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Technically a sequel to "You put Tim in box? You BOX him like dog?? Oh! Jail for Jason! Jail for one thousand years~" but can be read as a standalone. Probably. Hopefully. Some events are alluded to but if you"re in this fandom you should be used to reading references to events you don"t know lol.
Jason, Tim has learned, is basically the perfect big brother. He’s happy to help Tim do most things that Bruce doesn’t want them doing, but in some ways he’s even more overbearing than Bruce. He coddles Tim constantly, but in the most annoying way possible. He’s always stealing Tim’s coffee and trying to bully him into going to bed earlier. He teaches Tim exactly how siblings fight so much while still loving each other dearly.
There’s just one tiny little green-tinged problem.
“Say that again and I’m gonna break your goddamn kneecaps.”
The threat is so rote and normal at this point that Tim almost forgets to check for sincerity. But Tim didn’t make it this far by being lazy, so he checks, and double checks. Jason, still lounging in his rooftop armchair, has his eyes closed. But he’s lounging, mostly relaxed, and idly tapping his fingers on the spine of the book he was reading before Dick and Tim crashed his place.
Based on the evidence before him, Tim concludes: insincere threat. And acts accordingly.
“S K U N K,” Tim spells out, trying to hide the grin in his voice. “I mean, c’mon, y’can’t’ve missed it.” He sounds more and more like Jason each day.
“That ain’t an appropriate response to someone threatenin’ to blow out your kneecaps, baby bird.” Jason puts the book on top of his face, nose buried in the spine.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll be sure to quiver in fear next time,” Tim says, delighted by the sheer lack of anger in Jason’s movements. Even though he cannot see Jason’s eyes, he is certain: this is banter. Just friendly insults. “Brush up on the proper etiquette for responses to threats of bodily harm and grievous injury.”
“Good,” Jason grunts.
“How would you react to someone–hypothetically–saying that you look like a skunk?” Tim asks innocently. “Even if it’s measurably and demonstrably true. How should I react? Hypothetically.”
Jason gives him the middle finger.
“Jaskunk. Skunk Man,” Dick pipes up. He’s perched on a beanbag, which should be impossible because no one can perch on a beanbag. He gives Jason finger guns after sharing his two horrible, horrible names with his two wonderful, incorrigible little brothers.
Jason pulls the book off his face and cracks open his eyes. Tim seizes the opportunity to asses the color, which is actually easier at night. If Jason is too angry, they glow. They’re barely visible right now, which means that Jason is not actually angry, just pretending. This is in line with Tim’s earlier conclusion, but it is still nice to get confirmation.
One eye rolls over to glare at Dick. Jason holds up a middle finger. “Dickface. Dickhead. Dickwad. Bane of my existence, destroyer of my happiness.”
Dick drops his finger guns so he can clutch his chest dramatically. “How dare you. I am the light of your life.”
“First life, maybe,” Jason snorts.
The banter immediately dissipates, as it does every time Jason brings up his murder and subsequent revival.
Gotham, like most modern cities, glitters at night. Distant skyscrapers outlined as little white and yellow squares. The occasional purple or red spires spice up the skyline. In Jason’s fifth-story rooftop garden, fresh air swirls, cool and sweet. On the streets below, cars trundle past, their headlights cutting through the night like searchlights. It is in every way the most ordinary of evenings.
A Decade of Abuse: Wayne Accuses CEO Drake Of Mistreating Son In Heated Court Case
Tonight is anything but ordinary to Tim. Tonight there are dozens of articles floating around the internet with Tim’s name in them, but Tim only knows the title of the first and only one he read. Gotham shines bright with the lights of thousands of homes, and all Tim can think about is how there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people reading those articles right now.
“It wasn’t abuse,” Tim ventures.
Dick and Jason know instantly what he’s talking about. There’s a reason they’re keeping him company tonight, why Tim is staying over in one of Jason’s safehouses instead of at Wayne Manor. Bruce has, of course, made his home impervious to alien invasion, gods and monsters that make paparazzi look like a bunch of whiny babies. But everyone agreed that Tim needed a night away from everything. No patrol, no father figures, no haunted mansions. It is just Batman and Spoiler out tonight, while Tim and his brothers relax on a rooftop garden and watch the moon rise.
“Yeah, it fuckin’ was,” Jason growls. His green eyes pierce Tim, lances pinning him in place. They are glowing.
Tim’s heart skips a beat, fighting the embarrassing satisfaction in knowing that Jason is angry on his behalf. It won’t matter why Jason is angry, if he loses control. All that matters is who the most convenient outlet for that anger is, and that Tim is always, always the target of the Lazarus Pit and Jason, its biggest victim.
Janet and Jack Drake taught Tim this, and they’ve never been wrong. Maybe Bruce has never lost control, but he was much harsher with Tim right after losing Jason. And Jason has lost control, lost to the Lazarus Pit and its insatiable rage, over and over. Tim will do anything to keep his big brother from the green-eyed monster he sometimes becomes. He cannot go back to the days of Jason being his enemy instead of his friend. He can’t.
“Let’s not talk about this.” Tim rises from his chair and pads over to Dick’s beanbag, where he slumps, shamelessly asking Dick for cuddles.
“Tim is unavailable for comment,” said Ms. Rivera, Wayne’s lawyer. “We trust that everyone understands that Tim is a fifteen year old going through more than any teenager should have to go through, and respect his privacy during this tumultuous time.”
Dick obliges happily, tugging Tim by his armpits until he is splayed across the beanbag, half-off, half in Dick’s lap. Despite the haphazard nature of the movement, Tim makes sure to keep Jason’s face within sight. His head dangles upside-down. He watches Jason’s chin as it tenses, then relaxes slowly as the poisonous light drains from those green eyes. Still safe.
“Okay,” Dick agrees. “You don’t have to worry about it. You know that, right? We’re not gonna stop fighting for you. You just have to tell the truth.”
If only it were that easy.
What none of them–not even Bruce–realize is that Tim is a compulsive, consummate liar. He gets it from his mother. Sure, some of his lies have collapsed quickly and embarrassingly in the past, but sometimes Tim is such a good liar that not even he can tell what is the truth.
Tim is pretty sure that’s what’s going on with the court case. He has tricked the Waynes somehow, convinced them that Jack Drake is some sort of all-powerful monster, when he’s really not. He is terrified of the day they figure this out. When Bruce realizes he threw dirt all over his reputation for someone who didn’t need his help. When Jason realizes that Tim is not one of the poor, abused children that claim the soft spot of Jason’s heart.
Maybe that day will come after Tim is officially adopted. Tim hates himself a little for wishing fervently for that outcome, so that getting rid of him legally is more trouble than it’s worth.
Wayne’s eclectic adoption tendencies have been a topic of heated discussion in the past. However, in this case it is Drake’s behavior that is turning heads. Drake claims that on the night of September 9, notably another instance of the abuse alleged by Wayne, a man wearing a mask and a leather jacket broke into his house and assaulted him before kidnapping Timothy Drake and disappearing. “He was probably another one of those ****ing capes,” said Drake.
