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the manor is as he remembers. it’s night, and he can see it looming in the rain as he crosses the backyard swiftly. it’s huge, and intimidating. but even at this time there’s light on in one of the rooms. kitchen, jason realises. kitchen, because alfred is home, of course, how could he forget? bruce might be on patrol, but alfred is home, and he’s probably doing meal prep for the week.
he can’t help but want to peek into the window. he already went through the ridiculous security measures guarding the fence, and avoided the traps in the gardens. alfred wouldn’t expect anyone standing just outside the walls. he can afford a quick glance.
sentimental, he scolds himself. but it could be beneficial to see if they changed anything, he argues back.
he takes the chance.
the kitchen is yellowy bright. warm. he can imagine what it feels like inside. he can recall the quiet background noise of one of the british radio stations alfred liked to listen to while cooking.
alfred. there he is, pouring broth into a jar.
“i thought it came only in cubes,” jason said once. alfred looked at him with one eyebrow raised, contemplating.
“ah. you’re talking about stock cubes. highly processed food is not good for you, my boy. of course you can make it from scratch.”
his phone vibrates in the pocket. he breaks out of the memory, flinching. in the same second, he registers that his elbow hit the glass slightly, and he panics, pulling up on the upper windowsill.
____
one floor below, the butler looks outside the window as he wipes his forehead with a cloth.
“dear lord. it was probably just a bird,” he mutters to himself.
____
he works on a whim, recalling his plan and moving to the right side of the building. it’s as clean as the one in the kitchen, the window of his old bedroom. if nothing changed, he should be able to disable the security system to open it without setting off the alarm. he worked it out as a kid, when he wanted to sneak out to sit on the roof. oh, the childhood dramatics.
____
in. first thing, he rushes to the door and presses the handle slowly. locked.
then, he glances at the phone.
it’s from T.
status?
jason types the letters slowly, still straining his ears to check if alfred didn’t decide to take a stroll after hearing the suspicious noise.
silence.
arrived. all clear.
____
he takes a few breaths. it’s hard to ground himself when he’s in a place that makes him feel like he’s having a flashback.
if looking at the manor standing in the same place, unchanged, felt unsettling, then this room’s state was simply bizarre.
it’s one thing for the whole building to remain untouched. it’s another to stand in a room that looks exactly the same as he left it years ago, only a couple of days before getting himself blown up.
the room’s dark, but the can still recognise the shapes. there are books and notebooks on his desk, and a hoodie hung on the chair. the wardrobe’s open, a pair of sneakers neatly set beside his formal shoes.
jason feels sick. he opens the nearest book on the bookmark, squinting. page 128. wives and daughters. he never finished that one. he considered taking it to ethiopia, but he couldn’t afford to take too much luggage, and-
and then he remembers what he’s there for.
he closes the book.
breath in. breath out.
____
there are stages to jason’s plan, and the first stage is: observe.
of course, to get away with it, he has to avoid being noticed himself. and it’s easier than he thought it would be. there are no cameras in his room, for one thing. and he’s good at technology enough (and knows bruce well enough) to hack into other cameras and the cave’s system easily.
it does help that he’s at the same location and can pick up the signal from the security net, and all the devices connected to the batcomputer without hassle. he can’t blame oracle for assuming that whoever would try to overcome the firewall, wouldn’t do it connected to the same wi-fi.
(and the password hasn’t changed. so irresponsible, bruce.)
____
jason settles on the floor, ignoring the familiarity of the setting.
there’s a view of almost all rooms in the manor on the screen in front of him, the batcave included. but it’s dark, and silent, only alfred still pottering around.
he puts one earphone in and scans through the channels.
“robin, report,” he hears.
his breath hitches.
____
by the time they come back, he’s all set up. he can see them clearly in the batcave and hear their conversations.
they sound comfortable with each other. tim doesn’t joke as much as dick does, but he’s snarky, and smart, and-
and he’s robin.
he doesn’t hate the kid. he doesn’t. he’s angry, yes, but the person he’s angry with is not the kid.
he focuses on bruce, who gets out of his gear and accepts a glass of water that alfred brought downstairs. he looks a bit older, but all the annoying little habits, all the discrete glances at the robin, the new robin, are the same. he checks if the boy didn’t lie about not getting any injuries, he knows. he did the same thing with him.
it’s a quiet affair, the post-patrol routine, and it’s a quick one too.
