for making him stay.

Those days, now, are few and far in-between. He's thankful. He's thankful.) 

"Ah," he manages to say, after a long, lingering pause. "Thanks, T."

"You don't need to thank me for coming to your aid, little one," she murmurs. "That's my job as your mother."

The words bring about a sense of warmth, deep in his stomach; somewhere inside of him, broken edges shift and settle into something more manageable. Jason manages a wobbly smile for her, only her, and in the darkness of the room, no one is around to bear witness to the devastating gentleness in the way Talia bends over to press a kiss to the crown of his head. 

"Love you," Jason mumbles, a silly smile on his face and his heart repaired. He still hurts, will have to come to terms with what Bruce has done sooner rather than later, but here, in Talia's arms, he feels like the child he never had the chance to be.

And he decides he can stay here, deserves to stay here, if only for a moment longer. 

ix. and in the end...

A building had fallen, a week ago. Blood had flown across burning debris. 

And now they’re standing here, lone figures in the pouring rain: one draped in all-black attire, and another in a leather jacket. No armour, no guns, no helmet. 

Just a boy.

(Bruce’s boy, in a different lifetime.)

“I’m clearing out,” Jason Todd says, voice hoarse due to disuse. His irises glow, iridescent in the darkness; Bruce feels his chest constrict at the lack of emotion in his eyes. He knows he is the cause of it, the absence of everything substantial, but at the same time...he has no clue what to do about it.

He wants to tell Jason to stay, to come home, to let him fix this. He wants to apologize for the errant batarang, the blood, and choice he made.

Instead, what comes out of his mouth is: “Where.”

Jason can’t look him in the eye anymore, and it burns something precious in Bruce’s chest to ash. He has no right, he knows, but how can he stop this menacing thing he calls love? It’s dark and foreboding in every way he can think of and it disgusts him, to stand here and say he still loves Jason, after everything that happened, everything he did. In many ways, he is worse than Willis Todd. 

(He didn’t even stay.)

“Talia called me home,” Jason replies, jaw loose. “Says there’s nothing left for me in Gotham. And she’s right.”

Bruce wants to cry out. Of course there’s something in Gotham; family, the Manor, Duke and Dami and the others, Alfred. But Jason doesn’t want to hear it; the intuitivity in his blood takes in the aloofness, the finality of this rain-soaked moment. 

There is a stretch of silence. 

“You were one of the only people I have ever loved,” Jason admits, and it’s a truth that sends lightning down Bruce’s spine. There’s a quiet melancholy in this moment that hadn’t existed in their initial confrontation; gone is the raw anger, replaced with some sense of conviction. “You were my father. You were my entire world.”

I still am, Bruce wants to say. God, he wants so much. 

“But that was a lifetime ago,” Jason Peter Todd, second son of Bruce Wayne, the supposed epicenter of his universe, says. A burning star that had imploded, reborn into something without Bruce’s knowledge, a wound left to fester into something poisonous. But still had been his, up until that damned batarang had left his hand. “I’m nothing to you in this life.”

Bruce’s knees buckle. His damned mouth still doesn’t open. 

Jason’s eyes focus on his face, and Bruce knows he no longer sees the cowl but instead is looking at the man underneath. The pathetic coward who has his son’s blood on his hands. 

“I don't want to be anything to you. Not anymore.”

The final nail in the coffin. 

Bruce doesn’t let his despair show, even now; Jason doesn’t deserve that, deserves a clean break in the place of something messy and cursed. Above them, lightning flashes and idly Bruce remembers the night on the roof, a helmet clattering to the floor and a father and son battling it out over rain-slick tiles. 

There is none of that same frenetic energy now; this is a slow burn death, and less pain than he deserves for the things he has done to Jason. Maybe they could’ve made it work, in a different lifetime, but Bruce doesn’t like the thought of him needing three lifetimes to be a good father for his son. 

Doesn’t like the thought of being anything less than exactly what Jason needs, and yet...and yet that’s exactly what he is. 

“The Joker is dead.”

Those words hit him harder than anything else. 

“Talia killed him,” Jason reveals, still with no emotion in his tone but there is a spark of life in his eyes. If not for the information being relayed Bruce would be undeniably jealous of Talia’s ability to put that there, to make Jason feel. “She said she didn’t want me to feel like I had any reason to return to Gotham.”

The rain worsens. Bruce is...reeling, there is no other word for it, not over the loss of life but rather the cost he paid ending in vain. He gave Jason up, with blood and fury and regret, only for it not to matter in the end. 

None of it matters, in the end.

Bruce’s knees finally hit the concrete, his cape flapping in the late November wind. The cold settles into his bones, a familiar ache, but all he can see is Jason turning away, Jason beginning to walk, Jason dying in front of him all over again but there’s no cooling body to hold. 

“We’re done, Bruce,” Jason Todd, second Robin, a boy of magic, Bruce’s son , says. “You won’t have to see me ever again.”

A child’s death is sad enough, Bruce thinks through the mind-numbing pain. Watching the same child leave twice?

This is a blow he’ll never recover from.

And he has no one to thank but himself.

Chapter Text

Blood. There’s blood everywhere. 

Jason coughs, and it’s a low noise that grates painfully against the insides of his throat. Still, there’s very little he can do aside from lessening the impact of the blows raining down on him from all directions, the stiff gauntlets built for long-lasting damage. Bruce—Batman, Batman, right now he is more myth than man, human—is absolutely merciless, his rage so tangible Jason can almost taste the iron in the air; in that moment, when Batman’s fist dislocates his lower jaw, something becomes very, strikingly clear. 

He’s going to die here. 

Jason had sent Roy ahead thinking he would be able to get out of Gotham before Batman was on his tail, but somehow...somehow he had managed to completely underestimate the man before him, underestimate the raw power Bruce held despite not being a meta. And for that mistake he will die, alone, on this rooftop beneath the heavy hands of the man who claimed to love him a lifetime ago. This is not a fate Batman deemed even the Joker worthy of, but here he is, about to dole out the death sentence to Jason. 

A joke. Everything is a joke. 

When everything flashes white for a second, Jason knows his time has come once again and he rages at the parallelism of the situation: a beating, an explosion, a parent who doesn’t care. His blood soaking the ground beneath him. The utter hopelessness in his heart. 

The only difference, really, is he's not waiting for Bruce—his father—to save him this time, for Bruce is the one swinging the crowbar, the one locking the door, the one setting the bomb. 

Everything comes full circle, he supposes. He prepares himself for the inevitable end, for the burst of fire, for the despair—

But then there is a yell that doesn’t belong to him, and Bruce is stumbling backwards, momentarily stunned. In his shoulder, right between the chinks of the armour and one of the only vulnerabilities of the Batsuit, is a dagger. It’s buried deep enough that Bruce’s arm goes stiff in an effort to stall the pain, and Jason so desperately wants to look at who’s brave enough to step into a fight between Batman and the Red Hood but the pain racing up his spine is too much for him to move. 

“What in the name of the Gods do you think you’re doing? ”

Jason recognizes that voice. 

The hope that bursts in his chest is so painful he could cry, but at this point his body is too mangled to do more than moan in response. He can vaguely hear soft footsteps approaching him, and in the back of his mind he knows she’s only making noise so he knows she is coming closer and to save him from a bout of anxiety. 

“Talia,” Bruce snarls, a dangerous and feral sound. Jason still feels as if he’s caught in a maelstrom, memories of a childhood long buried underneath a mass of new traumas resurfacing. “What are you doing here?” 

“Stopping an execution,” she spits back, and Jason is left reeling at the fact that it isn’t his own, twisted narrative perceiving this all as an execution; it’s the truth, left bare and dangerously out in the open. Verbalized, for anyone willing to listen, for any stray witnessing the rooftop showdown. “Have you gone mad?”

“He killed the Penguin,” Bruce barks back, not taking the accusation laying down. 

“And your response was to...what, exactly? Kill him in retaliation?” Talia snaps, all the while helping Jason to his feet. He tries to keep as much weight as he can on his own feet, but he thinks one of his legs is broken and one of his lungs is punctured because he ends up all but limp in Talia’s arms, who takes his full weight with ease. "Aren't you the saint of trials and 'innocent until proven guilty'? Did you even check to make sure the Penguin was dead before beating Jason within an inch of his life?" 

Here, Bruce pauses; for a second, he has nothing to say, and instead seemingly fixates on the gentle manner that Talia handles Jason with. She has turned her attention back to the son in her arms, and there is unspoken love in the way Talia runs her fingers through Jason’s hair, the way she whispers soft promises into his ear.

This is a love Bruce doesn’t understand.

“Gods, Bruce,” Talia finally speaks up again, after Jason is safely tucked into her side and breathing a touch easier. The horror in her voice is easily recognizable, especially since she isn't trying to hide it. “Did you even realize who you were about to murder in cold blood? Did you even realize…”

Bruce inhales sharply, and behind the whiteout lenses of his mask, blinks once. Twice. Comes to focus, in a way, and sees the picture for what it is: his son’s blood on his hands, his body now a near corpse in the arms of his mother. He suddenly feels nauseous.

Hero, indeed.

“Talia...J—”

“No more,” she interrupts him, and her tone is glacier enough to freeze the sun. “No more of this...facade of parental authority. You may have Damian fooled for now with this charade of fatherhood—and I promise you, that, too, will end in due time—but Jason...Jason is mine . And I swear upon my own life that this is the last time you lay a hand on my son.”

She carefully maneuvers them back in the direction of her jet, leaving Bruce thunderstruck in her wake; Jason is barely coherent through the process. She isn’t even sure if he heard the gauntlet she’d just thrown down, but there is too much fury racing through her veins for her to care at the moment. 

Once she has placed Jason in the cot, though, she makes sure to turn back towards her once beloved, and says:

“Perhaps this is why Miss Kyle left you alone at the altar. Tonight I will go home and thank my Gods that we never got that far.”

With that, she is gone.

Everything is touch and go, for a while. 

Jason floats in and out of consciousness, aware long enough to take into account the warm breeze on his face and the smell of ocean water in the air. There is pain, immeasurable amounts, but he is never really grounded enough to feel it; the blood in his veins seems chilled, and everything...everything is a blur. It feels like he’s submerged in a racing river, everything muted by the rush of water, and he…

God, he so badly wants to let go and drown . 

It’s pathetic, he knows, for someone like him to crave the sweet embrace of death so viciously, but Bruce had carved out what was left of him and thrown it into the wind, left a hollow shell of a boy behind in his wake. 