This is in reference to Drake’s additional claim that his son and Wayne are none other than Gotham’s iconic crime-fighting duo, Batman and Robin. “He’s also claimed that Bruce’s ex-girlfriend is Catwoman,” says Clark Kent, a close friend of Wayne and a reporter for the Daily Planet. “He even said that I was Superman! It seems to me that he’s got a superhero name for anyone associated with Bruce.”
“It is sort of nice to see my dad being gaslighted for once.” Tim breaks his own request in a vain attempt to say something that will appease Dick and Jason.
Instead, Jason’s eyes (not glowing, just intense, good) lock onto Tim like a heat-seeking missile. “What did he say?”
“Huh?” Tim mentally rewinds through his comment. “Jason, he didn’t actually gaslight me. No one says that word to mean what it actually means anymore, it’s like, a meme, an internet phrase. It just means, like, lying, or like, being confidently wrong about something. I didn’t actually mean gaslighting,” he concludes, awkwardly avoiding Jason’s gaze.
He just finished monologuing about how he accidentally convinced Jason that he was abused, and immediately up and did it again. Why can’t Tim just stop lying. Because one day Jason will figure out the thoroughness of Tim’s lies, and he even if he forgives Tim for all of it, he’ll never be Tim’s big brother again. They’ll be back to the antagonistic days where Jason doesn’t trust Tim and Tim can’t trust Jason.
And Tim still can’t bring himself to regret the lies.
In a statement provided by Wayne’s lawyers, Timothy Drake states that he witnessed no such man the night of September 9.
The worst part about all of this is that Jason has the most understandable reasons of all time to be angry, even without the magical bursts of uncontrollable rage. He was murdered. He came back to life in, though they haven’t talked about it, perhaps the only revival method more traumatic than Jason’s murder. He was kidnapped by the League of Assassins, lied to and trained by them. Told that his dad had replaced him with a boy who looked so similar to him. They deliberately omitted Steph, and set him loose on Gotham City.
Pair all that with the Lazarus Pit, and really, it would be a dick move for Tim to get angry about anything Jason does while under its influence. And Jason tries so hard to control it anyways, for Tim. Tries to handle Tim with ill-fitting kid gloves and to be his big brother, just because Tim asked. Really, Tim is so incredibly lucky to have this.
Yet Tim still can’t help himself from wishing that he could interact with Jason without worrying about how close Jason is to losing control.
-oOoOo-
Jason is astonished by well he and Tim are getting along these days. Sure, Tim still has not totally gotten over his fear of him. He still checks for exits every time he and Jason are in the same room. He still draws back sometimes, when Jason moves too quickly. But he snarks back at Jason’s jokes. They even play-wrestle sometimes, like he and Dick used to do.
He thought it would take a lot longer for Tim to trust him enough for friendly banter, for brotherly fighting. Had resigned himself to waiting years just for Tim to feel comfortable being close to him, to never becoming close ever. Instead, Tim made it thoroughly, abundantly clear that he wants to spend more time with Jason. And after all he’s done to the kid, who is he to refuse? Tim wants, Jason is willing; it should work out.
There are still bad days.
“Get your thieving hands away before I start cutting fingers.” Jason delivers the graphic threat the same way he always does, which is to say, carelessly and casually.
Dick takes it the same way he always does, which is to say, completely unseriously. He drapes himself across the kitchen counter, arms curled protectively around his stolen carrot muffin. “You let Tim have one,” he whines, like the oversized man child he is, and no Jason is not hypocritical saying that.
Jason doesn’t bother cleaning his hands before shoving Dick off the counter. “That’s because Timmy’s my favorite brother.”
Predictably, Dick protects the carrot muffin instead of himself. He lands on the hardwood floor, shirt stained with orange-brown muffin batter. It’s one of Tim’s shirts, except that “Tim’s” shirt is secretly Steph’s shirt, so Dick is essentially wearing a sparkly purple crop-top and hideously yellow sweatpants as he carries on from the floor.
“I used to be his favorite brother,” Dick complains to Tim.
The plastic analog clock ticks away the silence as both Jason and Dick determine Tim’s reaction. Now is usually where he makes a dry comment like you used to be his only brother. He is sitting on a stool by the kitchen counter, hands folded politely in his lap, just a bit too still for comfort. His carrot muffin lies abandoned and untouched on the countertop.
Both Jason and Dick have put in a lot of effort in acting like everything is fine and normal, so that Tim feels more comfortable. But something must have set him off, for Tim to be so on guard. Jason wishes he would just say what it is. Not that Jason blames him, but so that Jason would know what to avoid doing.
Naturally, Tim fails to provide a comprehensive list of every single everyday action and household object that triggers him. Jason is left grasping in the dark while the clock keeps on ticking, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-TOCK, tick-TOCK, TICK-TOCK, TICK-TOCK TICKTOCK TICKTOCK TICKTOCKTICKTOCKTICKTOCK–
–HE’S NOT COMING–
–hahahahahahaHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA
A knife slips into Jason’s hand. His wrist flicks expertly, measuring distance by sound alone. Jason’s eyes stay fixed on Tim as the knife flies, strikes true, and shatters the analog clock in a spray of brittle plastic pieces. They rain over the varnished wood planks. The kitchen knife clatters to the floor. The black minute hand lands on top of it.
“Hey.” Dick is on his feet and in Jason’s personal space all of a sudden. Socks press over plastic shards as he grasps Jason’s shoulders with both hands, telegraphing the move in case Jason startles. And he doesn’t get too close, but he holds on tight. “Breathe with me.”
Unwillingly, Jason follows Dick’s breathing pattern. He can’t stand the infantilization, but he knows Dick is only trying to help, and it helps. Everyone knows it helps, or Dick wouldn’t be doing it. But that doesn’t mean that Dick’s easy acceptance and affection doesn’t scare Jason.
“I have this,” Jason says through gritted teeth, “under control.”
Dick does not call him out as the massive liar he is. Jason leans into his hold and breathes.
The years have crawled away from fifteen-year-old Jason in that Ethiopian warehouse. Years and years and yet Jason is still freaking out over household objects and scared of everyday actions. Tim is still fifteen and already doing so, so, so much better than Jason.
(Sometimes, on the darkest of nights, Jason lies awake and counts the good things in his life, notes how all of them are the names of the people who forgave him. Alfred and Bruce and Dick and Barbara, and Tim, God, Tim. Tim went above and beyond forgiving Jason. Their forgiveness is the only reason that Jason still has good things in his life, yet Jason still cannot bring himself to forgive Bruce. Not at all. Not even a little.
How’s that for irony?)
Jason waits for a blissfully silent minute to force his breathing back under control. He steps away from the remains of the clock and bends down to start picking up the broken clock pieces.
“I’ll clean up.” Dick squats and swipes the knife before Jason can get his murderous hands on it. He flings it, just as expertly, into the sink, where it clatters loudly in the dirty metal mixing bowl. Then he starts collecting the plastic shards, all with that same fixed, gracious and fake smile stuck on his face.
Guilt and self-loathing and boiling rage fuse into a volatile mix. He doesn’t trust you, howls the Lazarus Pit. He thinks you’re going to snap, thinks you should be kept in a padded cell, away from small children and chili dogs and anything bright and good.
Jason forces it down with inhuman effort. “You don’t need to.”