“goodnight,” bruce says to tim, even though it’s 4am.
goodnight, jason thinks.
he hates him.
____
they go to their respective bedrooms, all in the wing far away from where jason’s camping. the room tim stays at has always been set up as one for guests. he's not going to think about it, now. but for a few hours, there's not much for him to wonder about.
____
they’re talking about thanksgiving. jason has no idea why they are, there’s still a couple of months- he doesn’t care as well, of course. it’s not like he finds their conversations particularly interesting. it’s not like he needs to be listening in now, either, but he’s bored.
he’s bored, that’s why he’s doing it. and maybe he wants to know why dick came to gotham, because he’s here now.
“so if alfred takes a day off every year for thanksgiving…” tim says.
“you can’t expect me to prepare a turkey,” bruce explains patiently, as if it was obvious. ‘f course i can, jason thinks. he made him try to do it, once- he helped him, even, but…
no one brings up this story. dick wasn’t there. who would tell them about it? bruce?
“you heard him, you can’t expect brucie wayne to prepare a turkey,” dick mocks. “no, seriously, we’ve never had turkey for thanksgiving. maybe as a take away, once or twice. i don’t really care about it, anyway, i don’t feel particularly strongly… american,” he elaborates.
“we had turkey, once,” jason whispers. to whom, he doesn’t know.
downstairs, the conversation goes on undisturbed.
“ah, i see how it is,” tim exclaims dramatically, “no turkey, no reason to celebrate. so you don’t share what you’re thankful for, either, huh? i can see why, you’re shitty at expressing your emotions anyway,” he teases.
“master tim,” alfred interrupts.
“yes, sorry. bad. b is bad at expressing his emotions.”
“i’m not that bad.” bruce cuts in all of sudden, even though he didn’t seem to be very invested in their chat before.
sore point, huh, old man?, jason thinks, amused.
“oh, yeah? name one emotion you’re feeling right now, then,” tim challenges.
bruce is silent for a moment.
“i’m hungry.”
jason can’t help it and snickers along tim and dick.
and then he relapses into easy anger.
they celebrated, once. and while trying to cut the blackened piece of meat, bruce said…
“hmm, what am i thankful for? let’s see…”
____
it’s stupid. and risky. jason does it anyway.
it’s a very early evening, ironically - the only time when everyone at the manor is actually asleep.
he has falafel stuffed in a lunchbox, but he’s not feeling like eating falafel. and he is feeling like having some scrambled egg. and tea. god, he would kill for some strong black tea right now.
so he gets up off the floor, takes the key that lies on the nightstand (just as he left it, years ago) and unlocks the doors slowly. the hall’s dark, and the way to kitchen is way too long.
no need for anyone to have such a huge house, he thinks bitterly, same as he did when he first entered the manor, only eleven years old. it still seems as huge as it did back then.
he walks past the painting of the waynes, and he walks past the vase that he once almost broke and cried for an hour afterward. it tempts him to do it now, for no reason other than spite. it’s an ugly one anyway.
he could play a couple of tricks on bruce. pretend to be a ghost, leave some morbid note, break into his bathroom and write on the mirror with his own blood. or maybe just push every piece of furniture slightly, but far enough that it would make bruce bump into them when he tries to navigate the house in darkness.
he doesn’t do it though. he just goes to the kitchen.
when he was with his mum, kitchen never felt safe. he would like to remember his parents doing the little they could to keep him full. catherine's carefully prepared sandwiches. but what he remembers is her dazed smile as she tried to get a hold of the knife, a sight that made him more nervous than reassured, and in turn guilty.
nothing ever happened, after all.
but maybe that was the problem. maybe that liminal territory of a slip that never occurred, a tragedy that never came, was enough to mark the kitchen for him as a place of struggle. a field of tension between whatever johnny was selling and his mum's fingers coming too close to an apple that she was trying to slice in a loving gesture.
this kitchen, though… this is alfred’s kitchen. it’s so eerily peaceful, and cozy, that even now it makes him feel at home.
with that thought, he realises that he shouldn’t linger in there for too long, and pours some water into the kettle.
