Archive of Our Own ^beta

The woman grabbed him by the arm and snarled nastily, “A nice boy like you deserves to know what everyone thinks of him.” Then her eyes pulsed from dark brown to bright purple and she disappeared between one blink and the next.

Jason realized something was wrong when he brushed hands with the gas station cashier and she grabbed his fingers and said, intent, “When guys who look like you walk in, I start daydreaming about getting fucked hard over the counter. You got a gun? I imagine you holding a gun to my head while we do it. I pretend I don’t like it, but you don’t give a shit and you keep going anyway.”

Jason recoiled, snatching his hand back and giving the girl behind the register a scandalized expression that would’ve been more appropriate for a grandma at church. The girl didn’t appear to notice, tucking her arm back in, all calm, as she continued in an automatic drone nothing like the intense mania of before, “There’s three fifty-two for your change, have a nice day.”

Jason stood there clutching his bills and coins for about thirty seconds too long, staring at her dumbstruck. She finally had enough and moved her eyes away from the register screen to look back at him, raising one eyebrow.

“Was there anything else?”

“No,” his voice came out rough; he cleared his throat. “No, sorry, just zoned out.” He turned and walked away, tucking his change in a pocket and mindlessly twisting the cap off the soda he’d bought.

He remembered the lady from last night. He checked his arm where she’d grabbed him and found a purple mark in the shape of her hand on his skin. The fingers were already fading.

This bore testing.

Strangers didn’t have a good idea of what they thought of him, at least as Jason. They’d look him in the eye and tell him things like that girl’s fantasy, or tell him that he looked frightening. First impressions shared with more honesty than anyone really wanted.

When Jason put on the helmet, they had other opinions. A lot more fear. Still more attraction than he was really comfortable with. Some hate. One dealer detailed the explicit daydream he had about putting the Red Hood ‘in his place.’ Jason killed him.

But they all had something to say, couldn’t stop themselves from saying it, and didn’t seem to know that they’d said something afterward. Even the other people around them didn’t notice—it was like for the length of the confession, Jason and his target went off into their own little world, severed from everyone else.

It was probably supposed to be a punishment; Jason had been chasing that witch and she didn’t seem happy about it. There were some people in his territory that he got along with who’d confessed that they were afraid of him, and that hurt. But Jason was accustomed to pain.

And this opportunity was too good to pass up.

Bruce was incapable of facing his own emotions and being truthful about them. Jason was going to make him.

It was early afternoon as Jason pulled up to the manor on his bike and parked it. The handprint on his arm was mostly faded, down to the thumb and the heel of the palm; Jason had clocked it and estimated it was supposed to last about twenty-four hours. Plenty of time.

He rang the doorbell.

The doors were too thick to hear anything from inside, so Jason had no idea who was on the other side when they started to open. He figured Alfred most likely. Alfred would let him in to talk to Bruce. He might get the shotgun just in case, but he’d give Jason the chance.

It was Dick who opened the doors, standing there wide-eyed in a casual t-shirt and jeans, already saying, “Jason?”

Alfred would have let him in. Jason would have knocked Tim out. Bruce was exactly who he wanted to see. Dick was supposed to be in Bludhaven; Jason didn’t have a plan for Dick.

He lunged forward and grabbed Dick’s wrist.

Dick tried to dodge but he was off-balance and surprised. He wasn’t prepared for a fight. Jason was in civvies, too; it would be stupid for Jason to show up like this and pick a fight through the front door. So Jason got a hand on his wrist and Dick froze and relaxed at the same time, and Jason looked up and met his brother’s sincere gaze.

Dick said, “Your death was one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

The air froze in Jason’s lungs. Blood pulsed loudly in his ears. It couldn’t drown out what Dick was saying.

“It brought Bruce and I closer together, eventually. It made me try harder with Tim and the others who came after him. It showed me the importance of holding closely to the people who are supposed to be your family,” Dick explained. His tone was conversational. As if he was talking about the plot of a new movie. “And I don’t even have to feel guilty about it anymore, because you came back. I do still feel guilty. But I don’t have to.”

This was a bad idea, Jason realized suddenly. There was a reason this family was never honest with each other.

But he was in it now. If Dick, friendly, fiery, explosively angry Dick, who screamed his grievances when he lost his temper, was this bad...

Jason pushed Dick through the doorway and followed, still holding onto his wrist. He kept talking.

“Sometimes I hate you for what you did to Tim and I want to hurt you. I’m always watching to make sure you can’t do it again. Sometimes I imagine you came back right, came home to us, and I get to have everything. I resent you for keeping that from me. Why can’t you just come back? I think you’re being selfish, putting yourself above the rest of us.”

Jason let go of his wrist. Dick’s eyes turned away from him instantly, drifting off to one side as if he was suddenly lost deep in thought. He meandered a couple of steps away from the front door, fugue-like.