“No, I’ll help,” Dick insists, full of forced cheer.
“I’ll help too!” Tim slips off his stool and kneels next to Dick.
Jason’s knees ache with the effort to stay upright. His hand twitch uselessly by his sides as his brothers clean up his mess for him.
Then there are good days. Nights when it is just Jason and Tim, and Jason can believe that they’re okay.
“Wonder Woman, Superman, and Black Canary.”
Almost just Jason and Tim, anyways.
Jason fixes Steph with the most disapproving stare he can muster. “Superman’s, like, my uncle.”
Dick calls him Uncle Clark. Jason never has. That didn’t stop Superman from crying when he met Jason for the first time post-death. Batman isn’t the only hero who failed to save Jason, or the only one who feels guilty about it.
Steph nods without even looking at his glare. “So, kill Superman?”
“We are not playing this game,” Tim groans. “Also, Black Canary’s my therapist. Ew.”
How many Bats is too many Bats for a stakeout? Jason doesn’t know the answer, but three is definitely too many. The three of them lie belly-down on a dirty rooftop, each covering about 120º so someone exiting the building won’t be missed. Barbara muted them about twenty minutes after Steph started coming up with games to play while waiting, which is longer than Jason thought she would last.
Really, they could’ve covered all the exits with just two of them. But no one wanted Tim and Steph to take this mission on alone, except for Tim and Steph. Jason is trusted to keep them alive, but he is not trusted alone with either of them. Bruce and Dick are busy. Therefore: Jason joins the two teenage vigilantes for this mission. It is a weird limbo of trust and lack thereof. Most days Jason can pretend to be normal about it.
Steph gives Tim a disapproving stare, which similarly goes completely ignored. “You don’t have a therapist.”
“She gives me therapeutic advice,” Tim argues. “It counts.”
“I wouldn’t kill Superman unless I had to,” Jason hedges. “Like, if he went evil and had to be stopped.”
Steph snorts. “What, so, like you?”
Ah, Stephanie Brown. She is the only one who will make jokes about Jason’s violent mistakes. It’s like Jason’s death jokes, except that Jason is the only one allowed to make Jason death jokes. Jason doesn’t think she’s fully forgiven him for everything Tim-related, but she accepts him. Probably because Tim has more than fully forgiven him.
“S,” Tim hisses, mortified.
Strictly speaking, Tim should be the only one allowed to make these comments. Instead, he is the least willing to talk about anything Red Hood v. Robin. So it is up to Jason to accept Steph’s comments with good humor, show Tim that he’s still safe even if he says something Jason doesn’t like, and show everyone he isn’t like that anymore.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
The stakeout provides a convenient excuse for Jason not to force a laugh, but he thinks about it. Would that be good humor, or would that be refusing to acknowledge the severity of his actions? Jason never used to think so much about things like this. He wishes he could go back to those days. Wishes he never went after Tim. Wishes he could un-murder himself, kill the Joker and send fifteen-year-old Jason back home to finish his essay on To Kill A Mockingbird, drag Dick to the flying trapeze so he can try catching the pennyroll, and make souffle with Alfred on the weekends.
Tim twists, elbows digging into concrete, so that he’s almost within arm reach of Jason. “She didn’t mean–”
“I know.”
Jason is lying. He has no idea what Tim was about to say. All he knows is that he cannot stomach Tim trying to apologize for Steph after she made a dry comment at Jason’s expense. He shifts his weight onto his left arm, and reaches out with his right. Aiming to slap Tim on the back.
Tim grabs his hand and twists it before Jason can make contact. His teeth are bared, and Jason barely as time to think, grinning? So play-wrestling, before Tim is using his right arm as leverage to yank him off his left elbow, and pinning a knee in his back. Jason twists his left arm back until it brushes across Tim’s leg. Then he gets his hand around Tim’s calf and pulls.
While Tim is going splat, Jason rolls out of the way. Not a moment too soon: Tim’s leg lashes out, catching Jason in the side. He’s already scrambling to his feet while Jason just lays there, clutching his side (which doesn’t hurt) and readying to throw Tim like a basketball.
Instead, Tim stays where he is. On his feet, two steps from Jason, arms up. He looks at Jason expectantly, waiting for his move, but Jason doesn’t want to fight anymore.
“Why’d I get saddled with the two brats,” Jason grumps to no one in particular.
The problem with having brothers and being a trained killer is that all fights tend to bleed into real fights. Play-fighting isn’t play when you also fight for your life on a regular basis. It’s the reason Jason and Dick stopped. Nowadays Jason mostly just throws Dick out of windows whenever he’s getting too annoying.
With Tim it is, of course, even worse. He still remembers their last fight in 2160p monochrome, in a third of his nightmares. The scrape of dirty concrete. A jumble of arguments. A litany of pleas. The sickening, liquid fire crack when Tim broke his arm.
Robin had plenty of banter for him back then, quips and insults that bordered on friendly. The dirty rooftop, the adrenaline rush of the fight, Tim in his Robin suit, arms guarding his face, they all take Jason back, too far back. He doesn’t know how Tim can be okay with this.
But Jason checks, double checks, and triple checks, and Tim is still exhibiting no signs of fear. He plonks himself down next to Jason and gives him a pat on the head. Jason slaps the offending hand away.
“Why’d I get saddled with the two morons,” Steph complains right back. “By the way, they’re on the move. If you even care.”
This time both Jason and Tim scramble to their feet, abandoning boredom and all thoughts of trust and fear. Three Bats descend on the arms dealers from the rooftops. They’re outnumbered, 3 v. 20. The arms dealers don’t stand a chance.
-OoOoO-
Tim is running from human traffickers when he finds Red Hood. Normally, this would be good news. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near traffickers tonight, so he signaled for backup the moment he saw them. Jason should be his backup. Tim assumed he was backup.
Except Jason isn’t here.
The traffickers have a small fleet of vans and cars, one of which they attempted to stuff Tim into, that Tim is staying ahead of through grappling and extensive training on rooftop parkour. But Tim does not have infinite energy.
When he flies into the alley and sees Jason, he is initially relieved. Wouldn’t even complain if Jason killed them all. He probably should, but Tim really does not appreciate the trafficking attempt.
But then Tim sees the eyes. They are bright, acidic, chartreuse, terrifying; whichever adjective properly conveys the lethality. This is Jason in the throes of a Pit frenzy. Because Tim’s mind works faster than his body sometimes, he realizes four things in between one footstep and the next.
First: Tim can see Jason’s eyes because Jason is in civvies right now, has no mask or helmet and only a few weapons.
Second: If Jason is in civvies that means he’s here by coincidence, not as backup.
Third: If Jason if here by coincidence that means he doesn’t know that there is an uncomfortably large group of people that Jason usually kills right on Tim’s heels.
Fourth: Since Jason doesn’t know there’s someone else around, actually deserving of his rage, his focus will be on Tim. And a Pit-mad Jason’s attention equals pain.
Conclusion: run.
Except with Jason at one end of the alley and the traffickers at the other, running means flying straight into the traffickers’ open arms.
Tim’s next footstep falters.