It was murder, but Jason doesn’t have the conviction—the hate—to let the punishment fit the crime. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Talia calls for exile, but he…

Even after all this, Bruce is his—

“Sleep, my son,” a soft voice whispers, paired with calloused fingers running through his matted hair. His cheeks are warm with tears, pillow soaked, a phantom heart aching. 

Bruce can’t be anything anymore, not without an apology, not without rebuilding the bridge he had so painstakingly dismantled. And it is a truth that, unfortunately, is not surprising.

Jason sleeps.

When he finally manages to stay awake for more than a few minutes, three weeks have passed and Roy Harper is holding his hand. 

The archer is asleep upright in his seat, mouth open as soft snores fills the air. Jason watches him for a second with the utmost adoration, surprised for but a second to see him at his side before it subsides into fondness.

Roy has always had a painful habit of staying through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. 

“Hey, Roy,” he manages to wheeze, but the sound is barely there because of how parched his throat currently is; he ends up squeezing his boyfriend’s fingers instead, and the Titan alumni wakes with a start. 

“Jaybird?” Roy asks, winded. His eyes are unfocused, but it's more than enough for Jason, who manages a smile at that. “Are you...holy shit, you’re awake!” 

Next thing he knows, he has a boyfriend draped across his chest, his heart rate monitor is going insane, and a familiar woman is walking through the doorway with an eyebrow arched.

“I thought I told you to be careful, Roy,” Talia admonishes, reaching over to gently smack the back of the man’s head. “My not so little one has just managed to wake up and you’re already throwing yourself at him?” 

“Tals,” Jason manages, sipping at the water she suddenly holds up to his lips. “I...where are we?” 

She sets the cup down on the nightside table and sits down next to him, taking his free hand between her own; suddenly Jason is very aware of how... mortal she looks. She doesn’t look her age per se, but her skin is pulled taut and the bags under her eyes resemble bruises, smudges of darkness curved around her bottom eyelids. 

“My son,” she murmurs, and Jason manages a barely-there smile for her, because he won’t mention the way her voice catches, the glassy sheen of her eyes, the tremble in her bones he notices only because he was looking for it. “For a moment I thought we had lost you again.”

He can’t deny the claim, because he had thought the exact same thing while Bruce’s fists rained down on him. Jason can barely stand to think back on the fight, and briefly wonders what it must have felt like for Talia to stumble upon it.

“It killed me in many ways,” she says, almost as if she can read his thoughts. “To see him...this is a man I love, beating our eldest son to death with no fear of consequence. Very few times has such feral rage overtaken me.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason says, if only because he isn’t quite sure what else he could possibly say to such a revelation. Roy squeezes his hand in comfort. “I...I’m not sure if I should’ve…”

“Stop,” Talia’s voice is firm. Unwavering; hell, even a touch angry. “Do not apologize for something that is not your fault. I did not raise you like that.”

Jason flinches, just slightly, and Talia relents. They sit there in quiet contemplation, all three of the room’s occupants stewing in the reminder of what exactly had happened in Gotham. The reminder of just how poorly Bruce treats those he claims to love, and the lack of control he has over his rage.

It’s enough to curdle Talia’s lunch. 

“No more Gotham,” Talia finally whispers, but there is steel in her tone. She isn't focused on Jason, or Roy, or even the injures; there is distance in her eyes, and she is turned towards the window. Only when Jason reacts does she look at him, long hair moving across her shoulders to settle against her back. A queen with no crown, a protector in every sense of the word. His mother. “No more Dark Knight. From now on, you will go by a different name, linked to me , and we will take care of the world however you wish.”

A fresh start.

A new beginning.

“Azazel,” Jason decides after a moment, turning his burning eyes onto his mother. She nods her approval over the strong, resilient choice; it suits him. 

Roy, in the background, grins in delight. 

“The Demon’s Fang,” she christens, as the sun rises beyond the horizon.

Chapter Text

i. sunrise

Dawn is quiet, in a way that the fortress rarely is; despite the early hour, this is when most of the soldiers stationed are out and about, beginning with their morning routines.

Soft light filters through the curtains and spills across the bathroom floor, painting the granite in pretty shades of pink and yellow. It softens the harsh lines of the counters and the cupboards, turns the space into something soft and kind. 

A safe space for the injured child she has brought home. 

Talia’s fingers are gentle as they comb through his matted hair; sporadic splashes of water help her comb out the tangles, to wash out the blood. She hums some foregone melody in hopes of pulling him from his quiet state, but Jason Todd’s eyes remain close, and the water he sits in goes pink, then red, then darker still. 

The healing is taking its time, she deducts. An oversight on her part, but his wounds had needed cleaning before she could dress them; Jason had been covered in mud and grime when she had found him. Taking him to the infirmary would’ve drawn her father’s attention, and for now...for now, she would like to keep him to herself. 

It’s all for my Beloved, Talia’s mind supplies. Surely the pain that had flickered through her at the sight of the injured child had only been a phantom pain meant to be felt by Bruce, the boy’s only known living parent. 

And isn’t that a mess in itself? Her mind asks, a question she studiously ignores. 

Jason’s odd silence and lack of speech had clued her into more fatal consequences to whatever magic had brought him back, and sooner or later they would need the medical staff’s attention. For now, her careful hands and soft ministrations will have to do. 

Jason interrupts her musings with an inquisitive noise, and she hums back in response; yes, he is safe, yes, he’s alive. 

“Where did you come from, I wonder,” she murmurs, finally going about lathering the boy’s hair with some shampoo. She’s careful as she rubs the thick curls between her fingers, intent on getting rid of the grease and oil without aggravating the head wound. “And why did your father not find you?” 

Jason, predictably, does not respond; he doesn’t even flinch when some of the shampoo gets in contact with the open wound, despite the fact that it undoubtedly stings. Nonetheless, Talia still apologizes, all soft sounds and murmurs, too afraid to shatter the tranquility of the room with any loudness. She makes quick work of the rest of it, rushing through a rinse and then an equally fast layer of conditioner before she’s pulling the boy out of the tub and gently towelling him down, wrapping one around his waist and another around his shoulders to catch any stray droplets. 

He doesn’t like that, evidently; the boy stiffens as soon as the soft cloth lands on top of him, looking up at her with something close to surprise. Talia wonders what, exactly, he has been through that even a small comfort like a towel would incite fear; anger courses through her at the thought of it all. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers, leaning close and pressing their foreheads together. He’s trembling, just barely enough that she can only tell because of their shared point of contact. Regardless, she finds herself hating it, hating that a child would have any reason to fear in her presence, even with her reassurances wrapped around them like armour. Miraculously, Jason leans into the touch, shaking fingers reaching out to grasp at the silks she’s draped in. “I will not hurt you. You are safe. You are safe.” 

A mantra, spoken between two fractured souls now bound together by a single, rash decision. Because...because she knew, what it was like, to desperately need someone to protect you from the evils of the night. 

She was tired, perhaps, of being one of those said evils in everyone’s eyes; motherhood had changed her, moulded her into someone who wanted to protect, to cherish, to love freely. 

She carries on, leaving the towels where they are and instead picking up the cloth bandages she brought along, beginning to wind them around each laceration, careful to make sure they weren’t too tight. Thankfully, none of Jason’s injuries required stitches, and it’s quick work, tying the bandages; the worst of it all is the head wound, and she hisses some more apologies between breaths while she handles it.

It’s been quite a long time since she had to carefully dress someone else’s wounds, and out of practice as she may be, it comes to her...almost naturally. It settles something in her chest, a heavy and jagged thing, and Talia finds herself breathing a bit easier. 

Beyond their little sanctuary, the sun carries on its ascent into the sky, the light becoming harsher with every passing minute. Soon it’ll scorch the ground, beat mercilessly against the backs of her father’s men as they train in the outer courtyards. It’ll bear witness to Damian’s ruthless training, the training she is powerless to stop. But for once...just this once, she pays it no mind, pulling away from Jason to cup his cheek and press a chaste kiss to his forehead. 

“You are safe.” 

Perhaps she cannot save her baby boy yet, but in her arms there is a child she can save. Fix. 

And she will not fail. 

(She doesn’t know it at the time, but it’s the beginning down the path she’s always dreamed of traveling, the discovery of the second piece of her little family. She’ll tell him about this moment, someday, of a mother who had gently cleansed her son’s wounds and wrapped them with steady hands, had kissed his forehead and whispered vows of safety into his heart.

Maybe she’ll even tell him...

But before they get there, to that brightened point of contentment, there are dozens more baths, even more bandages, more fatal wounds.)

ii. midday 

It’s an irredeemable sin, to put your hands on your own child. 

Talia’s hands tremble as she strokes Jason’s hair, brushes the thick curls away from his forehead. His eyes are hollow, mind quite not with her, and that’s...well, she aches for the child in front of her. Her child. Her eldest, thrown away by his father like a broken toy. 

“Do you wish to return to Gotham?” Talia asks, trying to reroute her thoughts. Outside, the sky is clear and blue and perfect, the complete opposite of the bedroom they’re cooped up in. Jason is moody, exhausted, and--

Alive, she reminds herself viciously. Aching under the memories of his chosen father’s fists, covered in bruises and visible reminders of the attack, Jason is alive. Dimmed, but still so bright.

Despite all her reassurances, the pristine, white bandages wrapped around his neck are criminal; soon, Batman will pay the price for the err of his ways. When Jason is well enough to be left to his own devices, when her rage quiets into something more manageable, when slaughter isn’t the only thing on her mind. 

He doesn’t respond right away, at least not verbally; Talia can recognize the way he twists the bedsheets between his fingers anxiously, the way his eyes dart to the windows every few minutes. A gilded cage is still a cage, she thinks sadly. Someday, her eldest will know this, will come to the realization the same way she had. 

She hopes against all hope that it won’t be under Bruce’s fists, that Jason will come to an understanding all on his own. That the headfirst way he loves won’t be the cause of his ruination, because even if Fate had handed him a tainted hand, Jason has made the most of it. He still, against all odds, held onto hope, had a spark behind his eyes. She would protect it, either from his side or the shadows he cast, no matter the personal cost. 

Seeing Jason laid out in bed, throat cut open at the hands of his father, she makes a simple vow: nothing will touch him like this again, if she can help it. Some things are not her place to meddle in, but she and Fate are tried and true enemies, dance an ancient dance, sing a song older than time. 

But, at the end of the day, always--

Nothing in this world can compare to a mother’s rage. 

“I don’t,” he says, exhausted. “Not yet.”

