Archive of Our Own ^beta

It starts small, is the thing. It starts so small, seeping into the edges of his life slowly, then sticking around and before he’s even had a chance to notice that anything is different, that anything has happened, it’s settled in to stay.

It’s a lost minute here and there. A few hours of sleep that Jason doesn’t remember laying down for but that he suddenly finds himself waking up from. A stakeout fully planned and prepped for that he somehow misses entirely. Coming to in the middle of the bodega down the street even though he doesn’t remember getting off the couch. Snapping back to reality in the middle of a fight, his arm braced against the throat of some random goon he’s got pinned to the wall.

It’s not a problem. Jason’s handling it. He can control the Pit himself. Except—

It gets worse way faster than he was ready for. 

There’s a cut on his arm, courtesy of a dealer with a knife he didn’t know how to use. Jason cleans it, wraps it, carries on as usual. (Realizes that despite his careful attention, it takes weeks to heal.)

There’s a bruise on his side from a bad grapple angle that had him clipping a building. It’s big, covering most of his hip and the top of his thigh, but it’s not affecting his range of motion, so it should be fine. (Time passes and it stays dark and ugly, the edges refusing to yellow no matter how much arnica gel he smears over it every night.)

There’s the low level headaches that build behind his eyes almost every night as he jumps and runs and flies his way across his portion of the city. He pops a couple motrins, drinks some more water. It’s nothing special, he’s been fending off migraines since he hauled himself out of his grave, it feels like. Nothing new there. (He grinds a knuckle into his temple and tries to ignore the constant, aching leach of Green that seeps in at the corners of his vision.)

Jason doesn’t dream, he hasn’t since he woke up wearing his favorite suit with dirt in his mouth, but when he sleeps he can see something just of out sight, lurking like a shadow, getting closer and closer and reaching out–

Jason wakes up freezing even though it’s July. His hands are shaking when he runs them through his hair, and when he tries to take a deep breath it doesn’t quite seem to reach the bottom of his lungs.

(Later on, when he finally lets himself think about it, this will be the moment he’ll remember. The moment he finally admitted to himself that he knew what was happening and what he needed to do.)

Every Tuesday afternoon Jason waits outside Gotham Academy for his youngest brother so he can take him out for ice cream and look over any essays he has due in the next week. (It was Dick’s idea originally, that they get to know each other better, like Jason hadn’t been the first brother that Damian had ever known. Like Jason hadn’t bled for him. Like Damian hadn’t been the last thing standing between Jason and the Green for years.)

He doesn’t want to bring it up, doesn’t want to taint the afternoons they have left, but this is the only chance he’ll get without the others lurking over their shoulders, and time is running out slower than he’d thought and faster than he’d like.

“Baby bat.”

“I have told you not to-”

“Damian.” His little brother freezes, looks up from his sundae. 

“Todd.”

“I’ve got a mission coming up, and once it’s finished I’ll be going off the grid. I need your help to make sure no one can find me.”

“If you require assistance with a case or with undercover work, would it not be better to seek Gordan’s guidance?”

“Dami,” he takes a deep breath, tries to think of how he can say this without breaking his little brother’s heart. “I can’t- I don’t want the family to- I can’t let them stop me this time. And I don’t want them there when it’s over.”

“What?”

“Damian, the Pit’s fading.”

Damian’s spoon falls to the table with a clatter of noise, inelegant in a way he never allows himself to be. For the first time in years, Jason sees fear in his eyes.

Jason reaches across the table to take his little brother’s hand, and hates himself a little bit more for the way it trembles in his.

“There’s something I need to finish here first, something I have to do to make sure the rest of you will be safe without me.”

Damian stares right back at him with eyes that are too old and that have seen too much, despite all of the things Jason’s done to try to spare him.  He nods once, just a twitch of his chin, and Jason does his best to smile. 

Damian finishes his ice cream in silence, and he does not let go of his brother’s hand until they reach the front step of the manor. 

He doesn’t ask Jason about the last mission he has to finish. 

He doesn’t need to. 

Jason does his best to tie off his loose ends. He has tea with Alfred, joining him in the garden where it’s quiet so they can just sit and gossip and discuss the books they’ve been reading lately. He patrols more with Dick, letting his older brother cajole him into racing across the city until they get to the best bridge in town, laughing as they toss themselves atop the train passing below them. He lets Tim kick his ass across the sparring mats with a bo staff and then shows him the best ways to flip and pin someone Jason’s weight and size. He sits in the library with Damian for hours on end, reading him stories and legends and myths, curled into each other with his shirt clenched in his little brother’s hand.

All the while, he counts down the days he has left using the aches in his bones and the unfaded bruises as a calendar. 

He has dinner at the manor as often as he can, pretending not to notice the way Bruce raises his eyebrow and hides a smile every time he sees Jason take his place at the table.