Being captured by traffickers will lead to an uncomfortable few hours before Batman, Nightwing, and/or Spoiler come to his rescue. Maybe even Jason, if he gets his head out of the Pit soon enough. A run-in with Red Hood means pain, pain, pain. Tim can handle pain. He can handle Red Hood. He thinks he could even win now, maybe. Not without pain, but he could still win the fight.
He also knows that he cannot handle fighting Jason.
Red Hood isn’t an annoying Rogue anymore. He’s the shadowy monster that lurks behind Tim’s big brother. He is Jason gone wrong. If Tim fights him now, he’ll be fighting the same person that bakes Tim all sorts of desserts, that carries him when he’s injured, that yells at him about Animal Farm. The same face that pulls a funny disgusted expression whenever Dick says or does something particularly embarrassing, now smoothed into the cold fury of a stranger.
Tim stops. The traffickers’ van roars into the alley. Red Hood reaches for a gun. Tim can’t tear his eyes away from Jason’s face, hope fluttering, begging please, please, with his eyes, even as tires screech and shouts draw nearer. Please come to your senses. Please, Jason. I need you.
Hands seize Tim from all directions. He makes a half-hearted effort to shake them off. As much as he can do while still staring at Jason. Eyes still green green green. Tim hadn’t known that rage could be so green. The books all say it’s red. How does literary analysis explain that? Why don’t you explain the color symbolism? Tim asks Jason, while his eyes burn green green green green. Instead of wanting to beat my face into the ground. Please?
Jason does not draw his gun. The traffickers ignore him as just a random Gothamite that knows better than to cause trouble when a dozen armed, masked individuals are dragging Robin into a van. They’re twisting all sorts of metal and rope around Tim’s limbs, but he cannot be bothered to determine which. No shots are fired.
Pit fury rages in Red Hood’s killer green eyes.
Tim lets the traffickers take him.
-oOoOo-
Jason is returning from grocery shopping when the unthinkable happens. Because of course he must be unarmed, unarmored, and laden with egg cartons right when he is most needed. Or mostly unarmed, with several knives and one gun tucked away by his pants. He is not legally registered for concealed carry, but he’s not legally alive either, so the gun stays.
The alley’s fire escape takes him right up to the fifth flour, where his apartment is. Like all his other safehouses, it is stocked with weapons and tech, but it is also one of the more liveable ones. Jason has access to the rooftop garden, and sometimes Dick drags the beanbag out there and naps. It is where Tim stayed over, the night his custody case reached the news.
Something tips Jason off. After so many years of Constant Vigilance: Child Soldier Edition being drilled into his brain, it is impossible to say what, exactly, warns Jason of oncoming danger. Nevertheless, he follows his gut instinct, and spins.
His gut instinct is correct. Robin is barreling down the alley full speed. On the run, in flight, fleeing for his life. His suit is scraped and bloodied. The sight of Tim so obviously in distress sends a rush of fury he has not felt since his out-of-control days roaring through Jason. Exploding behind his eyes, dropping the grocery bags without Jason’s say-so.
Tires shriek on asphalt as five cars tear into the alley after Tim. Jason reaches for his gun. So someone thinks they can target Robin and get away with it? Well, Red Hood has no issue putting them in the ground.
And then Robin freezes. Milk and cracked eggs puddle around Jason’s boots. His hand hovers by the gun holster. What’s up, he is one moment from asking, when the people chasing after Robin catch up to Tim, and Tim…
Lets them.
Jason must be imagining things. It is not his time of day, he has PTSD and probably a lot of other mental problems. So it’s totally understandable, that he hallucinates for a second. Imagines that Robin, upon making eye contact with Jason, runs back to the traffickers.
They haul Tim to the van. He does not break eye contact with Jason, who holds his breath, waiting for some signal. Tim was running from them a second ago. What changed? Is he trying to protect Jason? Is there some change of plans going on that Jason doesn’t know about?
The car door slams. Locks engage. Engines roar. They leave one armed, masked man behind to deal with Jason while all the cars peel out of the alley just as furiously as they arrived.
His hand is still frozen by the gun he almost pulled out. He might not be breathing. Fury breathes for him. You’re not touching him, says the fury. You can’t take him. And for once it doesn’t quite sound like the Pit, despite sharing every symptom. For once this fury feels real, like it is truly Jason’s rage.
Jason shoots first. Despite his overabundance of fury, Jason does not kill the masked trafficker. He needs answers. The bullet pierces the man’s right arm, tearing through an artery or two and forcing the gun out of his hand. In the blink of an eye Jason crosses the distance between them and sucker-punches the man to the ground.
“What are you doing with Robin.” Jason leans in close. For once, he can see the green violence of the Lazarus Pit reflected in the other man’s eyes.
The man just wheezes incoherently, a sob of pain strangled by said pain. Jason hauls the man over one shoulder and carries him up all five flights of stairs to his safehouse.
“O, this is Hood.” The first thing Jason does once safely in his apartment, after dumping the man on the floor, is get his hands on the closest comm. “Is–”
“Hood, thank God,” Barbara interrupts, uncharacteristically worried. “R ran afoul of traffickers by the docks. It looks like they got him a few minutes ago ‘cause he’s going back. How soon can you get–”
“Send me his coords.” Jason straps on a few more guns, a few more knives. Pulls on his helmet and connects the comm. “I’ll get ‘im back.”
He mutes his comm. Walks over to the man, crumpled in pain on Jason’s floor.
“Please,” the trafficker sobs, “I’ll tell you anything–whatever you want–”
Jason pulls out a different gun. “I don’t need you anymore.”
This time, the bullet goes through the head.
Robin’s tracker leads Jason to a huge shipping storage container by the docks, temporarily co-opted by the trafficking group that kidnapped Robin. The walls are crawling with them, both inside and out. Blatantly walking around with guns out. It is quickly obvious how such a large group of traffickers was able to grow with none of the Bats noticing: they aren’t from Gotham.
Jason is following a time-honored Bat-tradition (Batradition, if you ask Dick) (don’t ask Dick) and hiding in the sewers. This close to the docks, they are as large as regular streets. Jason finds the porthole that heavy boots keep passing over and waits.
“He’s still in there,” a voice insists. Nasal, gender unclear. Jason mentally labels them as Diversity Win. “No way he got out. We just gotta find him–”
“I’m not staying in this hellhole city one second longer than necessary,” a second voice contradicts. Also nasal, male. Jason labels him as Rat Man. “How long until the Bats come for our heads? Place is gonna blow in five minutes anyway. Forget Robin, let’s go.”
So Tim escaped, and is now hiding somewhere in the storage facility. The storage facility that is rigged to explode. Fantastic.
“Forget Robin? We’re gonna make a fortune off him and…”
Their voices fade into the distance.
Jason waits until he can’t hear them anymore before he shoots the bolts off the porthole and crawls out of the sewer. “O? Where’s everyone?”
“B’s still fifteen minutes out, N’s in Blüd, but he’s coming.” Barbara reports quickly. “Spoiler’s on standby, but…”
No one wants to send the fifteen-year-old to rescue the other fifteen-year-old from human traffickers. Bruce is too far away, too late again. Tim barely has five minutes. Looks like it’s just Jason. Figures.