She hums her consent, sitting down next to him on the mattress and pulling him into her side. He’s bigger than her now, closer to Bruce’s size than anything, and a pang of surprise shoots through her at the thought. She takes pride in the fact that she had been there through his training enough that the growth hadn’t truly registered until they had spent the last few months apart; Jason’s grown into his frame, flourished into an unstoppable combatant gifted with size and speed. 

Still, this is her child, regardless of how tall he’s gotten, and at her insistence he huffs and lays his head down in her lap. Talia laughs, endlessly amused by this sunshine boy the Gods have gifted her with, and when they share a smile, their troubles are momentarily forgotten.

My child.

iii. dusk 

Out of all the heartbreaks she has seen Jason endure, this has to be the most painful of it all. 

It’s days after the news about the Sanctuary has broken out across the superhero and villain circles, and Talia had immediately set out to find Jason. Last she had heard, it had been from the two of them, bright grins on their faces and matching bands on their ring fingers. The engagement had been a pleasant surprise, and the interaction had left her with a smile on her face for the coming days. 

And now one of them was dead and the other was surely wishing for the same. 

When she finds Jason, despondent and quiet as he is, she drags him back to one of their many safehouses in an attempt to ward off the anguish she knew was coming. They had arrived nearly a week ago, and Jason hadn’t spoken to her since.

Talia is anything but impatient. Eventually, he had emerged, looking haunted and exhausted but he had begrudgingly accepted the plate of food placed in front of them and the two of them had eaten in silence. 

Now they were sitting in the sunroom, the skies overcast and the two of them silent, save for the occasional sniffle and sip of tea. She isn’t quite sure what to say, knows that it may not be her place to start a conversation about Jason’s sweetest love, but...as a mother, it’s hard to ignore. 

And just as she opens her mouth to start gently prompting her boy into speaking, he does. 

“He let his tea get cold enough that he would have to reheat it twice,” Jason says, staring off into the distance. The camellias are in full bloom, and something in her aches over it. She was going to put together a bouquet, as an engagement gift for the duo. An apology, for the day she finally tells Jason the truths she’s been hiding. “He left the crusts of his sandwiches but never let me cut them for him. He held my hand through every nightmare. He came for me, when no one else did. He...he…”

Talia grabs for Jason’s hands, just as the tears start falling. Outside their little haven, the rain begins to pour, battering the flowers in the garden with intense downpour; the petals fall, too weak to withstand the onslaught. 

“I loved him,” Jason whispers, voice hoarse; his eyes are lit up in the darkness, an incandescent mess of greens and browns. “I loved him.”

Talia has never quite understood the burden of love as she does now, holding the hands of a lonely boy whose heart has been laid to rest. She has experienced lost love herself, of course, the shadows of her lover--her Beloved--haunting her some nights, but Jason’s is something profound, stronger, more painful.

She has seen the boy hollow, before, and it was something quite like this. She hadn’t stood by and it let happen, that time, but now...perhaps it isn’t quite her place to tell Jason to pick up his head and keep going. In their joined hands, she can feel the warmed metal of the two rings he had been holding pressing into her skin like a brand. 

Her little star, Talia thinks, mourns, agonizes. Growing dimmer and dimmer with each passing life. Someday soon they’ll have to talk about it, that festering sadness deep within Jason’s heart, taking root and shining through everything he’s done. They’ll have to face the truth of his misery, and her part in it all, but for now…

For now, they sit there, a boy and his mother in a room far from their demons.

iv. sunset

Talia finds him standing atop a Gotham rooftop, jacket pulled up around his throat to ward off the wind. 

“How are you, sweet boy?” She asks, in lieu of a greeting. Jason half-turns towards her, a small smile on his face; it’s a sad imitation of what his genuine smiles are like, and her heart aches for her eldest son. How much heartbreak he has gone through, these last few years; her lack of help leaves her feeling inadequate, restless. 

“As well as I can be, considering,” he pairs the lofty words with a shrug, turning back towards the city he once bled to protect, no doubt looking out towards where she knows a certain cemetery was, where a certain man lies in rest. 

“The funeral…?”

“Went well, all things considered, according to Duke. Not that I would know personally, considering the lack of an invite to the damn thing. Alfred’s probably rolling around in his grave already.” 

“I could kill him,” Talia continues, conversationally. She comes to stand next to Jason, running a gentle hand down his arm, linking their fingers together in a show of solidarity. How poorly Bruce continues to treat him. “Bruce, I mean. For the way he treats you, I could kill him.” 

“I would never ask you to,” Jason throws back, a harsh laugh tacked on at the end. Talia can hear the pain underlying the statement, however true, because of all the history they stand on. Jason will never ask Talia to murder Bruce, or the Joker, or anyone who has wronged him, because she would, within a heartbeat. It would prove nothing, would be a simple act of love; a love Jason doesn’t need to be convinced exists. She is as grateful as she is pained. “Not...not even if he deserves it. I wouldn’t do that to you.” 

She smiles, and it’s guileless. Talia thought she would never be capable of truly hating Bruce Wayne, too far gone in her love for the man, in her love for the children they share, but as the years have passed, she finds herself disillusioned with the man he’s become. 

Jason, more than anyone else, knows this. Can see it on her face, whenever they’re together after a catastrophe, after another night of Bruce putting his hands on the ones he’s sworn to love. 

“Of course you wouldn’t,” she murmurs, and it’s soft and dangerous and tender. Everything she is as a mother. Gotham stirs beneath them, almost wary of her intent. “And that vile man will never know how you protect him so.” 

Jason watches her for a moment, considering, and Talia wonders what he sees, when he looks at her like that. Does he see a mother, the one who washed his hair and wrapped his wounds? Does he see a snake, who lied to him through her teeth, kept him captive and away from his true family?

Does he see himself, broken and bleeding across continents, and yet still alive? 

“He won’t,” Jason agrees. Beyond them, the sun begins to set, paints them in gold, paints them in blood. She ignores the way it makes her stomach curdle, the stark reminder of how her second son had found his way into her arms. Flashes of a sword, flames, a familiar face, a dead child. “He also won’t ever know the things you’ve done to protect me.” 

Quiet, forlorn, foreboding, Talia presses her cheek into her son’s shoulder, and the two of them watch the sunset together.

v. nightfall

She should’ve seen this coming.

Jason throws a stack of manilla folders onto the table, and the force of it sends the contents spilling across the table: pictures of Lady Shiva, David Cain, and the results from the blood test she had done years ago. Pictures of Cassandra Cain-Wayne, and Jason, with notes drawn into the margins of the pages. Notes in her handwriting.

The paper is aged and slightly crumpled; she knows how old they are. She had the papers put together back when Jason had first stumbled into her care. 

“So,” Jason starts, conversationally. “When were you planning on telling me?” 

Talia sighs, setting her cup of tea down on the table. This isn’t a conversation she wanted to have, not like this, not with Jason amped up on his rage and another fight with Bruce, herself exhausted following the confrontation against Leviathan. 

“It’s not what you think it is,” Talia tries, rubbing at her temples. The pressure behind her eyes grows with the sudden need to spin a tale on the spot, something to appease Jason long enough for her to admit to her faults. “It wasn’t…”

“Wasn’t what? A way for you to manipulate me?” And there’s genuine pain in his eyes now, despite the cold tone of the words he throws at her. The pain is what makes her chest hurt and her eyes blur even more, because she’s become, in Jason’s eyes, what she’s always hated: a parent who hurts their children willingly. 

A monster. 

“I was going to tell you,” she confesses, staring at the corner of the table she’s seated at. If she looks close enough she can see the bloodstains from the day her father had slapped her across the face for her rebellion regarding Damian’s future. It was just a few months after she had recovered Jason from Gotham, and a few weeks since Ra’s was made aware of his presence.

She can remember the enraged way Jason had launched himself at the old man, armed with nothing but his fists and teeth, the split second of surprise as the realization hit her, deep and true: this child is mine. 

She had seen the interest spark in the Demon’s eyes at the display of feral strength; that night, she had put the boy into the Lazarus Pit, a desperate bid to save at least one of her children from her father and his whims. 

It was not a fond memory, but rather one she desperately kept locked away, because Talia Al Ghul has felt like a demon many times in her life, but never more so than when her son had come up screaming for his father and all she could think about was ‘he should be screaming for his mother ’. 

What had followed was a childish reaction to her fear of being forgotten: her rash decision to tell Jason the truth, about Bruce, Tim, and the still breathing Clown Prince of Gotham. The gravity of the situation hadn’t truly sunk in until she had stood outside his bedroom, cowed into silence by the loud sobbing and sound of breaking glass.

She would spend years atoning for that selfish act, would live in regret until her last breath for what she had done. 

“When?” Jason asks, frustrated and tired. There’s blood on his gloves and a familiar dagger strapped to his thigh. There is no resentment in him, not yet. “When were you going to tell me?” 

“I don’t know,” Talia responds, after a long moment of silence. She can’t look him in the eye, can’t watch him slip away, can’t bear to witness the end of their story. “Why does this trouble you so much? Did I not give you everything you asked for?” 

Was I not enough?

“Talia this isn’t about...I’m not...just why wouldn’t you tell me?” 

Why had she hid the truth he had died for? What had compelled her to keep it hidden for all these years, despite Jason’s interactions with his blood-sister, his interactions with his biological mother? 

“I...I feared you would see it fit to side with Lady Shiva moving forward,” she can hear herself confess, and it comes out shaky at best. “I suppose I was trying to delay the inevitable, Jason.” 

There’s a heartbeat of silence. She still doesn’t look up; Jason has always been excellent at picking up on the things she leaves unsaid.

“You thought, what, I’d want nothing to do with you anymore?” He asks, rounding the table to come and stand at her side. Talia notes he doesn’t reach out for her like he normally would, and though it stings, she deserves it. 

“You will find, Jason, that very few people on this planet truly deserve you,” she shoots back, somewhat wry. Her face is wet, but she isn’t quite sure when she started crying; as it stands, it’s getting harder and harder to breathe. “I don’t quite think I fit on that list, and Shiva hasn’t exactly had the chance to prove hers--”

He reaches out, lightning-quick, to grab at her arms, dropping to his knees in front of her. 

“I love you,” he snarls, vicious and pleading and Talia’s tears subside for a moment, in a spellbinding shot of clarity. Jason’s hands are like vices, are like anchors; they are everything and nothing, holding her near, with him. “I love you, T, you hear me? You are my mother.” 

She gasps at the bold declaration, and finally, finally, it feels like coming up for air.

“I don’t fucking care who gave birth to me,” he continues, his own tears smeared across his cheeks, snot all over his cupid’s bow. She sees so much of Sandra in her son, can feel uncontrollable jealousy at the thought, and it all leaves her feeling oily. Disgusting. “I don’t...I don’t care about Shiva, or Bruce, or Willis or Catherine or anyone. There’s only you.” 