Jason left.

He staggered through long, empty halls, haunted around every corner by the ghost of a stupid little kid who had everything he’d ever wanted and still wanted more. Down there was the library where he’d sit too close to the fire in winter, sweating and forgetting that he’d ever been cold. Down there was the bedroom with a door he’d never had to lock, but could anyway.

Jason shook the maudlin memories away and turned down the hall to cBruce’s office, since that was on the way and he figured Bruce was either there or in the cave.

Bruce wasn’t in the office. Tim was, sitting at the desk and squinting at a too-bright monitor. Without looking up, he said, “What’s up, Bruce?”

Jason and Bruce had similar silhouettes now. A similar presence. The mistake was understandable. Jason considered turning away and finding a different entrance to the cave, but his earlier energy was gone. He just wanted to finish what he’d started and leave. He shut the door behind him and strode over to Tim behind the desk.

“Bruce?” Tim glanced up, finally. Jason had time to see his eyes begin to widen in panic before Jason’s hand landed on his shoulder, two fingers against his neck above the collar of his shirt.

Tim said, “I really wanted you to be my brother.”

Jason’s skin was still stripped away to raw nerves. The very air hurt to breathe, aching in his chest. He was braced for it, braced to hear more of the delicate poison that had dripped out of Dick’s mouth, but that wasn’t what this was. It was painful in a whole new direction. It was a knife when he’d been expecting the burn of acid.

“I liked your Robin better than Dick’s because you made Batman laugh and you saved me and bought me ice cream once. I want you to like me and I spend hours thinking of ways to make you like me. I think you’re broken and insane and I’ve read psychology research to try to figure out how to use that—”

Jason shoved Tim away from him so hard the kid had to catch himself with his hands on the desk, head hanging over the keyboard and blinking slowly in confusion. Jason didn’t waste a step; by the time Tim had recovered and blinked the fugue away, the clock door was firmly shut behind him.

Jason took a moment, right inside the tunnel down to the cave, to put his back against a wall and breathe deeply. He didn’t think about Dick or Tim or anything they’d said. He pushed it away. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t what he’d come here for. He didn’t give a single flying fuck about either of them or what they thought of him, he’d only used the curse against them because it was easy and they were in the way. 

Dick was the asshole who’d resented him when he was a kid and Tim was the little bastard replacement. They were nothing. Their words meant nothing.

Eventually he got it together and descended into the cave. And there he was, sitting at the computer, staring at the screens.

Bruce was in a tank top and sweatpants, clearly just post-workout by the towel around his neck and the still-damp hair. His face went slack in shock as Jason appeared, and he stood slowly, bracing himself against the desk.

“Bruce,” Jason said. He’d meant for this to be deep and vaguely menacing, he knew it wasn’t going to be hard to get Bruce to touch him. To hit him. One touch of skin on skin would be enough. But Bruce’s name came out in a rasp and suddenly Jason’s eyes were burning and his stomach was cramping and doing Robin-style flips, and what came next was a half-choked, “Dad.”

Bruce moved around the computer and met Jason halfway. His hands came up and they were crashing together and his dad’s arms were wrapped around him for the first time in years, and Jason tucked his face against Bruce’s shoulder and sobbed.

Bruce said—

Bruce lost track of time, was surprised to note how late it had gotten. Almost time for patrol. He locked the computer and spun the chair around, standing up with a stretch. Alfred would give him hell for sitting down here in the chilly cave until his hair dried, said it was bad for his health, but what the old man didn’t know wouldn’t hurt Bruce.

He pulled the towel from around his neck. Something about the movement made him look down, and he saw that one side of his tank top was damp and half-dried. Not the back, where it could have been from wet hair, but the front near the collar.

He looked up. Sometimes new stalactites or drips formed, it was just one more bit of maintenance to keeping a secret, natural cave, but there was nothing above. His eyes came down and landed on the display case, lit up with Jason’s old—

Jason.

Bruce’s heart skipped a beat and started hammering against his ribs. His skin felt tight, flushed, prickling, the way it did when his body knew something he didn’t. Jason was important. He’d forgotten something—something recent—

A sense memory flashed into Bruce’s mind of Jason’s broad-shouldered form silhouetted against the cave entrance. It was too real to be something his mind just made up. The damp shirt. It was later than he’d expected. The cave was too quiet.

He’d lost time.

Bruce sat back down at the computer, unlocking it again and navigating to the camera logs. First discrepancy, not large enough to have been automatically flagged for his review—Jason riding up to the manor’s front door. Timestamp put it in the middle of Bruce’s workout.

It became clear to Bruce, in that first minute as Dick answered the door, that this wasn’t going to end well. 

He watched Dick and Tim both forget the things they said, forget about Jason entirely.

He watched Jason slide down against the wall of the tunnel, half-hysterical, gasping for breath for the small eternity of fifteen minutes.