So Jason enters the usual way: by shooting Rat Man and Diversity Win, and strolling in the main entrance. The moment he’s inside, he starts searching for the best hiding places without moving his helmet. Where does a hunted, injured Robin hide? Up high.
A woman stands in front of the assembled traffickers. They line the walls, but keep inching closer to Jason and the door. To overwhelm him with numbers, or so they have less distance to cover when this place blows.
“Red Hood,” says the woman. The leader of the traffickers, then. Jason labels her as New Diversity Win.
Jason dips his head in the barest acknowledgement. “Heard you caught a little bird.” He thanks the helmet’s voice modifier for keeping out the shaking fury in his voice.
“How much are you offering for him?” New Diversity Win asks.
Jason pulls out two pulses–no, Bat-bombs–whatever the hell Dick calls them–and throws them in opposite directions. They skitter to a stop by New Diversity Win’s two groups of thugs, now clustered on Jason’s left and right, and explode. None of them react fast enough to dodge the blast, except for New Diversity Win, who pulls a gun. But Jason is already side-stepping and drawing his own gun.
The bullet whizzes past Jason’s ear. He and New Diversity Win both freeze, guns leveled directly at each other’s faces.
“Your life,” Jason answers.
He waits as New Diversity Win assesses her situation. Her grunts, out cold, injured, or dead. Robin, loose somewhere in the warehouse. Red Hood, armed and eager to kill. Her first night in Gotham City and she’s already been found out by Robin, is facing off Red Hood, and is being targeted by Batman.
“Fine,” New Diversity Win snaps.
She keeps her gun up as she approaches the entrance. Sliding around Jason, meters in between them and not taking her eyes off him for a second. Then she’s out the door and running for her life. She doesn’t know that Jason already knows about the bomb. For all she knows, Jason is about to die.
“Sending Spoiler after her,” Barbara informs him.
Jason doesn’t bother to acknowledge her verbally. He has bigger problems. “Robin?” Jason calls loudly. “I took care of ‘em. You can come out now.”
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. There’s about three minutes left on the bomb that Jason can’t see. He shouldn’t be able to hear it either, but he does. Jason panics briefly, thinking that Tim is unconscious or incapacitated. He’ll have to find him and carry him out of the warehouse before it explodes with both of them in it. Then–
“How are you feeling?” That’s Tim’s voice, but weirdly echoey. Like he’s shouting down a long pipe. His voice bounces off all the walls, disguising his precise location. “Are you…green?”
Oh. Tim’s awake and aware, he just doesn’t trust Jason. That’s fair. That’s fine. Jason is so fine with that. It’s just that Tim couldn’t have picked a worse time to not trust Jason.
The echo effect doesn’t disguise all the hesitancy in Tim’s voice, but Jason can’t lie to Tim. “Very. I’m not leaving them alive. You know I don’t fuck with human trafficking.”
“Then I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind.” Still muffled and oddly polite as fear freezes Jason’s blood.
“Robin. No. We have to get out now. This place is rigged to blow. Three minutes.”
A snort, echoing through the pipes, bouncing off the walls, ringing in Jason’s head. “Sure it is.”
He doesn’t believe me. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Who’s coming?
“Why would I lie about that.” Jason can barely hear himself over the roaring in his head.
“‘Cause you want me to come out,” Tim answers plainly.
“‘Cause this warehouse is gonna FUCKING EXPLODE.” Jason’s control is slipping, but he needs it right now, dearly and desperately. Knows any chance he has of convincing Tim of anything is shot to hell if he loses control. “With us in it. So let’s go.”
“Sending Spoiler to your location,” Barbara says, a question hidden behind her statement. Clearly confused by Tim’s reluctance. Jason wishes he had answers for her, but he’s just as confused.
“No,” Tim hisses. “O, what are you thinking? Hood’s in the middle of a Pit fury!”
Pit fury. Pit fury. The sound slithers around and around Jason’s brain. He is, isn’t he? He’s furious and so fucking afraid. So close to losing it. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. No one’s coming.
“And you’re not helping by staying in the warehouse,” Barbara snaps back, not bothering to cut Jason out of the conversation. “What are you thinking?”
“That I don’t want to get beat into a pulp!” A pulp, a pulp, cry the warehouse walls. “He’s lying about the bomb,” Tim insists. Where did Jason go so wrong, that Tim thinks he’d lie about something like that? “He just wants me to come to him. This is Red Hood, O. Not Jay.”
He means Jay but he says it like the letter, like Mistah J, like the Joker. Is that who Tim thinks he is? When did Tim become convinced Red Hood and Jason are two different people? How did Jason fuck up that badly? How can he fix this in the next minute and a half? Tick-tock. Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock–
–START RUNNING–
“He’s not lying about the bomb!” Barbara shouts. “What is wrong with you!”
“What’s wrong with me? Did I miss the part where I un-made myself his biggest trigger?” Tim snipes.
“I won’t kill the traffickers if you come out,” Jason bargains, trying to think of anything that’ll get Tim out. “I’ll–fuck. What do you want? Tell me what you want and I’ll do it so long as you come out. Baby bird, please. I’ll do anything.”
Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCK–
Jason struggles to breathe as history rhymes, all doom and screeching violins.
“I want my brother back,” Tim sobs. Back, back, the walls wail with him. “But we can’t all have what we want, now can we?”
Spoiler steps over the bodies by the warehouse entrance and steps warily up to Jason. What the fuck, she mouths at him. He nearly cries in relief. I don’t know, he mouths back.
“Robin?” Steph calls. “You here?”
Quiet shuffling. “Get away from her,” Tim snarls suddenly, all the fear and hesitancy replaced with all-too familiar anger. “S, get away from him. He’s not–it’s not safe.”
“How about we all get away from here,” Steph proposes.
Tim ignores her perfectly reasonable request. “Please get away from him.”
TICK-TOCK TICK-TOCK TICKTOCK TICKTOCK TICKTOCK–
– If being Robin won’t protect me, maybe being a monster will–
Jason breathes in dust and death and loses it on the exhale. So Tim thinks he’s a monster? Fine. Jason will play the bad guy. He’ll be the bad guy. Jason swore he would never go back to those days, but here he is again. Another warehouse, another bomb, and three Robins, past and present. He’ll let Tim hate him, justify his fear, so long as Tim stays alive.
“I won’t hurt her if you come out,” Jason shouts.
Steph makes a big what the hell gesture at Jason. He shushes her and she crosses her arms. They wait in tense silence for Tim’s answer.
“You’ll hurt her anyways.” The echo is loud and unending, but Tim’s voice is small.
He thinks you’re a monster. He really believes it. Jason grits his teeth and perseveres. “Not if you come down. I’ll–hurt you instead,” he forces out.
Steph’s staring at Jason, disbelief obvious despite her hidden face. What the fuuuck, she mouths.
“Send her away first,” Tim bargains. “Then I’ll come out. I won’t fight if you send her away.”
Jason looks at Steph. Presses one palm on his chest and moves it in a quick circle. Please. She’s scowling at him. Send me? She mouths, obviously displeased with the manhandling.
“Forty seconds,” Barbara tells all of them.
Steph mutes her comm. “Fine,” she whispers harshly to Jason. “But you fucking owe me.”