You could never be that boy’s mother, her father sings in her head. She makes him shut up. 

“Do you remember? That first night, where you brought me to Nanda Parbat from Gotham?” Jason asks, borderline desperate. Of course she does; she has never forgotten. “Where you...before all this, before I could even speak, where you washed my hair, do you remember?” 

“Of course I do,” and she sounds pitiful even to her own ears. This is what love reduces you to, always, without a fail; a broken, bleeding thing crawling on its hands and knees, the leash in the hands of someone who may not deserve it. 

“Because I remember it, too,” Jason moves to cup her face, presses their foreheads together; a mirror of what she had done, all those years ago. “I remember how gentle you were, T, when you didn’t have to be. When no one else would be.”

She remembers, too; the way she had washed out the blood, the quiet fear they had both existed in for so long. The way the sunlight had shone off the tiles, the warmth of the morning sun, the gentle heartbeat under her fingertips.

A mother, and her son. 

“I’m yours,” Jason declares fiercely. “And you’re mine. My mom. The one I chose.”

The one I chose. And isn’t that the crux of it all? Her chosen son. His chosen mother. 

Found family. 

Talia smiles, at peace, and pulls back far enough to press a gentle kiss to the crown of her eldest son’s head.

“My son,” she whispers, all love. Something in her chest shifts, settles, and she finally feels whole. Nothing is perfect, but a few of her demons have been laid to rest. Jason smiles up at her, at ease, and everything is okay.

My son.

Chapter Text

Her informant is an old one, their relationship one of mutual respect and trust and a healthy dose of fear. She comes to her one stormy night, to the apartment Talia has tucked away in the heart of Metropolis, the walls lined with iron and kryptonite shards tucked into hidden alcoves. 

Lady Shiva is dressed down today, in street clothes as opposed to the outfit she’s infamized over the years. In her hands, there is a stack of manilla folders; her eyes are dark, bottomless, ageless. 

Whatever she has to say, it isn’t good news. 

“What do you know about the Joker,” is what the woman starts with, tossing the folders onto the table. Talia doesn’t reach for them, choosing to keep her hands steady on the cup of tea in front of her. The warmth of the drink combats the chill threatening to shoot down her spine at the mention of that monster. 

“Enough,” Talia allows, glancing at her companion as she slides into the seat opposite. 

It’s a gentle silence that envelops them. Talia makes the mistake of thinking it will last. 

“Did you know there’s three of them?” 

A heartbeat passes. Two. Three. Still, the question makes no sense, the subtle accusation undercutting the words even worse. Did you know? Did you know how many men haunt the streets of Gotham?

“Explain,” Talia reaches for the folders now, flips them open to stare at the different pictures of the Clown Prince of Crime, and she’s a fool for not even considering it before because now, with the evidence in front of her, it becomes clear it's not the same man in all these pictures. A different nose, a different pair of ruined lips, a different evil in their eyes. 

“I did some research,” Shiva says—no, Sandra, this is Sandra in front of her, pretending like she doesn’t have her own reasons to care about a stain on the world like the Joker. “This came up. Really, Talia, why did anyone ever think Batman was a good detective?” 

It’s a jab directed at her and her heart, but all it does is make her smile sardonically. Truly, why did she ever think Bruce Wayne had his head in the right place?

A different face flashes through her mind, a strong jaw and eyes that glowed in the dark. A shock of white in an otherwise dark head of hair. 

Talia Al Ghul stands, a hand already on her sword.

“Will you tell him?” Sandra asks, still seated, while staring into nothingness in a futile attempt to mask the slight tremor in her voice. She isn’t asking about the Joker. 

But Talia is a selfish creature, born and raised in the shadows of a madman. Her sons were her light in the dark, the sunrise that awaits her. She will not willingly give either of them up, not anymore. 

She doesn’t offend Sandra with a response, choosing to sweep out of the room. 

She finds Batman, first. 

“Talia,” the man says, and it’s a distant thing, her disappointment; she has a goal in mind for the night, after all. “What brings you to Gotham? Robin didn’t say you were visiting.”

“I didn’t tell him,” she murmurs, coming to stand next to him. Batman doesn’t speak again, no doubt waiting for Talia to speak up, but she finds her throat clogged, her eyes burning. 

A different face. A boy, dead-eyed and yet so protective of her. That same boy, screaming into the darkness of a cave illuminated by ghastly green waters, crying for a father who didn’t know to be there. 

The same boy, haunted by a clown in the corner wielding a rusted crowbar. Throat cut by sharp steel and his body bleeding dry, tear stained cheeks and bruised knuckles and more. 

She opens her mouth, fully intending to divulge the truth about the Jokers, but what comes out instead is—

“Did you ever love him?” 

Batman jerks, as if she had run him through with her sword. On her son’s worst days, the thought of it is her greatest wish and deepest sorrow. 

But Batman doesn’t deserve the sweet mercy of death. 

“I don’t...is this about Damian?” 

She smiles, and it’s a brittle thing. Of course. Of course. What else did she expect? “Did you know there are—or have been—three Jokers?” 

She doesn’t wait for the fatality of her words to sit in, but relishes the startled whoosh of air that leaves Batman’s lips. She carries on, “I think you are so blinded by your love story with that... thing, that true justice escapes you. Nonetheless, it has been brought to my attention, and I will be dealing with it.”

She turns and heads for the ledge of the room, head held high, hands clasped behind her back. She has committed many sins throughout her life, but at least she never put a mediocre facade above the wellbeing of her children.

She never will. 

In the end, Jason finds her. 

It’s a beautiful spring morning; she’s enjoying breakfast on the balcony of her apartment, a cup of tea in hand along with the morning paper. Her son lets himself in using his copy of the key to the house, takes his shoes off in the foyer like she taught him to. He’s carrying a basket of food, a hat pulled over his unruly locks in an attempt to hide from Metropolis’ guardian saint. 

“T,” he begins, and she always delights in the fondness that wraps around the single letter, that nickname he bestowed upon her ages ago. “Tell me you didn’t.” 

She smiles, hiding it behind the rim of her cup as Jason glides over to drag the free chair over to her side before plopping down, so close their knees are touching. Her heart rejoices at the relief in his eyes, lit up by the early morning sun; this close, she can see the flecks of gold in his irises, the aquamarine colour clear of the eerie glow of the Lazarus Pit.

“I did,” she admits freely, setting her tea aside and reaching for his hands instead. Rough and calloused as they are, she knows these hands are being put to use for child rearing these days. Little Lian Harper, her first grandchild; the thought leaves her giddy. “Think of it as an early wedding gift.”

Jason’s ears go red at the reminder, as if he isn’t sitting here with a band on his left ring finger. “What if Batman comes for you?”    

She had thought about that, on her way back from Gotham that night. But that accidental blow she had delivered, when she had asked if Batman had ever loved their eldest son, she knows...Batman—Bruce—will know what it means. 

“Let him,” she laughs, and Jason rolls his eyes in exasperation at that. “If he dares, I’ll remind him of his place. Now, enough of all that nonsense, tell me how Roy and Lian are doing.” 

And he does: the air is filled with the sound of their laughter, the quiet sounds of cutlery as they indulge in the meal Jason had brought with him. Here, the boy—her son—is at peace. 

The headline on the morning paper reads ‘THE JOKER: DEAD?’

Chapter Text

It’s dark and musty in the room he’s confined to. 

Jason stands; the chains on him break and fall away, rusted beyond measure and barely put together anymore. It has been nearly a decade, after all.

Jason smiles. 

There’s light filtering in through the crack beneath the door; feeble and dim, but still there for the first time in a long time. 

He makes his way across the dusty room, swiping the familiar dagger off the countertop as he goes, and makes a mental note to call Talia, in a bit. 

It’s a joyous day, after all. 

Finally, Jason reaches the door tucking into the very corner of the small room, unfamiliar peace settling into his bones that’s belied by confidence. By knowingness.

He twists that broken, bloodied knob, and for the first time in years, it turns; the door opens. 

Beyond the grimy doorframe, he sees familiar faces. Old friends and lovers. Family that, he hopes, has never forgotten him. 

Beyond the door lay freedom that has been stripped from him for years, held captive in the hands of a clown. 

Jason Todd smiles. Doesn’t look back at the carnage he’s leaving, not even once. 

He leaves.

Chapter Text

It’s raining tonight. 

Dick pushes his mop of hair out of his face, huffing at the weight the wet tresses press down against his scalp. Though there were still a few hours in his patrol route, he’s already dreaming about the hot shower and warm bed waiting for him back at the manor. But Gotham is the city that never rests peacefully, chained to the ground by the monsters that roam the streets at night. 

It’s not a monster he’s hunting tonight, though. 

“B, I have no visual on Hood,” Dick mumbles into his comm, shooting up and off the roof he’d been camping on for the better part of an hour. “Do you have any leads?” 

“None,” Batman—Bruce—growls, tone belied by frustration. Jason had all but disappeared into nothingness, a ghost haunting their streets. A bleeding, injured ghost, who didn’t believe them when they said they wanted to bring him back to the Batcave for medical attention. 

Dick’s stomach flip-flops over the thought of his younger brother, somewhere out there, bleeding to death (again). 

“Maybe it’s time to call it,” Barbara’s voice is grave, but someone has to be the realist. “If he doesn’t want to be found, Hood won’t be found. You know this.” 

Dick doesn’t like the idea of it; it sounds like abandonment. It tastes like failure. 

But Jason has been back over a year and they’ve gotten no more of him than furious confrontations and fleeting moments between heartbeats.

Giving up tastes like failure, and Dick has grown all too familiar with it.

It’s an accident, the first time it happens. 

Dick had been in the neighbourhood for a case, following up some leads and covering the bases. It was thankless work, sometimes, but he enjoyed the quiet, mechanical chore. 

And when he sees Jason, arm slung around a woman, he can even think it’s rewarding.

Unbidden, a smile crosses his face; the thought of his little brother finding happiness is a delightful one, and not one he’s ever really associated with Jason before. The realization comes with a healthy dose of guilt, and that abrupt self-hatred is what has him trailing after Jason and the mystery woman, two hundreds paces and hands in his pockets like a scolded child. 

But the closer he gets…

“Seriously, T, I’m fine,” Jason is complaining, but his voice is laced with a fondness Dick has never heard in this lifetime. “It was just a flesh wound, nothing more.”

T?

Does that mean— 

“And did you take care of it properly, silly boy?” 