A few weeks after their conversation at the ice cream parlor, Jason coughs once, hard, with his napkin held tight to his face. He folds it carefully and tucks it away in his pocket before anyone can see the blood that speckles the folds. 

Across the table, Damian’s gaze locks with his. 

They don’t say anything, and the others carry on around them, oblivious.

The night Jason picks is entirely unremarkable. There’s no symbolism, no significance, no flair of dramatic reasoning or anniversary. It comes down to opportunity and the weight of certainty in his chest. It’s his night off, and while he’d usually have Damian tucked tight against his side as they sat on a rooftop and looked at the stars, tonight his little brother is curled up on the sofa in Jason's apartment waiting for him to come back, the kettle on the stove and the book of myths open to the next story. 

Jason goes down to Amusement Mile in plain clothes without even a domino mask to cover his face. This is for him. It’s not for the Red Hood, or even for Robin, and it’s certainly not for Batman.

The cameras have been looped and the hired goons have done their rounds. By the time they’ve realized something is wrong Jason is going to be far, far away from this place, some of the unholiest ground Gotham has to offer.

In less than ten minutes he is in and out, gunning it for the city limits with his unwilling cargo bound and gagged in the trunk.

He drives with the windows down and the radio turned all the way up, singing at the top of his lungs to drown out the laughter he hears in the back of his mind. 

30 miles outside of Gotham there’s an empty construction site that’s about to become a parking lot. It’s a place where no one will notice freshly disturbed dirt, and it’s a place no one will be digging up anytime soon. Jason parks the car, grabs the shovel from the backseat, and starts digging. Almost every part of him aches, but he pushes through it, gets the full and final six feet down, and then hauls himself back topside.

When he opens the trunk the Joker stares back at him, eyes wide. He struggles, because of course he does, but Jason doesn’t let himself falter as he drags the monster who killed him to the hole he made and drops him in.

(Before, every time he pictured this moment, every time he let it play out in his head, he always had something to say. A witty comment, a joke, something to make sure the Joker would know exactly who he was. 

In reality–)

He puts one shot between his eyes and two more in his chest. The Joker dies without a smile on his face, and that’s all Jason could ever want.

He slumps to his knees, teeth gritted against his laughter, and feels one of his ribs slide out of place, feels his head throb in time with his heartbeat. There’s blood in his mouth, on his teeth. Jason spits it into the dirt and laughs through the pain. 

He won't be around anymore to be the final wall between his brothers and the monster that haunted him, but that's ok. He won’t have to be now.  

He stands up, picks up his shovel, and he pushes through the agony as he refills the grave. In some ways it feels wrong that any other place should have to deal with this monster, that anywhere but Gotham should play host to the clown’s corpse, but—

Jason stopped pretending he wasn’t selfish a long time ago. He doesn’t think anyone would begrudge him his refusal to be laid to rest in the same city as this monster, and his final resting place is an argument he’s already lost, so–

30 miles outside of Gotham there’s an empty construction site that’s about to become a parking lot. It’s a place where no one will notice freshly disturbed dirt, and it’s a place no one will be digging up anytime soon. Jason buries the Joker without fanfare somewhere where no one will think to look, and when he walks away he doesn’t falter, and he certainly doesn’t look back.

That night, for the first time since he broke the surface of the Lazarus pit, Jason sleeps easy. Damian is tucked against his side, peaceful and quiet, lulled to sleep by Jason’s voice as he reads him the story of Orpheus. He’s here and sleeping and safe, finally, from the thing Jason feared the most.

(There’s still something lurking in the corner of his eye in the darkness. It no longer feels menacing. 

It’s starting to feel kind.

He’s starting to feel ready.)

His condition devolves quickly after that, like his body can tell that he's finished his last mission.

He goes to ground so far off the grid that even Barbara won’t be able to find him, ironic given how he’s tucked himself away in the first place they should know to look.

Hidden in a safehouse that’s stashed in the basement of a building just off of Crime Alley, Jason Todd lays in a bed, wrapped in blankets and wracked with shivers as the final remnants of the Lazarus Pit’s magic give out on him.

He didn’t want Damian here for this part, didn't want his baby brother to watch him slip away. But–

He couldn't trust anyone else with this, couldn't risk the others deciding against letting him go out on his own terms. 

He couldn’t refuse Damian’s quiet request to remain by his side. 

He couldn’t deny that the thing he was afraid of, even more than the darkness (even more than dying again), was dying alone, the way he had in that warehouse.

Damian’s hand curls around his. It’s so small, god, he’s so small, he shouldn’t be here for this, he shouldn’t have to see this—

But he’s here. He’s here, and he’s Jason’s whole heart, the only part of Jason that’s worth anything.

He’s so damn proud to have called Damian his brother. So damn lucky to have gotten the chance to.

