Chapter Text
Tim trailed his finger across the empty sinks. They were dry and shiny, full of promise. It was, weirdly for any commercial kitchen, completely silent in here, closed off from the noise and cacophony of the workaday world. It was peaceful.
It wouldn’t last. It never did. But it only had to last long enough for respite. What was life but a constant planting of flags, staking out little bits of peace where you could for whomever you could?
Tim breathed.
His quiet footsteps took him towards the walk-in store. He reached the swinging door - it was open, but he knocked anyway because he wasn’t going to make a guess of the mood of the man inside it.
“... Yeah?”
“Jason?” Tim said softly. “Can I come in?” A little bit of training with Dinah and some assistance from a bionic vocaloid implant courtesy of Waynetech had helped with his voice, but it would never and could never be normal in either sound or volume. The training and implant had frankly done more for his confidence than the voice itself, but with that confidence had come a certain amount of acceptance and peace. It’s not that he still didn’t struggle to make himself understood these days, but the fact that he couldn’t bothered him a lot less than it ever had before.
The people who mattered understood him.
“You don’t even need to ask, Baby Bird.”
Tim cautiously sidled into the store and promptly had a spasm of worry and affection at the sight of Jason seated on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chest, a couple of big caterers packs of ketchup, mustard and barbeque sauce next to him.
“I came in to get some refills and junk,” Jason mumbled. “Then I just had to think for a minute, you know?”
Tim nodded. He silently took his seat next to Jason, close enough so their bodies pressed against one another, offering silent support. “If you want to talk, I’m here to listen,” he offered gently. “I’ve got Grade A listening skills, the choicest and finest on offer, matured in state for about thirteen years.”
Jason shot him an affectionate glance. The spark of good humor faded though, and left a more pensive expression in it’s ashes. “I had a dream about all this last night, you know.”
Tim didn’t let his wince show. Despite all his best efforts, he didn’t always know when Jason had nightmares. Sometimes he absolutely did, because Jason would be out of the bed and in the next room, far away from Tim, entire body heaving like an ocean in storms before Tim could do more than sit up. They’d worked out a system for those nights.
But there were other nights when Jason - trained in stealth by literal ninjas Jason - wouldn’t make a sound as he violently hit consciousness, not even a telltale clenching of muscles. Tim worried sometimes that those nightmares were the worst ones. Jason was getting better about telling him what they were about, but eloquently erudite as one Jason Todd could be despite himself, no amount of wordsmithing would be likely to ever convey just how they felt.
But still, Tim took in every word. “Yeah?” he prodded.
“The usual shit,” Jason rubbed his face tiredly. “I saw the party. I’m at the griddle and everyone’s eating and then… then there’s blood everywhere and… and I look down and I’m not holding tongs or a spatula, I’m holding a gun. And everything’s green.” His lips curled. “I fucking hate green.”
“I know,” Tim said, holding his hand. It would be a long road in teaching Jason to like his eyes. Tim was working on it. “This is big for you. It’s a huge emotional milestone. And the Pit tangles your emotions sometimes. We knew to expect that. And you know,” he firmly made Jason look him in the eye. “You know that that’s not going to happen. Not today. So what’s actually percolating up in that handsome skull of yours?”
“Handsome huh?” Jason tried to deflect, but one thing he knew about Tim was that Tim was implacable, as much or more so than the Bat himself. He took a breath. “I guess it all just hit me, you know? Standing here, looking at all this… stuff,” he waved a hand across the rows upon rows of dry goods, a cornucopia of plenty that they shed blood, sweat and tears to finally get fully stocked. “All this,” he waved his hands encompassing still more. “This was just a dream. It wasn’t real. It’s not supposed to be real. What the fuck did I do to deserve anything like this?” His voice wobbled a little and trailed off.
“Jason, it’s not about deserve,” Tim protested. “You might as well ask who deserves to eat. It doesn’t matter if you’re a baby or a senior, or homeless or wealthy, or a hero or a prisoner on death row. Everyone deserves to eat. No matter what they’ve done or what they’ve been through. You did some messed up stuff, you made some messed up choices, but believing you deserve to do nothing else but suffer when you’ve already suffered enough for ten… that’s ridiculous. Even if you did deserve it, what the hell does suffering ever fix? You deserve the same thing everyone else deserves, Jason Todd,” he declared. “You deserve a chance to rise up. It’s not like it hasn’t been hard for you. Plenty of other people got that choice and they threw it away. You didn’t. You accepted what happened and you made your amends and then you worked at it. That’s hardly being lucky or spitting in the face of those you hurt. You were hurt just as much as you inflicted it. Acknowledging that is a part of this too.”
Jason squeezed his hand. “I know. I’m trying to get that. I just… I sunk into this at first because it was just a fantasy. Maybe I never really believed it was going to happen,” he admitted. “Maybe a part of me didn’t want it to, and that’s why I went ahead. I’m a contrary bastard, even without the Pit. But now it’s not a fantasy,” he said in a thin voice. “It’s brick and mortar and real and… and I’m a fuck up in my bones, Baby Bird. What if I fuck this up too? What if I fail? I got too many of those etched in me already.”