Dick recognizes that voice. The familiarity of it wraps itself around his heart like a vice, raising his hackles and that defensiveness so deeply ingrained into his bones. 

“Talia, I’m fine,” Jason replies, the rebuke sharp and still so much kinder than anything he’s ever said to Dick or Bruce. “Now, are you going to let me cook for you or not? I’ve been practicing a handful of recipes since last month and I think you’re gonna like some of them.”

Kindness. The implication of repeated visits. Cooking. 

Something ugly and cold creeps into Dick’s mind. 

He stops walking. 

Talia Al Ghul casts a look backwards, takes in the turmoil on Dick Grayson’s face, and smiles.

“I’m not sure what to do,” Dick finally concedes, defeated. Duke makes a sympathetic noise, and in the background even Cass frowns in sympathy. 

Damian’s nightmares have been getting worse, aggravated by the endless cycle of violence and bloodshed that has taken Gotham captive. Dick has temporarily relocated to the Manor, dead set on offering his little brother the comfort he doesn’t know how to ask for. But nightmares are nightmares and growing children need their sleep.

“Warm milk. With a touch of honey and cinnamon.” 

The voice that offers a solution is not the one he had expected, made clear by the way everyone’s heads turn in Jason’s direction.

The man in question shrugs, facial expression hidden by the shiny metal of the helmet he wears. The curtain between him and the rest of them, a shield that can only be broken intentionally, if in which case Jason will have all the more reason to retaliate with a brutal vengeance.  

“It used to help him,” and the explanation is perhaps more baffling than the willingness Jason gives the suggestion with. 

And Dick…

The hope that balloons through him is enough to choke the air from his lungs, fierce and unyielding as it is. It’s as if the sun is peeking out through the clouds, a sought-after kindness in the mid-November weather.

“Thanks, Jay,” he manages to say, around the growing lump in his throat. His heart is constricted by the quiet, aching fondness that haunts their every step, every cautious interaction. And when Jason nods back before waving goodbye and hopping off the roof...

He doesn’t say the million things he’s kept close to his chest for so long, though, the fear of shattering the moment outweighing the burning need to let Jason know he can come home.

The first time his brother smiles in his direction since coming back to life, Dick almost cries. 

It’s a precious gift, even if Jason thinks nothing of it; all his hard edges have been softened by the combined power of Duke and Damian, something close to companionship tying the three of them together. It’s hard not to be jealous of the closeness they share when Dick has been chasing after shadows for what seems like half his life, but he wasn’t raised to resent happiness. He can appreciate the kindness the three of them afford each other, even if it’s something he isn’t privy to. 

He smiles back at Jason, blinding and true, and when the sun rises on the two of them, Dick thinks he’s invincible. Two young gods overlooking the city they’ve sworn to protect, the city they’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears for. A job Jason has died for.

“Quit your smirking, ass,” Jason snarks, and it’s the kindest thing he’s ever said to Dick in this lifetime. The sun paints his little brother golden, a masterpiece with their weight in gold; how badly part of him wants to share this with Bruce, to point it out to their father and say ‘look at your son’. But another part of him refuses to let Bruce ruin it for them, will keep it to himself for as long as he lives. 

I’ll treasure it, Dick promises to himself. It’s a torture like no other. 

It’s a love like no other.

Their lives damn them, Dick thinks. 

It’s with numbing pain and a mouth that tastes like ashes that he watches the playback of Bruce and Jason, on that roof, the beatdown, the blood, the fallen form of his little brother. He can barely think past the way Jason doesn’t get back up, the thought of Bruce carrying on his assault if not for Roy’s timely intervention.

Perhaps it’s time to understand. Perhaps the Manor is no longer home, and Batman is no longer Bruce, and after the lives they’ve led…

Dick isn’t quite sure he can keep asking Jason to come back only to be cut loose. To be pummelled into the unforgiving concrete, to stick his neck out only to be abandoned by the same people who were supposed to cherish him. 

He feels like a monster. He feels like a villain.

He feels like a failure.

The first time he sees Jason after Bruce had thrown him out of Gotham, the ex-vigilante is with a smiling Roy Harper. A Roy with his arm slung across Jason’s shoulders, so casual it stings. 

The sight of the two of them jolts Dick, pierces him with a fierce and brutal longing to go up to his brother and beg for his forgiveness. To explain how desperately Dick hangs on to the strings that bind them all, if only to be there for Dami and Duke and Cass. It’s suffocating, it’s horrible, and sometimes it feels like a noose.

Jason, though, has been cut from those strings. Dick wonders if his brother thinks he did it himself, or if he lives with the knowledge that it had been Bruce, all Bruce, who had torn the delicate strings of ‘family’ and left Jason alone in the darkness. In isolation.

He wants so badly to cross the room.

But he doesn’t; he stays at Bruce’s side, quiet and despaired. Batman himself is looking over at the duo, something like pain driving his aborted motions, and all Dick can think is ‘how dare you’. 

Light catches, out of the corner of his eyes. He chances another glance at Jason, his hands, and feels his heart still at the rings on their fingers, the two of them lost in their own world. 

He’s happy, Dick thinks, and it settles into his bones. He feels at peace. 

It’s belied by sadness. 

He wants to shout across the space between them, a pleading ‘I miss you’ in the presence of Earth’s finest. To have everyone bear witness to how much he wishes it had been him Bruce had put his hands on, how badly he wishes Jason had been spared that wrath. 

He doesn’t, though.

He doesn’t think he deserves to anymore, to yell in the aftermath. To Jason, it’ll seem like nothing more than another breakable promise, a hollow victory in the face of despair. Nothing more than an alleviation of Dick’s own guilt. 

(Dick turns around; Jason’s eyes follow his retreating back curiously, his dinner curdling in his stomach at the sorrow he’d caught in his older brother’s eyes.

“I thought you wanted to talk to him?” Roy asks, concern in the furrow of his brow. Their hands are interlaced, and Jason knows Roy is one of the very few people he’ll ever let touch him so casually.

“I do,” Jason concedes, turning to offer Roy a quiet smile. It’s a melancholic thing, but everything about this second life is, save for the man standing next to him. 

“But now isn’t the right time, huh?”)

He asks Wally one night, while they’re curled up around one another and watching the sunrise.

“Is it bad? That I miss him? That I want him home, even if I know he’s happy wherever he is now?”

Wally looks at him then, and the pity is almost unbearable. He thinks he hates it. He thinks he’s grateful.

“It’s okay to miss people we love, Dick.”

And that’s the simplest truth, isn't it? 

Jason is family. Despite the years of tribulation that stand between them, despite any resentment between Bruce and Jason, they’re family. 

Dick misses him with something fierce; Wally’s touch alleviates only a portion of it all. 

(But for tonight, for today, for now, it’s enough.)

An urgent hand grasps at his shoulder, shaking him back unconsciously with an unpleasant undertone of nausea. 

“Goldie, stay awake, you bastard!” 

That voice…

It’s unbearably familiar. 

It sounds like a dream. It hurts like a nightmare.

“Jay?” Dick manages to slur out, reaching out blindly into the darkness of whatever hell they’re immersed in. All around them is the sounds of battle, of war, and Dick wonders how pathetic he’s become, to be one of the first to fall. 

“Who else, dumbass? Stop moving.”

It sounds like a dream. Dick wants to cry, maybe, possibly, but his entire body is on fire and everything in the world narrows down to the way Jason is staring at him, teeth gritted and hands shaking.

“Dumbass,” his baby brother repeats, voice cracking. “You fucking moron, why would you...that bullet was meant for me.”

“‘Xactly,” Dick mumbles around a mouthful of blood. Jason tells him to shut up; he can’t hear anymore, but Dick resorts to staring up into the face of his baby brother, all grown and big. When had that happened? How did he miss it?”

“Miss what, idiot?”

He had spoken out loud? Movement unsure in a way that’s unlike the acrobat, Dick reaches up to press his hand against Jason’s cheek. 

“You’re big now,” Dick hears himself say. He’s sure there’s a broken smile on his face. “Missed it, didn’t I?” 

And because fate is cruel, because they have never had the best of luck, because life is cruel in unimaginable ways—

Dick blacks out before he can hear what Jason has to say.

(Jason forces the tears from his eyes, shaken by the gentle question. He’s grown, he knows, is no longer the angry boy Bruce had given up on. Talia knows it. Roy knows it. Duke and Damian know it.

But to have Dick...for him to see what everyone else sees, for someone so close to Bruce to know Jason is trying to move on…

“Jaybird,” Roy says, gently pulling his husband away from the scene so the medics could get to work. Batman hovers nearby, torn between settling into the space between his sons and staying far away from the son he had thrown away. “Jay, you gotta let them work.”

Jason doesn’t let go of Dick’s hand, not until he’s being pushed away and his brother is being boarded up, taken into the skies. 

He’s covered in blood. The realization is haunting, sending a bolt of nausea straight through his body, gutting like a knife. He’s been blood-drenched before, hands slick with red from the day he had crawled out of his own coffin. He’s familiar with Bruce’s blood on his hands, has had the Joker’s, Ra’s, every petty criminal to grace Gotham’s streets.

He's had Dick’s on his hands before too, though. But for the first time—

It burns.)

When he awakens, it’s in a hospital room. 

To his right, Wally sleeps; slumped over in an uncomfortable-looking, plastic chair, the speedster has clearly been there since they’d brought Dick in. The thought brings an apologetic smile to Dick’s face, but before he can gently shake his boyfriend awake, a voice interrupts the silence.

“You’re up.”

Dick has been the personification of hope since he was a child. Has been beheld as the hope of his generation of heroes, the standard that everyone tries to live up to. It’s always been such a joke to him, that a flawed, broken thing like him could be what everyone aspired to be like; hope has never been kind to him in turn. 

He’s grown tired of it, over the years. All its brought is heartsickness and misery. 

But here, in this sterile room, hooked up to a handful of machines and numb with pain—

Dick turns to find his little brother in the mouth of the room, tired and bruised but here. 

“Little Bird,” the old title slips out, instinctive despite years of never being used. And yet somehow it feels right, especially when Jason’s eyes light up.

“Huh. That’s a throwback,” the younger man smiles, but it’s strained around the edges with something that looks like pain. It’s a familiar look, but Dick is too full of painkillers to be able to place it; Jason moves closer to the bed, hands in his pockets.

It’s the first time they’ve been around each other, unarmed, in years; Jason is still in his gear, but the guns and daggers and masks are nowhere to be seen. This is Jason, how Roy has him, how Talia has him, how Duke and Damian have him. The realization floors Dick, and he can gorge himself on the sickly sweetness that fills him at the thought. 