He heard, “Bruce. Dad.”

“Don’t,” Bruce whispered to nobody but the screen as Jason leaned into his embrace. “Jason, please, no.”

But begging for it had never changed the past.

And Bruce petted his hand down the back of Jason’s head and said, as gentle as he’d been when Jason was thirteen and bed bound with the flu, “It was easier to love you when you were dead.”

Bruce’s fist slammed down on the keyboard so hard it cracked down the middle. The video paused. The cave was filled with the sound of harsh breathing, ragged gasps. “You idiot,” he snarled, not knowing if he was talking to the Bruce on the screen or Jason who’d sought this out. “Shut up. Stop this and walk away. Don’t...”

And because he and Jason were the same kind of people, Bruce pressed play again.

Jason groaned once trailing off into a whimper, as if it had been stabbed out of him, and then went dead silent. His chest didn’t even move; he’d stopped breathing. He didn’t pull away.

Bruce said, “I could remember all the good things, all the times I loved you and took care of you and got to be your father. I didn’t have to remember your temper or your violence because no one ever speaks ill of the dead.”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Bruce whispered in front of the screen, completely unaware that he was speaking. “Stop me, Jason, stop this, please, stop this now. Don’t listen.” His stomach ached like a gutted open wound but he was fine. Jason hadn’t stopped him.

Bruce said, “When you came back, you ruined that.” Don’t listen, Jason. This isn’t true. Jason's shoulders heaved with a single, desperate gasp.

“I can’t think of the son I lost without remembering that he’s a killer now,” It isn’t meant for you. I wouldn’t say this. Jason's fingers clawed at Bruce's shoulders, pulling him closer, not trying to get away.

“That you ruin people’s lives the way mine was ruined and you want me to be like you.” I don’t mean it. It’s not real. Under Bruce's words, Jason's sobs were muffled against his chest.

The vast silence of the cave pressed in around Bruce like the weight of an ocean. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t stand up. It was a yoke over his shoulders and the back of his neck keeping him in the chair, hands shaking with strain, all he could do to not collapse entirely.

Bruce said, “I do still love you.” Don’t. Don’t give him hope, you monster. Jason wracked with shudders, going quiet again.

“But you make it so hard.” Shoot him, Jason, stop letting him hurt you, you never let anyone hurt you. He was hyperventilating.

“And I wonder if I even should. Some days I wonder if there’s anything left of the son I loved, and if there’s any point in trying to love you.”

Bruce’s fist went straight through the monitor.

“Nobody’s seen him in Crime Alley,” Dick reported over comms. The exhaustion bled through in the tired sigh he gave at the end. They’d both been out for hours and pushing hard the whole time. “I’ve checked all the safe houses we know about, asked his girls.”

“Keep looking,” Bruce ordered, swinging with mechanical precision between two skyscrapers.

“Burnley cameras are clear,” Tim reported. “Checking Diamond District next.”

Bruce grunted an affirmative and said, “Oracle. Expand the search—”

“Batman,” Oracle snapped. “You’ve had us look for Hood off and on since he came back and we’ve never found him when he doesn’t want us to. Burning ourselves out tonight isn’t going to change that. I don’t know what he’s done now because you won’t tell me but—”

“Hood didn’t do anything,” Bruce said flatly. A silence fell over the open line.

“He’s hurt, O,” Dick explained, quiet and somber.

“...hurt?” Barbara repeated.

Bruce heard a shuddering breath come through the mic. Dick said, “Bad.”

“But you haven’t been—you didn’t ask me to look at hospitals or clinics,” Barbara’s voice was tentative, confused.

Bruce kept hunting, going from building to building, scanning streets. Nobody was out committing crimes anymore. Batman didn’t have time to do things slow and careful, so the first few idiots had gotten batarangs in tender places and the rest got the message.

“Not that kind of hurt. We said—there was some magic and he... heard some things.”

A stretched-out pause. Then Barbara’s voice came through clearer and stronger: “You should have mentioned this, Batman.”

“The specifics are irrelevant.”

“You’re wrong. There’s only one place Hood goes on his worst days, that we haven’t checked.”

“Where?” three voices demanded in near-unison, Bruce’s deep growl overlaying Tim’s yelp and Dick’s heated appeal.

“...yes,” Barbara said after a tense moment. “I’ve got him on camera hours ago. Batman—Bruce.” There was an edge to her voice; Bruce didn’t even chastise her for breaking code name protocols. “The cemetery. Hurry. He’s carrying—he had a shovel.”

Bruce’s heart was in his throat for the entire eight minutes it took him to speed to the cemetery. It was one of the rare times that he wished his brain was less efficient. Lane splitting through Gotham’s traffic on a motorcycle at top speed wasn’t enough to keep him from coming up with all the reasons Jason could have for bringing a shovel to his grave.