Jason nods tersely. He’d sign over his firstborn at this point. Steph stomps out of the warehouse. Jason watches her back and thinks, at least one of us is getting out of this alive.
“You see that? She’s out.” Jason can’t keep the growl out of his voice. “Now come out.”
A series of shifting fabric sounds echoes through the warehouse. Then a familiar green-red-yellow figure pops into view, by the ceiling. Tim descends by grappling hook. He is trembling like an autumn leaf in a thunderstorm when Jason reaches him. Jason knows he ought to be calming him, reassuring him, like Dick would do, shouldn’t be losing his temper and grabbing Tim too harshly by the wrist.
But Dick never died alone in a warehouse.
Thirty seconds. Jason starts running. Drags Tim behind him. Robin stumbles along, semi-willingly. Jason blocks out the sound of Tim’s quick breaths. Pretends he can block out the tick-tick-ticking, the non-stopping tick-tock, tick-tock, ticktockticktockticktock TICKTOCKTICKTOCKTICKTOCKTICKTOCKTICKTOCK–
Twenty seconds. Jason pushes Tim into the open porthole, jumps in after and pulls the grate closed above them.
Fifteen seconds. Tim is waiting, so infuriatingly docile, when Jason turns around. He doesn’t resist when Jason grabs him by the arm and sprints through the tunnels. Boots splashing through sewer water.
Five seconds. Jason takes out a gun with his free hand. Four. He shoots through a wire net. Three. He slams through the newly-broken part feet-first. Two. Hears the broken ends scrape Tim as he gets pulled through after Jason. One.
BOOM.
The slimy cobblestones rattle from the force of the explosion. Water sloshes up to Jason’s thighs, then recedes. He and Tim are knocked off their feet, against the rounded walls.
But they are alive.
“The bomb was–” Tim’s struggle to catch his breath ends with his voice cracking. “Real?”
Jason doesn’t have the energy to feel hurt by Tim’s disbelief. His heart has already been scraped hollow. So Tim never felt safe around Jason. So Jason never understood him. So what? It’s not like Jason deserved forgiveness in the first place. What’s so hurtful about learning that he was never forgiven?
“B’s here,” Barbara informs them.
So perfectly late, Jason thinks bitterly. Like always.
Tim pulls himself off the sewer wall. “Hood,” he says, cautiously, deferentially, “about our deal–”
Jason turns his back to Tim. “Go home, Robin.”
He strides away through the sewers. Tim doesn’t come after him. Doesn’t say this was all a misunderstanding or come back, I trust you. Doesn’t say a word. Jason wonders if this how Dick felt when he lost his little brother. This awful, hollowed-out feeling that Jaosn let him fester in as he tormented Tim for months.
And in it pours: guilt, running through the filth of Gotham’s sewer water, hiding in the rafters of a dirty warehouse, seeping with Robin’s blood into a dozen rooftops, guilt in the back alleys, guilt in the public libraries, guilt in every place Jason has ever called home. Jason drowns in it.
-OoOoO-
Dick lets him lick his wounds for twenty-three hours and twenty-four minutes. Jason is on an Old Gotham rooftop, stubbing out a cigarette on the head of a gargoyle when Dick’s stupid head pops over the roof’s edge. He’s wearing regular clothes, or as close to regular as Dick Grayson ever gets. The shirt is fuschia and the pants are lime green.
Jason is also in a shirt and shorts combo. If they get into a fight now, they could both end up hospitalized. He’s stayed away from his safehouses, terrified that the Bats can track him down there. Figures that Nightwing finds him anyways.
“Go away.” Jason stamps down the Pit’s suggestion: punch him until he goes away.
Even though a different voice chimes in, echoing the same way that Tim’s voice saying Pit fury, Pit fury did in the warehouse. Why bother trying to control yourself, the voice whispers. He doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re out of control, thinks you’re a monster. Why bend over backwards trying to please him? Just give in to the violence.
“No.” Dick hovers by Jason’s shoulder. Despite his blatant refusal, he doesn’t invade Jason’s personal space.
Jason waits for the Lazarus Pit to scream its fury through Jason’s fists. Waits for the urge to wipe that stupid smile off Dick’s face by force.
It doesn’t come.
“Tim’s worried about you,” Dick says. “He misses you.”
Jason snorts loudly to cover up the sudden moisture in his throat. “Sure he is.”
“You think you know better? What he’s actually thinking?”
“I think I don’t know a goddamn thing about the kid.” Jason flicks the cigarette off the gargoyle’s head. It disappears into the street below.
A cool October breeze blows the white strands of Jason’s hair across his forehead. He brushes it out of his eyes, and gets cigarette ash on his eyebrows for his troubles. The two of them breathe in soot and sweat, and Jason pretends, just for a moment, that they are fifteen and eighteen again, Nightwing and Robin, the sons of Batman, instead of the ancient nineteen and twenty-two that they are. The beloved son and the prodigal son who never should’ve returned.
“Maybe I shoulda stayed dead.”
Then Jason ruins the moment, like he always does.
“Don’t say that.” He leans across the gargoyle like the closed distance will help him burn the words into Jason’s brain. “Don’t you dare say that.”
Dick is so furious his blue eyes are alight. Like he’s the one whose eyes glow when angry. Like he’s the Robin who died and came back a monster. Jason knows that Dick can maim with this type of fury, might even murder.
But Jason isn’t afraid of Dick. He heard once that love is when you feel safe with them, even when they’re angry. He’s not so in-touch with his squishier emotions to think that deeply about Dick, but. But Dick is spitting fury right now, and Jason still isn’t afraid.
“Didn’t someone tell you what happened?” Jason returns Dick’s murderous glare with a scoff. “Tim can only stand to be around me when he pretends I’m the kid who got blown to bits. ‘Cuz I fucked him up so bad he thinks I’m two different people.” His gaze wanders over the cityscape. “And I keep finding new ways to fuck him up. Ain’t you had enough? I have.”
Jason is lashing out now but still not quite asking what he really fears: Haven’t you had enough of me? Aren’t you sick of me? Don’t you wish I never came back?
“Then tell him that.” Dick chases after Jason when he tries to retreat around the gargoyle. “Tell Tim you’re sick of him. To his face.”
“That’s not–” Jason halts his flight. Dick stops as well, three steps away. “I’m not– he shouldn’t be okay with me!”
“Okay,” says Dick, too easily. “Go tell Tim how he should be feeling, then.”
“Stop playing dumb,” Jason growls. “You can’t really want me around him.”
“We’re not talking about me.” Dick’s blue eyes are cold. “This is about Tim. He wants you around.”
“He wants Robin around.”
Jason is seized by a sudden need to make Dick feel even a fraction of his hurt. He’s talking big right now, but he always shuts up real quick whenever he’s reminded of Jason’s death. Maybe he’s also deluding himself, that his little brother, fifteen-year-old Jason, came back.
So Jason rips off his shirt. One hand on the collar, pulling it over his head in half a second. The other hand, coming up to run a finger across his autopsy scars. His mouth curls into an awful smile as Dick’s eyes follow his finger.
“Robin died.”
Dick wrenches his eyes away from the scars. “But Jason came back. You came back. You at least owe him an explanation. If you’re so convinced he has it all wrong. Go and tell him who you are and who you’re not.”