“Yeah, well, you’re never around for me to use it,” Dick shoots back, words slurring and sticking together in his current state. Still, Jason understands; there’s no guilt on the man’s face, but his eyes sharpen with something close to acknowledgement. 

“Not my fault, Big Bird,” Jason shrugs. Even to Dick it looks uncomfortable as hell, but there are a thousand unsaid things between the two of them, and this is merely one of them. “You can take it up with the head honcho.” 

“I will,” Dick says, and the firm vow sobers them both.

(He remembers where he's seen that look before, that expression that had tugged at his memory with insistence. He's seen it on Bruce. He's seen it in the mirror.)

It’s a few minutes before Jason speaks again.

“Dick. You can’t pull this shit ever again.”

His brow furrows. His memories of the fight are muddied, but he can’t recall doing anything reckless enough to warrant a lecture from Jason, of all people. “What are you talking about?”

“Taking a bullet for me. It was stupid, rash even.”

The familiar fog of anger sets over him; Dick struggles into a seated position, careful not to jostle Wally. Jason watches him with put-upon nonchalance, those incandescent eyes bright in the early morning sunlight. 

When he’s finally upright, breath caught, Dick speaks through gritted teeth: “knock it off.”

“Knock what off, bastard?” Jason asks, Red Hood’s grin on his face. Dick hates it. “I’m telling you you’re not allowed to take a bullet for me ever again.”

“That’s my job!” Dick snaps, desperate for Jason to see . “That’s my job, and I’ve never once succeeded at it. Do you know how that feels, Jay? To repeatedly fail those you love?”

“Don’t do that,” Jason snarls, and oh, Dick is reminded of wounded prey. Abruptly, he realizes his brother has come to cut his ties, to wash his hands of Dick, christened by the fear of loss that had shaken him when Dick had fallen. Like hell. “It’s not your fucking job, Goldie. I’m not your family.”

“You are! You are, you always were, and you always will be. Bruce or Tim or anyone can’t change that, Jason!”

A break in the conversation; a change of pace, really, punctured by their heavy breathing. Dick thinks he’s pulled his stitches, a burst of warmth flooding his side, but he can’t focus on anything but the pain wrought across the face of his little brother. 

“Why?” Jason almost moans, eyes shuttering close. It sounds like agony, but to Dick, it finally tastes like hope. “Why do you...why, for me?

Finally.

Finally. 

No more ghosts. No more regrets. No more abandonment. 

Dick smiles, and it feels like freedom. A new beginning.

“Cause I love you, baby brother. Always have, and always will.”

And when Jason shuffles closer still, a new light in his eyes, a new curve to his smile—

Something broken in Dick’s chest shifts, settles into place, eases the burden on his heart. Wordlessly, a very much awake Wally squeezes Dick’s hand in congratulations, and a grinning Roy bursts through the door with a happy cheer. 

It looks like his future. 

It feels like love. 

Chapter Text

It’s a warm, wet spring day when it happens. 

He’d heard rumblings, of course, the small tidbits of information he hears he and there, the things he picks up on from Duke’s offhand comments. Despite the subject matter, he doesn’t run to Bruce; he never will again, not without a thorough acknowledgement of all the shit that had happened between the two of them. And considering that’s as likely as Bruce willingly retiring the cowl, Jason goes to the only source—the only parent—he can trust. 

“I’m not quite sure what’s happening, either,” Talia says, brow furrowed in that familiar way. She puts a cup of tea in his hands, absentmindedly placing her hands over his and maneuvering his fingers into curling around the warm ceramic. “All I’ve really heard is things about an alternate dimension, the usual ‘world-ending’ nonsense that you’d expect from the Justice League.”

Jason flashes her a small smile, the one he reserves for her—just her, now, but if he dwells on the thought too long his heart will break just a touch more—before taking an appreciative sip of the drink. There’s nothing more than a touch of sweetness, just like the way he’s loved it for years; nothing is quite as kind as a cup of tea made by motherly hands. “Nothing says Tuesday like an impending apocalypse, huh, T?” 

“Mm. I do wonder, though…”

He shoots her a curious glance over the rim of his cup. She shakes her head, reaching for her own tea; her eyes drift to the open window, taking in the cloudy skies with a contemplative look. 

“...What, exactly, had been worth putting the entire universe at stake.” 

And though Jason may have his own grievances with the League, he can admit the heiress has a point; Batman is, with anything other than the topic of his second son, level-headed and bias-free. And there’s very little in the man’s eyes worth the safety of their universe. 

“Well, whatever it is, we’ll just have to be prepared to deal with the fallout, won’t we? It’s what we do best, after all.” 

Talia inclines her head in agreement, even if her expression remains unsettled. Jason knows it’s the present and future leader in her, that mind that’s both with him and miles away with the smallest Robin. Jason knows the boy is safe with Duke and Batman and everyone else guarding his back, but Talia has never been in the business and leaving her children entirely in the hands of other people, even if it's their father. 

Unbeknownst to them, off in the distance, the world lights up golden.

He wakes to a single text from Duke: expect incoming.

It’s ambiguous enough that Jason shoots upright in bed, blinking blearily at the too-bright screen with adrenaline lighting up his brain. He knows the kid knows better than to say something so vague to Jason, and at 3 in the morning the irritation is near tangible; the next time he sees Duke, he’s going to kick him in the shins or something.

“Fucking youth,” Jason grumbles, crawling out of bed and reaching for the gun he keeps next to his bed. It’s hard to see in the dark, harder to hear under the furious sounds of the thunderstorm, and when lightning washes the room in blue-white, Jason thinks he can make out the ghosts that haunt his steps standing by the edge of the bed.

“Fucking everything,” he hears himself say, hoarse and tired and lonely, even as he barely manages to tear his eyes away from the apparition of an all-too familiar hat. That stupid, ugly hat, whose counterpart sits untouched in Jason’s closet, next to a box of tools and a couple spare arrows. 

He exits the bedroom, all but stomping down the hallway in search of the kitchen. Jason’s glad, more in this moment than any other, that he had gotten Talia to relent on the larger apartments the woman had picked out. He isn’t quite sure what he would do with more too-long shadows and empty rooms. This modest condo was already too big with two people, and is near unbearable, now, with just one. 

He grips the glass in his hand just a touch tighter.

Here he is, months after the loss itself, and the wound is still fresh and aching and bleeding, stubbornly refusing to scab over. Jason has loved and lost before, many times; he’s a master in the art of loss. But losing Roy...it had been too much, too fast, too soon. He doesn’t want to recover from Roy, he doesn’t want to stop seeing his best friend’s ghost out of the corner of his eye. 

Belatedly, he hears the door opening. It must be the ‘incoming’ Duke had been speaking of, either Batman or Cass or maybe even Duke himself. Maybe something else had gone wrong, maybe someone else had turned up dead, and now he has more crimes to answer for. 

Jason turns in the direction of the doorway, bracing himself for a fight even as Roy’s memory—his phantom touch—lingers. It’s the same old song and dance with the Bats, and even if Jason is too disorientated to really pose a threat right now, he’d be damned twice over if he didn’t at least try to intimidate whoever came through the door. 

But—

A familiar ghost steps through the opening, disheveled and grimy and panting. In the waning moonlight, he almost looks transparent, like an untouchable dream, an unforgettable nightmare. The last he’d seen of him...well. Jason has always been a haunted man, but never like that.

“Oh, you asshole,” Jason says, and they both pretend like his voice doesn’t crack on the familiar insult. His tone is too breathy for it to be anything but loving. “You said you’d come back.”

“And here I am, as promised,” Roy Harper says, a tiny grin on his face even as his eyes go impossibly warm. “Just a little late, and a little like death warmed over. But better late than never, right, Jaybird?” 

And—

They’re both hovering in their spots, held down by either shock, hesitancy, or the relentless fear of whatever this is being unreal. A passing chance in a dream. But then Jason is moving, and Roy is moving, and they’re slamming into each other like waves against the shore; the kiss is brutal and fierce, nothing short of desperation. 

“Roy,” Jason says into his boyfriend’s mouth, still clinging, still disbelieving. He’s too tired—too knowing—to hope for anything anymore. Batman had beaten it out of him, on a rooftop in Gotham months and months ago. “What the fuck.”

“I know,” the archer groans, leaning forward and stealing another kiss, and another, and another. “I know, Jay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t...I’m here now. I don’t even know what the hell happened or who brought us back but I came here as soon as I could.”

Expect incoming. Fuck, Jason was gonna have to buy the kid some dice for that game he enjoys or something. Maybe yell for a few minutes for not giving him a proper heads up. But all that was secondary to the very real feeling of Roy in his arms, Roy kissing him, Roy back home. Roy. Undead and smiling and here with him. 

“Can’t let you outta my sight ever again,” Jason mumbles, pressing his nose into the curve of Roy’s shoulder and relishing the way the man laughs. “You might go and do something stupid like die again.” 

“No worries,” Roy holds him close, lets Jason listen to the archer’s very strong heartbeat. Jason can feel that months-long wound finally beginning to scab over and heal, even as dawn breaks outside the window; at some point, the rain has stopped. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Jason lets his eyes close, hiding a smile against the side of Roy’s neck. The ghosts retreat to the darkest corners of the apartment, one less in numbers and now nearly powerless; there is less grief for them to feed off of now, after all. 

“Welcome home, jackass,” Jason says, eyes bright, heart no longer heavy, and everything...everything finally feels alright. 

Chapter Text

He hits the ground running. 

“Hey, Bats, heads up!” Jason yells, ducking to avoid an errant fist. The goons in front of him start shooting again, forcing him to slide under one of their legs; the force sends him careening into a pair of garbage cans, pulling a pained groan from his lips. Damn it. 

“Hey Hood, you good?” Duke asks over the comms, hardly any strain to be heard. Maybe Jason’s getting old, getting a crick in his back, but the entire fight he had been wheezing. Huffing. Duke is just the first to ask about it. “You sound, uh…”

“Like shit,” Stephanie pipes up helpfully, kicking a gun-wielding thug to the ground. “You catch the flu that’s goin’ around?” 

Jason scowls—not that it’s visible under his helmet. “Listen, it’s hard to stay all healthy and shit when you live balls deep in Crime Alley, alright? Mrs. Fulstone had the flu and I was helping her with her groceries, do the math.” 

There’s a pause in the conversation; he’s sure they’re cataloguing the information that the big, bad Red Hood spent his free time helping old ladies. He would be offended if he still gave a damn, but, well…

“You should come home.”