____
jason’s back in his room, deleting and looping the footage from the cameras to make sure no one notices his little trip.
this is when he sees it.
he didn’t look too closely at the batcave before, even though this is what he’s there for. he’s supposed to be looking at their gear, checking if bruce has any aces up his slave that could get in jason’s way. but he got distracted.
now he’s head is as clear as it ever was. he zooms in.
good soldier, it says.
he almost chokes on his tears, except his tears are never just tears nowadays, and next thing he knows, he almost knocked over the desk.
steady, he tells himself. or maybe it’s talia’s voice in his head. or bruce’s.
what if someone heard his little stunt?
what if bruce heard, and went into the room, right now? what would jason say?
hey, dad. don’t mind me, i’m just spying on you.
____
“i don’t remember leaving this mug here,” bruce says, looking at it suspiciously. he doesn’t ever drink in it. it used to be jason’s favourite. but neither tim nor dick know, so it's probably them who took it out of the cupboard. he can’t blame them for it.
dick laughs.
“what is it, b? do we have a haunted house now?”
“hmmm,” he responds in his usual fashion, and leaves to prepare for a patrol.
____
jason almost forgot what day it was.
bruce left a while ago; where to, he’s not sure. he’s been focusing on the batcave, and now there are only two people there.
“do you want to tell me?” tim asks.
dick sighs.
“he was good. he was- he actually made bruce laugh, you know? it’s not like bruce never laughed with me, but…”
jason huffs. would he be able to do it, now? there’s rage building up somewhere deep in him, weighing on his chest. would he make bruce at least smile?
“but this year, he’s not sitting here, brooding. i thought he would. that’s why i came. and he said he had an important meeting today. so maybe…”
“maybe he’s moving on,” tim finishes for him.
jason clenches fingers on his laptop, and thinks of smoke, and of blood in his mouth, and he can’t breathe. there’s cold soil pushing him deep into his grave.
“moving on,” dick agrees easily.
____
jason knows that if anything, he should go to the safe house and take a nap there. but there are no cameras in his room, and he’s tired. he sits on the bed, just to catch a breath.
“it’s not your home,” he tries to remind himself.
and yet he gets comfortable on the bedding, the computer still on his lap.
____
he dreams of the times he shouldn’t remember. he dreams of being on the streets, all ragged clothes and aching hunger nesting in his stomach. he’s holding something, a pear, maybe, that he got out of the trash. but he can’t be sure, his eyesight not quite right, all edges blurred. or perhaps it’s just his mind. it’s a familiar state, he realises, and that’s when he understands.
he dreams of being catatonic.
and yet, there’s something that startles him, a huge shadow coming all over him suddenly. he looks up.
the bat.
“b,” he tries to utter. bruce. but he can’t. he stares at him, a clog in his throat.
batman takes a step back and looks right at him. or maybe through him, now jason thinks. it must have been through him, because the next thing bruce does, is turning away and leaving.
____
he wakes up from his dream and hears voices suspiciously nearby.
“there’s no reason to stress that much about it, tim,” bruce is saying.
jason startles. they must be in the corridor where his room is. they don’t usually go to this wing of the manor.
bruce hasn’t been in that close vicinity to him in years.
the laptop falls to the floor. fuck. some shadow he is.
“did you hear that?” bruce says.
“uh… yeah,” he can hear the kid replying. “it sounded like it came from uhm… the room?”
“i’ll get the key. don’t worry, ” bruce replies, and that’s when he starts to panic.
____
“jason?” bruce says as he opens the door. there’s no one inside. the sheets are neatly folded, and the window is wide open.
there’s only one other person who has the key, and he finds them segregating laundry.
“alfred, have you been to… the room?”
“ah, yes. apologies, master bruce, i cleaned the window a couple of days ago.”
____
he’s sitting on the rooftop and hears his father’s calling his name with a strained voice.
that’s when he understands.
“tals,” jason says, phone pressed into his ear “i’m coming back.”
“good. good”, talia replies, and he can hear the tenderness in her voice.
jason leaves the manor the same he remembers it.