“He’s afraid of me!” Jason shoves his shirt at Dick. Steps closer. Attempts to loom. Invades his personal space, showing Dick none of the courtesy that he showed Jason, because, well, he’s the worst. “How can you want me around him?”
Dick shoves Jason away. “Stop asking,” he snarls, “about what I want. Stop running away.”
Like he’s still the fifteen-year-old idiot running to Ethiopia, running from the people who love him and into the arms of the people who’ll see him dead. Maybe Jason really hasn’t changed.
“So you messed up,” Dick continues, relentless. “Big fucking deal. At least you didn’t get him killed. At least you were there on time.” His shoulders are shaking but he doesn’t attack Jason. His shoulders are shaking but Jason suspects it might not be from anger.
“Hey,” Jason says, the October chill suddenly getting to him, “I don’t blame you. About Ethiopia.”
Dick laughs hollowly. The hollow of loss. Jason knows it now, learned it in a Gotham sewer when he walked away from the little brother he never had, the brother he failed horribly.
“Yes, you do.” Dick smiles. A bitter, brittle and broken smile on the sunshine smile guy. Jason did that to him. “You blame me and Bruce. You targeted Tim for months because you were mad at us. Because you wanted to hurt us and you knew nothing would hurt more. It’s okay. I get it, okay? I don’t blame you for. For blaming us. But you can’t take it out on Tim. You messed up with Tim. You owe it to him to do better.”
Jason is winded by the end of Dick’s speech. Has run a marathon just to keep up with Dick’s leaps of logic. “I wasn’t mad about that. I thought you’d replaced me. And didn’t want me. I wasn’t in my right mind–” Understatement of the century, holy shit– “And I thought that I could make you regret replacing me and make him regret becoming Robin. It all made this, this sick sort of sense,” Jason confesses, aware he sounds insane, like the sort of Rogue that gets locked up in Arkham. Maybe Dick will be disgusted by him after this, but he needs to know. “It wasn’t about blaming you for my death. I never did.”
The broken smile fades into a smirk so familiar that Jason almost cries. “So you don’t blame me, but Tim definitely blames you?”
“Okay, fine, I’ll talk to him, stop fucking smirking at me.” It must be raining, because his cheeks are wet and he can’t be crying.
Dick’s smirk breaks into a huge smile. It’s not sunshine or the sun. A dawn, maybe. The start of something. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s standing by the fire escape. He holds out a hand.
It doesn’t mean anything, but Jason takes it.
-OoOoO-
The chosen battle ground is a living room on the first floor of Wayne Manor. Overly large French windows, overlooking the football field called the backyard. A grand piano, sitting on a circular white rug. A red couch, where Tim waits nervously for Jason and Dick to arrive.
He understands that the lack of trust in Jason he demonstrated two days ago is risking their brotherhood. Tim doesn’t get why, which is bad because he’s being provided with an opportunity to fix it and he needs to know how to fix this. They can’t possibly want him to stay still and take it whenever Jason loses it, right? Because Tim doesn’t hate himself that much.
No, more likely Jason has come to reassure Tim that he isn’t mad about the warehouse thing. Even though Tim invoked his worst memories and fears. Because the Jason that Tim has come to know really is the best.
It was generally understood that Dick, the only functional mediator of the family, should be there. Doesn’t mean that Bruce “What Is Privacy” Wayne hasn’t bugged the room, because he definitely has, and is definitely listening in. But at least he isn’t here to mess things up. That burden falls squarely on Tim and Jason.
The room holds no significant memories for any of them. Perhaps Jason’s ghost doesn’t linger in every room of this haunted manor.
“Your eyes glow,” Tim starts off, when Jason settles into an armchair across from Tim. Dick glances around the room, then sits on the floor halfway between his brothers. “When you get…too mad. So I stay out of the way. When that happens. But it happens so rarely. And when you’re not like that, you’re. You’re great.”
Excellent job, Tim. Way to state the obvious. Now they can continue to politely discuss this topic, perhaps have a cup of tea while someone plays classical music on the piano in the background.
Jason leans forward on his elbows, then leans back in his chair. Perhaps this also feels weirdly formal to him. Tim wishes to ease the formality, but the specter of Janet Drake has phantom fingers wrapped around Tim’s neck, and she’s whispering don’t you dare. Jason isn’t the only ghost in the room.
“Okay, uh.” Jason pulls his legs onto the armchair. He’s far too big to make it look comfortable. “But I’m not mad at you, though. So.”
Tim waits for those sentences to reveal their meaning. When they fail to do so, he ventures: “But the…? Threats? Of violence? Are real? Like when you say. Uh. I’ll break your kneecaps or something. Yeah.”
Jason never broke Tim’s kneecaps back when he was still violent with him. But he very easily could have.
“Yeah, I. Yeah. But I threaten to defenestrate Dick, like, once a day.” One hand rubs across Jason’s jaw, where the faintest hint of stubble is growing. On a good day Tim would say it compliments his skunk look.
“Defenestrate. You’re such a nerd,” Dick says fondly.
“Yeah,” Tim agrees, “and you actually chuck him out a window like once a week.”
Jason grimaces. “Okay. Yeah. Fair. Only ‘cause he’s a goddamn bird though.”
“OMG, so true bestie,” Dick adds.
Jason leans forward and slaps Dick on the back of his head. Dick reaches back and slaps him back without looking. Then they both look at Tim like kids caught stealing from the cookie jar in real time.
“A week ago you threatened to cut off his fingers if he stole one more oreo,” Tim reminds them.
“Yeah, but that wasn’t–I wasn’t–” Jason’s splutters die out. He looks to Dick for help.
“He didn’t mean it,” Dick supplies. “I knew he didn’t mean it. That’s why I stole the rest of the oreos.”
“Dick,” Jason mutters under his breath.
“Okay,” Tim says slowly. To both of his older brothers’ horror, he pulls out his phone and opens the Notes app. “What threats can I expect to be carried out?”
“That’s not what I– none of them!” Jason rises to his feet and makes an aborted motion to slap Tim’s phone out of his hand. He looks like he regrets the attempt when Tim draws backwards, knees jammed to his chin. “Unless it’s taking away your coffee. Or making you go to bed. Or–”
“Little Wing,” Dick groans.
“You don’t need to make a list about it,” Jason insists. From standing, he’s close enough to see Tim’s phone screen. The new note with two lists, entitled Jokes and Threats. The percentages that Tim is currently adding to the list items.
Tim pauses in the middle of putting a 50% by sleep more-make how???
“I’ll throw pillows at you ‘til you go to bed!” Jason’s fists are clenching and unclenching. With Tim’s dad that’s an obvious tell. With Jason, Tim is less sure. “What did you think ‘make you go to bed’ meant.”
Jason throws the question out like a challenge, a gauntlet at Tim’s feet. A rapier and a demand to get up and fight. Only Dick understands it as the anger of a guilt-ridden Jason. The fight of a doomed man walking to the firing squad. Pick up the rapier and hurt me back, maybe then the guilt will go away.