Jason pauses—trips, due to his surprise over who is offering up his roof and all that comes with it. “Um, no thanks, B. I’m good.”

“You’re sick. Alfred could take care of you.”

“In the Manor? No thanks, big man, I’d rather not deal with the stifling disappointment and the tension over a cold.”

They finish tying up the bad guys, Batman—Bruce—inching closer and closer. Jason stands hostile, but—

“Please, son. I’d...feel better, if I knew you were being taken care of.”

—it’s the slight tremor, the indications of old age, the unbearable hope . 

“I...fine, B. Fine.”

That’s what makes him say ‘yes’.

“Cass! Stop moving!” 

The words come out garbled, distorted by the hairpins he’s biting down on. Jason watches Cass roll her eyes in the mirror, bedecked in her ballerina gear. The backstage area is bustling with activity, all sorts of dancers and their families milling about; Cass is on in approximately ten minutes, and Jason’s been recruited to help her do her hair and makeup for the event.  

He’s meticulous when he pulls back every wayward strand and begins to put it into a bun, careful not to pull too hard. She watches him in the mirror, finally sitting still enough for him to finish tying up her hair and taking a step back. 

“Why’d you want me to do this, anyways?” He asks, pushing some of the bobby pins into the bun, securing it as best as he can. “I know the others are out in the audience, so it’s not like they wouldn’t have jumped at the opportunity, so…” 

Cass doesn’t immediately respond, instead choosing to climb out of the seat and tucking it in under the vanity. Jason watches on curiously as she settles in at the spot at his elbow, pressing fingers into the crook of his arm. 

“You’re my brother,” she says, eyes bright, lips pulled up in a smile. It draws a startled noise from him, an embarrassing reaction to something that’s just factual. 

“And you’re my sister,” Jason shoots back, a tiny grin on his face. 

And that? That is enough.

Jason clings to the sink, leaning his entire weight onto his forearms as he gags into the basin. Fresh blood—bright red—splatters against the porcelain, running down into the drain. It had been a rough night, with no one to watch his back by his own choice. 

“Shit,” he grunts, pulling back to swipe the back of his hand across his mouth. It pulls at the wound on his chin, a gruesome little thing from someone’s pocket knife. 

“Language,” Talia’s voice comes from his phone, the exasperation clear even with the distance that separates them. “Why were you out alone, my son? ” 

“You know how it is,” Jason shrugs even if she can’t see it. “Me n’ Bruce had a falling out—again—so I told the brats to stop hanging around—again.” 

“Oh, Jason,” Talia sighs, but she knows better than to push; not with this, at least. “Would you like to come visit me, then? It’s been quite some time since I’ve had your cooking.”

He thinks about it. Considers the loneliness, the cold nights, the empty apartment; remembers the all too familiar disappointment—anger—on Bruce’s face. Over dinner, arguing about something stupid, aggravating enough that Jason had stormed out mid-dinner. He couldn’t for the life of him remember the actual argument, though. 

He never does, anymore. 

“Uh, sure, T,” he finally responds, cursing himself mentally for the way his voice wavers. He sounds his age, for once, and he knows she catalogues it away for later. “I’ll swing by.” 

“Good, I’ll be waiting. Love you, son.”

“Hey, Jaybird!” 

Jason grunts and looks up from where he’s putting the finishing touches on the food spread out on the table, glancing up to find Roy standing in the mouth of the room, bedecked in feathers and sparkles. 

“Oh, excellent,” Jason’s eyes roam over his boyfriend’s attire, a wry grin on his face. The redhead gives him an exaggerated twirl, feathers scattering to the floor all around them. “You gonna have that on when Bruce gets here?”

“You know it.”

“God, I love you.” 

Roy’s laugh is bright, guileless; somedays, when things feel especially hopeless, Jason wishes he could bottle it up. Keep it to himself. But he could never rob Roy of that happiness, would rather do his best to keep Roy convinced to stay by him. 

“Love you too, Jay,” Roy throws an arm around Jason’s shoulders, pressing a dramatic kiss against Jason’s cheek. “Hey, it’s midnight in a couple hours.” 

“Yeah?” Jason asks, raising an eyebrow while leaning into Roy’s embrace. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Ha ha,” Roy rolls his eyes, but his grip only tightens. “I mean that next year? Is our year.” 

Oh. Jason turns his head to hide the blush that breaks out across her face, but Roy knows him too well; he chases after him with a chuckle, presses a mess of kisses against the curve of Jason’s jaw.  

In the light, the ring on Jason’s finger—silver, carrying the weight of a promise, the hopes of a future—sparkles.

“Just so you know, this is temporary,” Jason stresses, gesturing for Bruce to sit down. “Only ‘cause it’s raining hard and, well...you’re not exactly in tip top shape anymore. Alfie would come down on my ass if I let you out in this weather.” 

“Thank you, chum,” Bruce says, pulling off the cowl with a sigh. The vigilante startles at the gray hairs at the man’s temples, the deep lines of his face. “I won’t overstay my welcome, I swear.” 

“No worries,” Jason shrugs, vaguely uncomfortable with the visible signs of mortality. “Just, um, doing what anybody else would do, yeah?” 

An awkward silence envelops them now; Jason takes the opportunity to cross the room and grab some more towels, stripping out of his gear and tossing it into the laundry bin he keeps for this very reason. Bruce watches him—part curiosity, part parental stress—for a few minutes before turning his attention to the well-kept apartment they were in. Jason’s apartment. 

“This is a nice place,” Bruce notes. Jason kind of misses the days where he couldn’t hear the underlying suspicion. 

“Talia set it up for me,” he answers the unspoken question rather vindictively, eyes narrowing. “Said something along the lines of she didn’t want me living in a dump. Or whatever.”

That shuts up Bruce. The man finds a patch of carpet to glare at while Jason moves through the apartment, heating up leftovers and plating it up for the both of them. Only when he comes back with steaming mugs of tea after placing the plates down on the table does Bruce look up. 

“You could’ve asked me,” he murmurs, something painfully vulnerable in his eyes that Jason doesn’t want to think about. “I wouldn’t have minded helping you find a place, I…” 

“I know, B,” Jason cuts him off, somewhat hastily. This isn’t a can of worms he wants to be opening now, rained in with nowhere to go. “Don’t worry, I know, it’s just...she’s very involved, uh, with my well-being. Kinda annoying, honestly—but don’t tell her I said that.”

Bruce smiles, at that. A tiny, secretive thing, a relic from their shared past. Jason sighs, places the mugs down on the table before patting the man’s shoulder. 

“I know I can come to you.”

“We cannot keep him.”

Jason doesn’t hear her; he’s too focused on the bundle of fur jumping on him excitedly, drawing peals of laughter from him. Talia watches on, equal parts amused and exasperated, but she doesn’t pull the two of them apart. 

“Can I name him?” Jason asks—pleads, really—turning hopeful eyes towards the woman seated near the window, nursing a fresh cup of tea. “Please, T?” 

“Naming him grows an attachment, Jason, and we can’t take a dog with us on our travels,” Talia chides him gently. 

“We can! I can take care of him!” 

Oh, son, you barely take care of yourself.

But Talia—

She’s powerless in the face of Jason’s imploring face. This is the most animated she’s seen him since they’ve left on their so-called world tour to get him properly trained. The most childlike he’s allowed himself to be. And if this dog is all it takes, then, well…

She sighs. And Jason? Jason knows it’s in defeat. 

The things we do to protect those we love.

Jason shoves the dealer onto the pavement, clicking his tongue as the man groans in pain, blood spilling across the asphalt.

“Ah, ah, ah, Douglas,” he says, rather mockingly. “You’re being a rude boy. Either you give up your stash or I break a couple more bones, eh?” 

“Hood. That’s enough.” 

He stops. Sighs. Keeps his foot on the bastard’s throat as he turns to watch Batman and his lackeys approach, weapons drawn. 

“Listen, Bats,” he starts with a monotone, even with anger licking its way up his spine. “This gentle giant has been selling to street kids on my turf. What I do to him? None of your damn business.” 

“Everything that happens in Gotham is my business,” Bruce shoots back, incensed. One of those nights, then. “Either you let up or I get involved. You choose.” 

Rock and a hard place routine. It makes Jason scoff, relent, has him strolling down the street even if indignation burns a hole down his throat. He had Douglas’ cronies, anyways, and if Batman and the like wanted the easy target he’d already apprehended? Then, fine. Whatever.

“Hood.” 

He stops walking. 

“When did you...when did you get back into town? I thought you were with Talia.” 

For the better part of a year, goes unsaid. Truths too heavy to bear.

And Jason?

Jason keeps walking. 

“You haven’t been eating,” Talia murmurs softly, pushing his hair back from his forehead and planting a soft kiss on his temple. Jason flinches, before feeling embarrassed over the reaction; this is Talia, who he has never had to hide anything from, be it pain or emotion. 

“Haven’t felt like it, I guess,” Jason whispers. The speaking makes his throat move, pulls at the meticulous stitches across the skin of his neck. Every word pulls the woman’s eyes back to the grievous wound, resetting the fury deep in her irises. It makes Jason want to run, maybe, makes him want to fade away into nothingness and leave no mark on any soul he’s come in contact with. 

“Nonsense,” Talia picks the bowl of broth up herself, collecting some onto the spoon and blowing on it gently. Jason watches her with dull eyes, not quite gone, not quite there; she’s careful when she brings the spoon to his lips, careful as she tips the tasteful liquid down his aching throat. The pain it causes him isn’t lost on her, and the spoon trembles during the next mouthful.

“He’ll pay for this,” she says, absentmindedly. Every syllable comes drenched in rage. “All of it.”

Jason stares out the window; it’s raining again, painting the whole word in the same dull shade of gray. A reflection of the void inside of him, maybe, the twin to the nothingness left behind by death. 

He wonders if he’ll get anything back. 

“Jason? Did you hear me? He’ll suffer for what he did to you,” Talia repeats, firm. Unyielding. The lighthouse in the dark. 

Jason can’t resist a smile; a painful, ugly thing that would make anyone other than Talia Al Ghul pull away. 

“Which one of them?”

“Oh great, this is just lovely,” Jason groans, shoving his hands deep inside his pocket and throwing his head back. Next to him, Cass giggles, and even Duke grins at his exasperation; across the room, Bruce shoots him a look before immersing himself in the conversation he’s having with Oliver fucking Queen, of all people. “What are the odds they’re planning the next Capes get together?” 

“Fat zero.”

They turn and find Dick approaching them with a smug grin on his face, smug enough that Jason wants to slug him despite the fact that they’re at a very public event. 