Okay, Tim thought. Anxiety over failure? This he could handle. “You know how I found out that I wouldn't graduate?” he said softly. “I called the Gotham U alumni office and asked why I hadn’t received the invite to the graduation ceremony. I’d just gotten back from the funeral, I was packing up my stuff from the dorms, my uncle hadn’t exactly been shy about telling me that I couldn’t live in the same house as his wife - over the casket, no less. That’s when I found out that Chuck hadn’t paid the U their money. That’s when I found out I had nowhere to go. Charles just said he’d given me whatever the estate had listed, he’d put through the emancipation and that was the end of his responsibilities as far as he was concerned. That’s how I found out my life had fallen apart. I went down to actually see the land that was on the deed, to see if there was anything I could get from it. You should have seen my face when I realized it was just a valueless bit of Quake collateral.”
Jason looked at him. “Yeah, I wondered about that. Why the fuck did they leave you that of all things?”
Tim shrugged. “They believed our wealth had to be earned. Getting into college as a prodigy was all that earned me. The rest I’d get when I’d started making money for the company or upholding the family name or… whatever shit they wanted from me. They assumed I’d start earning more for my portfolio once I had my degrees and was ready to be a ‘proper’ heir to the business. They assumed they’d be alive to see that, I guess. It never even occurred to them to have some kind of clause in the will covering failsafes in case of early death. It worked out pretty well for my uncle, not so much for me.”
“What a complete load of shit,” Jason muttered.
“They thought earning things was, like, inherent to moral character,” Tim nodded dryly. “The irony winged right over their heads and never stirred a hair. But my parents cognitive dissonance where reality was concerned is only tangential to my story. Can you imagine how much of a failure I felt like in that moment, Jason? I’d done everything they’d asked of me. I’d given up culinary school because they insisted. I forgave them for crippling me and put up with their public lies about it. I never rebelled or spoke up about the diets or the workloads or how mom was slowly killing herself or the twenty year plan they’d mapped for my entire life. I was a good son. And I wasn’t worth even an extra clause on the will. All that repressing, all that obedience to their whims, and I’d still failed. It had all been for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” Jason protested. “Look at the shit you pulled off! Look at what you managed to do!”
“Yeah,” Tim smiled. “That’s my point. It was a failure. I hit rock bottom. But that’s what showed me which way was really up. I spent fifteen years being desperately unhappy and when I found myself driving around in a junker truck and getting laughed at in a shitty halloween mask and feeding people, I realized I was the happiest I’d ever been. I got to be me, finally, for the first time ever. Sometimes, Jason,” Tim turned to look Jason in the eye. “Failure is magnificent. Failure can be the best, most educational, most nourishing thing that ever happens to you. You shouldn’t worry about it. Even if it does fail, so what? You’ve survived worse. We’ll pick up and we’ll start again. We’ll try something new. We’ll ride over the horizon together, you and me.”
“You and me, huh?” Jason smiled.
“If you think there’s a hell I wouldn’t follow you into, Jason Todd, you don’t know me at all,” Tim told him levelly, as if people just said things like that.
Jason tugged off Tim’s face mask and gave him a thorough kissing for that one.
“And also,” Tim added as he drew back. “Roy told me to tell you that if you don’t go out there, he’s going to the speech.”
“Fuuuuuuuuck!” Jason popped to his feet, dragged Tim with him and hastily shoved a gallon flagon of ketchup into Tim’s arms, juggling the barbecue and mustard on his own. “You shoulda lead with that, Baby Bird! Move, move, move, go, go, go!”
They ran, laughing, through the small but neatly appointed kitchen and out through the swinging doors into the dining room, with its booths and homey tables and chairs all stacked up and waiting for use. Jason vaulted the polished wooden countertop in a single bound and effortlessly lifted Tim over with one hand while Tim yelped and flushed before sprinting for the doors and out into the street.
The crowd was impressive, considering, and the marquis covered the whole street end-to-end - say what you will, sometimes being connected to Bruce Wayne netted some real perks. Temporary seating was spread across it, with ticket holders already eagerly seated, and still more hovering in the shelter. They’d done their best to make sure everyone was protected from the cold; the snow season was just about crystallizing the air.
Portable kitchens - courtesy of invited food trucks, parked on the sidewalk - were cooking up a veritable storm, and there were also portable grills that the Bats and various others were already sweating over, making mountains of food. It was, nominally, a Thanksgiving party but there was plenty of non-traditional fare being made as well - not just burgers, dogs and fries, but cuisines from around the world to suit any cultural or dietary requirement. Even open to the air, the marquis was already warm with the heat of the stoves and fragrant with the aromas.
Tim was already hooking on his headset. He had, at any one time today about twenty different throughputs and ordering shenanigans to contend with. He took the sauces from Jason and went off to deliver them to the grill section.
A street food fair, Thanksgiving-style. Jason had to admit, it was a brilliant idea to launch his joint.