Jason smiles, and he lets his green green green eyes slip shut one last time. 

(6 months later)

The skies over Gotham are dark today. Darker than usual. There’s a steady drizzle falling on the city now, and the clouds moving in are threatening even worse weather come evening. Sheltered under a black umbrella, Damian Wayne stands at his brother’s second grave.

“It was greedy, Todd, to commission another stone. Your first was perfectly serviceable.”

It wasn’t. Damian was the one who’d demanded a new marker. Who had insisted Jason give him somewhere to visit. Who had arranged the purchase of this plot, here in Gotham where Jason belonged, rather than bending to his brother’s initial desire to be delivered to a far away city, Star or Coast or Central, where he could be interred as a John Doe.

The name on the headstone is sharp, newly carved and dark with the water falling from above. 

Todd Bennet

Jason’s choice. The last thing he signed off on, skin feverish, breathing labored, blood dripping from his nose and ears and the upturned corner of his mouth no matter how many times Damian wiped it away.

“It is quieter at home now, without your insistence on disturbing the peace.” The wind blows a little harder. He shifts his coat accordingly. It has nothing to do with his difficulty finding the appropriate words. “The others still look for you over their shoulders sometimes. They do not hide it as well as they think.” Father's eyes are dark and sad. Richard's smiles are forced and rarer than usual. Timothy has buried himself further in his investigations than he has since Father’s disappearance.

The library has remained undisturbed since that night, the evening before that last mission, when Jason had last been at the manor. Next to the window seat there is a table, and on it sits Jason’s battered copy of Pride and Prejudice. Underneath it is the book Jason had been reading to him. He has yet to continue it, but it is free of dust despite its disuse, even as Alfred’s eyes slide past the doors of the room as though they don’t exist. 

Patrol is just as solemn an affair, though Damian won’t say so aloud. There is no need to risk their identities in public. (No need to burden his brother’s soul–) Just as Jason had predicted, the Bats spent the weeks directly following his disappearance tearing through every nook and cranny of Crime Alley. They found nothing. 

They don’t know he's here, right under their noses. They don’t know he’s just a few rows down from the last place they tried to lay him to rest.

Damian can’t (won’t) tell them. He gave his word.

(“I’m going to finish this Damian, and then I’m going to disappear. That’ll be best for everyone.”

“But why–”

“This will only work if they don’t know. If none of them know, and if they have no reason to suspect that you do.” Jason leans down, because it doesn’t matter that Damian’s grown nearly 12 centimeters since he came to live with Father, Jason still towers over him. “It’s not fair, it’s not something I should ask for, but I need you to promise me that, okay?”

A moment of silence passes while Damian’s brother shakes like a man freezing to death, but he doesn’t look away, and he doesn’t flinch when Damian reaches for his hand and takes it between his own.

“…I promise.”

“Thank you, Dami. Thank you.”

A kiss pressed to his forehead, and strong arms pulling him into a hug.

Jason had been dead less than a week later.)

Damian turns to leave, and as he walks away from the grave he tries to ignore the small voice at the back of his mind that urges him to turn back. Foolishly, he is reminded of the final stories Jason shared with him, the night it all began to fall apart. The stories about heroes that attempted, against all odds, to retrieve their loved ones from the Underworld. Stories that warned against looking back. 

When it really counted, Damian has never disobeyed Jason’s instructions. Now though–

Now his brother is not here to tell him stories anymore. Now his brother is not here to warn him of the consequences.

Damian stops. Takes a deep breath—

(He’s hoping for a miracle with everything in him, and somehow he still doesn’t notice the way the universe shudders, shakes, and then snaps back into place like a broken bone reset.)

—and looks back over his shoulder.

A hand bursts from the soil, shaking, and the black leather glove encasing it is streaked with mud. There are thin streaks of blood trailing from the scrapes that circle the trembling wrists, and wood shards bleed up from the dirt like a fountain.

Damian drops his umbrella and races back to the headstone to pull his older brother out of the cold clutches of the sodden, grasping dirt.

A few moments later Jason is crumpled against him, chest heaving, surrounded by the detritus of the plain pine box he’d selected. 

Shivering as the rain soaks through the suit that Damian buried him in.

The two of them stay like that for a moment, Jason’s head tucked under his chin as he takes in deep, rattling gasps of air. There’s mud wicking into their clothes, blood smeared across both of them in streaks and splotches, but he hardly notices. All he can do is clutch at his brother, disbelieving, until his breathing finally starts to even out. Damian’s voice, when he finally finds it, shakes in a way Mother would never tolerate.

“…Jason?”

Slowly, his older brother leans away, putting space between them, though their hands are still locked together, fingers tangled the way they had when Damian was still young and small and afraid of the dark. Jason’s gaze meets his. 

His eyes are blue.