“What other equipment did he have on him, Oracle?” Bruce asked.

“It looks like his full gear. The hood, his pistols, two knives that I can see, a grapple, his belt. He could have a lot of stuff under that jacket, too.” Barbara’s voice didn’t waver once. “I’m checking nearby security cameras since. He hasn’t shown up since, but there are blind corridors.”

He could still be there or he could be long gone, she meant.

“He’s not...” Dick’s voice started weak and trailed off almost immediately.

“We don’t know what’s going through his mind right now,” Tim said. I think you’re broken and insane echoed on the line after his words, or maybe that was just Bruce’s imagination. “But for what it’s worth, Hood seems more like the type to inflict his problems on other people rather than himself.”

“Then why’s he at the fucking cemetery, Mr. Psychologist,” Dick snarled.

“Enough,” Bruce snapped as he roared into the cemetery’s parking lot. “You will not use things said under the influence of unknown magics against each other. I am at the cemetery and am approaching on foot. Keep comms clear except for emergencies.”

Dick reported a terse, “ETA eleven minutes,” and then the line was silent.

Even if there was some world in which Bruce forgot where he buried his son, he’d have been able to locate Jason’s grave just as quickly. It was the only one open, fresh earth piled next to it, emanating the perversely warm glow of a fire.

Bruce’s heart leapt into his throat as he sprinted the last distance. If Jason—if he’d—if he wanted to be sure he wouldn’t come back a second time—

He dropped skidding to his knees next to the edge. Hot air blasted the little exposed skin on his face, the acrid smell of an accelerant in his nose, and behind the lenses of the cowl Bruce’s eyes searched the grave. He’d jump in. The suit was fire resistant.

Six feet down, he saw Jason’s red helmet melting in the flames.

But it was just the helmet.

“He’s not in there.” 

He didn’t realize he’d voiced his relief aloud until Dick demanded, “What? Jason’s not there?”

Bruce didn’t respond. The worst thing he could imagine hadn’t come to pass, and it freed up his attention to look at other things. The helmet wasn’t the only thing in Jason’s grave.

Bruce pulled his cape in front of the lower half of his face to shield himself as he inspected the scene. There was the hood, center-stage, right where a body’s head would be. There was also a blackened mass that Bruce recognized as burnt leather; Jason’s jacket. His guns, holster, and two knives were glowing cherry-red among the coals of what had once been the coffin. It was as though he’d stripped down and thrown all of his gear into the hole to burn it.

Assess the rest of the crime scene.

There was the shovel he’d used, planted in the pile of dirt. It was stabbed through... an empty bag of kosher salt. Okay. A gasoline can—Barbara hadn’t said he’d been carrying that.

Bruce turned his eyes to the headstone. Here lies Jason Todd, although he hadn’t for years. There was an open pack of cigarettes laying on it, Jason’s favorite brand, and a little spiral-bound notepad with a disposable pen stuck in it. He lunged for the pad as if it was going to try to get away.

It was blank.

There were impressions on the top page, but Bruce tilted it against the line and he could already tell that it was notes from the Red Hood’s latest case. Nothing else. Bruce flipped through it, turned it upside down and flipped through again—not a mark on any of the pages.

A blank note, a half-smoked pack of cigarettes, a burning grave.

Bruce sat down in the narrow space between the headstone and the grave, leaning back against cold marble. In his mind’s eye, he saw Jason walking up with the shovel. Digging for hours, while Bruce was sitting in the cave forgetting. He’d gone the whole six feet down, that wasn’t easy or quick no matter how athletic you were. Maybe he took breaks to smoke. Maybe he took the entire thing in one go. Maybe he’d used a shovel instead of the graveyard’s equipment because it would take longer and he wanted someone to find him.

At some point, he’d sat down right here where Bruce was sitting, maybe dangling his feet into his open grave, the notepad laid on one thigh and the pen poised above it, ready to receive words that never came.

Jason was never at a loss for words. Usually, he had the opposite issue. He could say enough for himself and Bruce both.

How long had he sat here and tried?

How close had Bruce been to saving him? There wasn’t an autopsy to tell him this time.

Until eventually Jason had stood up and shed his helmet and jacket and gear into the grave. Poured the accelerant on top—and the salt. It was a magically purifying substance meant to exorcise restless or violent spirits. That kind of dramatic irony was Jason all the way through, as natural to him as breathing.

Bruce imagined that he'd lit the flames with a cigarette, flicking the glowing ember of the butt into the remains of his second life, purging himself in fire and salt.

"B," Dick's voice croaked from somewhere nearby. "What happened?" Bruce looked; firelight flickered dimly over his first son's pale, drawn face.

Bruce took a deep breath, the acrid scent of the fire filling his sinuses and sweeping him back years into the past. He hated this smell. Why did it end in fire twice? That was probably on purpose.

"I was too late."