There was a hulking shape covered by a cloth tarp and in front of that a podium where Roy was doing sound checks. Jason hurried over.
“Here he is, folks!” Roy flourished as Jason climbed up. “Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Todd!”
There was a round of applause as Jason took his spot under the lights. Sister Des was sitting with the Interfaith people and cheering the loudest. Tim gave him a discrete thumbs up from the labyrinth of cooktops he was overseeing.
Jason took a breath. “Uh, hey. Welcome, everyone, to our Thanksgiving street fair.” He faltered a little but rallied when Bruce looked at and tilted his chin up slightly. Right, recitation. Believe or not, Jason had once actually been good at this.
He relaxed and leaned into it. “Thank you, all of you, for coming out. I know this isn’t quite the Thanksgiving everyone wanted. Certainly not the one we were expecting at the start of the year, am I right?” There was a smattering of laughter.
Jason breathed. “It's been a rough one, folks, let’s not even kid ourselves. And it may never go back to exactly what it was. Maybe some people have moved away and now won’t be able to travel back anytime soon. Maybe a job’s been lost or pay has been cut, and everything is just a little bit leaner and a little bit meaner, which means you gotta cut some corners and make some compromises you didn’t have to before. Maybe….” Jason closed his eyes. “Maybe the people you used to do this with… can’t do it now, will not ever again. And that’s never not going to suck, and you have my sympathies.”
“But…” he lifted his chin. “In our darkest hour, we, the people around here, rose up. We reached out. Even when times were as tough as they could be and only looked to be getting tougher, even when the days were hard, we gathered bread and honey and started giving it to the people around us. We did everything we could to make the world just that little less painful and that little less dark for everyone we possibly could. And I don’t care where you come from, or what language you speak, who you worship or what rituals you follow, that is absolutely something we can and should be thankful for. We all, on some level, believe people should be cared for, and that’s true the world over.”
He had their attention now, they were hanging onto his every word. Time to tone it down a little. “That’s pretty lofty words for the grand opening of a dinky little diner, I’ll admit,” he laughed, and the crowd laughed with him. “But you should all be proud of yourselves for doing what you could when you could, even when the world was turning to compost. Even when idiots were telling you that you shouldn’t. So I give thanks to all of you for this moment.” His eyes cut to Tim, briefly. “None of this would even have been possible without you.”
“Are you done!” Roy yelled. “I’m hungry!”
Laughter.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jason snorted to more laughter. “Aren’t we all? So I’ll wrap this up quick. Thank you for coming out. All your generous donations will go towards the community, so no one ever has to go hungry. Now, as we know the restaurant trade is not doing so hot right now, and neither is the food delivery system. It might be a while before anyone can sit down in the diner behind us, so we - as in my friends, Interfaith and the Wayne Foundation - have come up with a solution to keep the system working and to help the community, even after the crisis has passed. So, without further ado, could the Master - sorry, the Mistress - of Ceremonies please cut the ribbon?”
A gleeful Lian was boosted up by Roy to grabbing range of a huge red ribbon that had been wrapped over the tarp of the big shape, snipping through it a little clumsily because it was a big ribbon.
The tarp fell away effortlessly, as if they hadn’t done about thirty separate practice runs trying out different methods.
Underneath was a gleaming, brand new, uber sophisticated food truck, emblazoned with enough bells and whistles to make even the most hardened cynic’s jaw drop. The crowd oohed and aahed with satisfactory awe as the Bats at the back pulled the rest of the tarp to reveal it in full.
“This baby is going to be delivering everywhere in Gotham - food, medicines, amenities, all of it, during the day. Plus, it sells chili dogs,” Jason added gleefully, the child inside him jumping up and down. “This is just the start. We’ll have more of them soon, but this is the first, and this one is going to be ours, the community’s, here. We hope this program will continue to expand so that no one ever has to go hungry in this town again!”
The crowd cheered wildly, standing to clap and stamp their feet.
“One day,” Jason said as the wild excitement calmed. “No matter how bad it gets, you will, one day, get to sit at a table and eat with your loved ones again. Sharing a meal is just about the most human thing anyone can ever do, it makes up the parts of our lives we remember the most and love the best. So hang in there, folks. We’ll make it, all of us. But in the meantime, we all of us need to help each other, and this truck and others like it will be helping you do that. And of course, we named it after someone who has done nothing but care for their entire life.”
The truck name lit up on the special screens loaded on the side of it while the crowd all clapped.
Alfred, who was loading up plates, did something Jason had never once seen him do, and drop them entirely. He stared, drop jawed, at the truck, stepping forward to view it closer like he didn’t quite believe his eyes. Tim, on one side of him and Bruce on the other, both put their hands on his shoulders to steady him.
He looked like he might be blinking too much.
Jason beamed at the old man. Feeling a bit teary eyed himself, Jason thought every secret meeting, every subterfuge, every contortion of secrecy they went through to keep the old spymaster from finding out had made this moment absolutely worth it.
Lighting up one side of the truck was the name.
Alfie’s.