“Walked by, heard your name and Roy’s name excessively,” his older brother reveals, gleefully. “I’d start placing bets, people.” 

“Ten bucks says Bruce is going to punch him in the gut,” Duke starts them off, waving the bills around for proof. 

“Ten bucks says Bruce is going to slug him, yes, but also blame Ollie for sleeping with some ex,” Stephanie carries on, grinning and flashing the bills. Jason guffaws and steals a high five as Duke swears under his breath, the others nodding in approval. 

“Maybe I’ll drop twenty on Ollie being the first to swing, because Bruce insults his honour or something like that, just so Bruce can go on record and call him a hooligan,” Dick tries. 

“Isn’t like you to bet against Papa B like this, Dickie,” Jason needles, raising an eyebrow. Roy is across the room with Donna and Wally, caught up in some argument about seating arrangements or whatnot. “You know the consequences of withholding information during serious proceedings such as this.” 

“Do I ever,” Dick mutters under his breath. “You think I forgot about the last time? I still get phantom pains, you little shit.”

“Oh, do you now? Good. That teaches you to mess around with the family betting pool, Goldilocks.”

“Well it’s your turn to be in the hot seat, Little Bird, and I hope you have zero fun—” 

“Um guys?” Duke interrupts, tugging on their sleeves. “Not that this isn’t highly entertaining, but I think we all lost. Look at what’s going down.”

They turn their attention back to the scene, where Clark Kent is standing between the two men, a fake, pleasant smile plastered on his face as he talks to both men, quietly enough that they can’t hear what’s going on.  

“What happens when everyone’s wrong, again?” Stephanie asks, groaning. Cassandra pats her shoulder in sympathy. They all watch the proceedings—Oliver gesturing animatedly while Bruce is pulled away by Diana—with varying degrees of amusement. 

“Uh, the money goes to Alfred.”

“The cheese pot?”

“The cheese pot.”

Their late-night missions are frustrating in the sense that they’re the last things standing between them and warm beds. Sometimes, it’s more than worth it; crimes, cracking cold cases, finding new leads...but sometimes?

“I cannot fucking believe this is happening.”

Sometimes, it’s the most aggravating thing to ever happen.

Jason stands covered in soap suds and bubbles, every inch of his gear soaked and smelling floral. Damian is in front of him, holding back his snark for once, equally covered in the spilled contents of the runaway truck they’d been chasing. 

“Well, Hood,” the kid mumbles, shaking an arm to try and dislodge some of the soap. “I daresay we can blame this shortcoming on your historically documented bad luck.”

“Oh, and you’re a real lucky dude, huh?” Jason snaps back, ripping his helmet off; the wiring’s fired, and the thing was beginning to spark and sizzle. Way he’s feeling, he’s seconds away from punting it off the pier. “How did we get the info so wrong?”

“I think that’s my fault,” Barbara shamelessly admits through their comms. “They went dark for a few minutes, I sent you after this one, sent Duke and Cass after the other. Sorry, boys.” 

“I don’t like smelling like flowers,” Damian scowls, crossing his arms; much like Jason, he’s finally given up on trying to wipe any of the residue off. “And this is overkill.” 

“Yeah, but you know what?”

Damian turns his attention to his partner, but Jason has his eyes fixed on the horizon, a tired smile on his face; it’s the first time that Damian’s seen such a wistful smile on the man’s face, even after years of knowing each other. 

“Least we got to see a pretty sunrise, huh?” 

Chapter Text

FERNS (secret bond of love, sincerity)

He had given the slip to the Bats just over an hour ago, leaping over rooftops and swinging between skyscrapers until he was sure Batman and his brood had tired out and left him be. Practicing caution, he’d moved from district to district, taking the most roundabout way home to ensure his anonymity would last another night—even if it’s an allowance Batman gives him, the space. A self-inflicted punishment. 

Jason tries not to think about it too much. 

The stairs creak as he climbs them; it’s a familiar rhythm, one that has the adrenaline in his veins quieting down with every step. His body powers down, his shoulders begin to lose their tension, and by the time he’s unlocking the front door, he’s exhausted and longing for a bout of plentiful sleep that’ll never come. 

The door opens; contrary to popular belief, he lived in a well-kept apartment tucked into the heart of his territory. The place had been a mess when he had picked it, stubborn and immovable, but after renovations it looked like it belonged up where Wayne Manor was. 

He spies a pair of familiar heels by the rest of his boots; he hears her before he sees her. 

“Hello, my son,” Talia’s voice carries through the distance between them. Immediately, his mind settles into ease, soothed by the warmth of her tone, and the smell of chilli powder in the air. “Welcome home.”

ALOE (affection, but also grief)

Bruce watches Jason go; behind the mask, his eyes lose their focus, all thought fizzling out into white noise. The sight of Jason’s back shouldn’t haunt him like this, not anymore, but he can’t stop himself from wanting what he can’t have. 

Duke touches his arm—out of sympathy, out of pity—and it brings Bruce back into himself, at least momentarily. In the distance, Jason’s silhouette gets smaller and smaller, soon a pinprick out on the skyline. Bruce knows the boy will double back, spin circles around Gotham’s streets in an effort to cloak himself from their eyes, and it's as endearing as it is upsetting. 

Someday, he’ll be able to look Jason in the eye and say ‘you don’t have to hide from me’. But he has no right, no ground to stand on, no evidence to back up his claims. Bruce raised his children to always consider the facts, to set aside all and any bias when dealing with a case—it’s not fair, then, to now beg Jason to consider where Bruce is coming from without a lick of precedent to strengthen the claims.

“Was he injured?” Bruce finds himself asking. He sounds as distraught as he always does whenever their paths crossed with Jason. The rain and the darkness of night hadn’t been enough to cover the anguish in Jason’s eyes—however quick it was—at the sight of Bruce landing on the rooftop in front of him. The slight hesitation belied by fear, whether he liked it or not.

Fear. His son was—is—afraid of the things he’d do, or say, or accuse him of. 

“No, just tired,” Duke mumbles, like he knows the truth is worse: it is. There is no cure Bruce can find, no medicine available, to fix something like bone-deep exhaustion. 

And what right did Bruce really have, anymore? 

You failed him, he reminds himself as he turns, a silent command for the others to follow. And you continue to fail him. 

But Bruce—

Bruce has always been a selfish bastard. 

HONEYSUCKLE (bonds of love)

Sometimes, life is merciful. 

It’s rare for the lot of them to do something together during the day, but the various vigilantes find themselves gravitating towards one of the local ice rinks, no mention of their nightly duties—or dynamics—in sight. Jason snorts as Dick goes flying into the railing surrounding the rink, the sheer momentum sending him sprawling over the top and into the snowbank behind it, much to Barbara’s long-suffering dismay.

“Seriously, this guy’s supposed to be the gracious one?” Duke asks, nose wrinkled as the two of them watch their older brother flail around in the snow for a few seconds before giving up and resigning himself to his fate of being wet and cold, pouting up at Babs, who nurses a warm cup of hot chocolate and has a blanket over her legs. “I’ve seen Lil D do better on negative hours of sleep.”

“Gonna pretend like you didn’t just forget we all operate on negative hours of sleep and instead remind you all that he and Wally are going through a rough patch because he sent the eggplant emoji one too many times,” Jason takes a sip of his hot cocoa, vicious and swift in his vengeance. “Serves him right for walking in on me and Roy last week.”

“Y’all don’t lock your doors?” Stephanie asks as she skates by, Cass’ hand held tight in her own. Duke’s never seen such a peaceful look on his pseudo-sister’s face before, but he supposes that’s love. Or something. “You’re asking for it!” 

“He never knocks!” Jason shouts back, indignant. “Who comes over to someone else’s apartment and goes into the bedroom without knocking?!” 

“Only exhibitionists don’t lock their doors!” 

And Duke knows what’s coming before Jason even bends down and scoops some snow into his gloved hands, sighs deeply when said-snowball finds a home on Steph’s head. He also knows it’s his cue to do the same, that Jason and him have an alliance in place that promises his participation, and when the snowball war breaks out, he can only think—

Man, I wish we did this more often.

CARNATIONS (mother’s love)

Talia’s hands are gentle, as she washes his hair.

Jason sits unmoving in the expensive tub, staring at a small smudge on the wall across the room—the only blemish in the pristine bathroom aside from him and the blood splatters on the edges of the bathtub from when he had been getting in. Blood.

Sacrifice.

He must make some sort of pained noise at the reminder of what had happened to his friends, because Talia tuts in disapproval, speaking for the first time since she had saved him from Batman: “hush, habibi.” 

She hasn’t called him that in years—he must look very rough, then.  

“Will you tell me what happened?” She asks quietly, once the shampoo has been washed out of his hair, along with the dirt and grime and blood. He feels not an inch cleaner, but the gesture has his heart calming, and has him falling victim to his grief over his rage. 

“Artemis and Biz, they… they’re gone,” Jason croaks out, letting his eyes slide shut. They’re all gone. “Batman, he, I…” 

Talia hums, a very Talia-like command to stop talking; Jason quiets down, slinking lower in the tub and letting her finish her ritualistic washing before she taps him on the shoulder, easing herself off the stool and grabbing one of the large towels from the rack in the corner. 

“Dry yourself and change into the clothes I left on the bed for you,” she instructs, before patting his cheek and floating out of the room and no doubt towards the living room.

Jason sighs, doing as he was told; he pads into his bedroom and tugs his shorts off, drying off as best as he can with his injuries—it hurts, but it’s all beginning to dull, one of the (only) blessed contributions to his life from the Lazarus Pit.

By the time he’s stepping into the small living room, there are two cups of steaming tea and a plate of freshly soaked knafeh on the table; Talia is swiping through her phone, though she sets it aside once he sits down. 

She lifts a cup to her mouth, watching him quietly take a slice of the sweet before grabbing his own cup, and for a few moments, it’s easy to forget everything that’s transpired, and the home he's lost yet again. 

“Rest,” she says, eyes softening when Jason looks at her. And he knows she must have a thousand more questions, but all she does is push the plate of his favourite dessert closer, leaning back in her seat once he begins to eat with more vigour. “And heal.”

Heal. One of the only requests she’s ever made of him—the reasonable ones he keeps track of, at least. 

And so he does—painfully. Slowly. In that moment, he lets a kernel of acceptance bloom in his heavy heart, cupped between two bangled hands that have held him so tenderly throughout the years. That have safeguarded and raised him. 

Heal. 

He knows, unspoken as it is, it is a mother’s command. And Jason Todd has always been his mother’s son. 

And so he does.