“I didn’t assume you were going to use violence,” Tim snaps back. He caught the unspoken question, but not Jason’s hidden self-hating need to know exactly what sort of monster Tim thinks he is. “There are plenty of sleeping pills, for instance.” The firing squad’s first shot. “That can remain undetected in a strong cup of coffee yet have little to no side effects–”
“I wasn’t gonna drug you.” The snarl is animalistic and nearly incomprehensible. Green lights up Jason’s eyes. His hands are shaking by his sides.
Tim takes it all in with silent flicks of his blue eyes, unsure of what he said wrong. Jason is a drug lord. How can he have such a bad reaction to Tim mentioning them?
“Jason’s not mad at you,” Dick jumps in.
Jason does not contradict this claim. But Jason also appears to be one second from tearing Tim to shreds, so privately Tim begs to differ.
“Right,” Tim says unconvincingly–the firing squad’s second shot–then hurries to finish his damage control. “Obviously, I didn’t consider using drugs to be your first choice, I thought–um.” His mind races to the least offensive method he can think of and comes up blank. “You know–just normal annoying sibling stuff. You’re creative,” he says to Jason, and he means it as a compliment, he really does, a useless appeasement to feed an ego he knows now that Jason really does not have. But the moment the words leave his mouth he remembers saying the same to a Jason that still held a gun to Tim’s face.
How infuriating, that Tim is attempting to comfort someone who did that and worse, until…Until something. Tim still doesn’t know why Jason changed from Robin’s enemy to Robin’s annoying, overprotective brother, and that’s terrifying. Because what if he changes back? Then Tim will have to deal with Red Hood again, which was hard enough before, with all the rooftop fights and the metahuman restraints and the box. With the raw-wound, slit-throat knowledge of what it’s like to be Jason’s baby brother? Tim can’t do it.
But Tim can’t worry about that now, because he’s busy worrying about whether Jason also remembers him saying you’re creative or not. And whether it’s bad if he does. Jason is already vibrating and glowing from anger, so it is hard to tell if the words register.
Until: “I’m not gonna psychologically torture you either,” Jason spits, throwing Tim’s words back in his face. Yep, he remembers. “You shouldn’t–wanna be friends with someone you think would do that to you.”
But I do, Tim thinks bitterly. Aren’t I just so pathetic?
“Guys, enough.” This time Dick physically intervenes. Rises to his feet and holds both hands out, one to each brother. “We’re not getting anywhere like this. Let’s cool our heads, alright?”
Tim takes Dick’s offered hand. He’s not sure that he’s physically capable of turning down physical affection from Dick Grayson.
Jason looks down at the hand like it’s a particularly gross insect. “This ain’t gonna work when we get another brother.”
“Maybe we’ll get a sister,” Dick says brightly. “Or hey, they don’t always have to go down in age. Maybe I’ll get a big sibling.”
Someone to big-sibling the most big sibling of all time? Tim makes eye contact with Jason’s no longer glowing green eyes, and he could swear they’re thinking the same thing.
Dick quickly notices their conspiring looks. “On second thought, that’s not possible,” he quickly backtracks. “Since I’m an adult! So they’d be an adultier adult, and B can’t adopt an adult.”
“Like that’d stop B,” Jason scoffs.
“Time travel,” Tim suggests.
Jason’s eyes land on Tim and his chin dips in acknowledgement. Maybe even approval. “Alternate universe.”
“Okay, okay,” Dick surrenders laughingly. Obviously pleased that they’re no longer at each other’s throats, even if it means they’re ganging up on him instead.
It’s what little siblings are supposed to do, after all. Tim should have it added to the contract he signed for Bruce.
Jason sits back down. Now he and Tim are eye to eye. The meaningless gesture shouldn’t make Tim feel safer, but it does. Tim expects him to reassure Tim that his threats aren’t meant to be taken seriously, which Tim understands. His dad does–did–the same thing. All those comments about Bruce, about what he could do to Tim. They weren’t meant to be taken seriously, unless they were. Tim gets it.
But Jason was never Jack Drake.
“I thought you trusted me,” Jason says. It shouldn’t mean anything to Tim, because he does trust Jason. He opens his mouth to say as much, but something about Jason’s confession is just so vulnerable that Tim shuts up.
“You joked back whenever I said, like, the kneecap shit. I thought that meant you trusted me. Obviously I missed the mark by a fuckin’ mile. But that’s. That’s okay. It just. It hurt.”
Once again, the vulnerability stuns Tim silent. Intellectually, Tim knows that Jason still feels guilty about everything he does under the influence of the Pit, is still trying to earn Tim’s trust. Hearing it said like this, though. It makes Dick cry.
“I do trust you,” Tim finally gets out, and for once he knows he’s telling the absolute truth.
So naturally, Jason doesn’t believe him.
“You think I’ll snap and attack you whenever I get mad.” He offers up a sad smile. “I don’t blame you. I know I deserve it. But that’s not trust, baby bird. That’s fear.”
“I do!” Tim insists. Oh God, Dick is really crying buckets now. Tim needs to convince both of them that he’s telling the truth, doesn’t he? “It’s just…sometimes when ad–people get angry, about whatever, they lose control, and they can hurt the people they care about.” Tim forges on past his tongue slip and prays that neither Dick nor Jason, both Batman-trained detectives, read into it. “They don’t mean to, it’s just…you know, a natural human response.”
Tim must have said something wrong, because Jason’s eyes are glowing again. But he’s not attacking, and he said he wouldn’t attack Tim when mad, so he can prove it for once. Tim presses his toes into the rug, politely folds his hands in his lap, and hopes the second half of his speech lands better than the first.
“And you have actual valid reasons to be angry, and the Pit, I mean God, who else has the Lazarus Pit as an excuse. It’d be wrong to blame you for any of it. So it’s fine. Well, it’s not fine, but I, uh, appreciate all the effort you’ve put into not…not losing control. Not everyone…does that, so.” Tim makes an awkward little gesture with his hands. “I forgive you.”
The last three words do not turn out to be the magic words like Tim was hoping. Jason looks madder than ever. Eyes so magically, furiously green. Tim tried telling the truth for once and it ended horribly.
“Don’t ever.” Jason closes his eyes and inhales. Opens them on the exhale, but they’re still vibrantly, viciously green. He’s really losing it.
Oh, well. If Jason snaps now, Dick will protect Tim.
But Jason lumbers from his armchair, and Dick doesn’t move. Actually, Dick looks a little sick. Like all his tears disagree with his stomach. Jason looms over Tim, trembling, shaking with anger, eyes burning like comets, and Dick still does not move. Tim could try and run, but he’s so tired of running from Jason’s wrath, of escaping before he’s made to face a Jason that wants to hurt him.
Jason’s hand descends. The couch cushion presses against Tim’s back as he looks up at Jason and thinks, this is it.
“Use your parents’ shitty behavior.” Jason’s hand makes contact. Curls around Tim’s shoulder. Drags him to his feet. “To justify my mistakes. Don’t ever do that to me.”
Tim is being hugged. And…lectured? About his parents? Fifteen seconds later, when his brain has rebooted, he says very eloquently: “What? When did my parents get involved?”
“Who else taught you that adults hurt you when they get mad?” Jason’s embrace is suffocating. When he pulls back, his eyes are stilling burning poison fury. But he’s not attacking Tim. How is that possible?
“Most of us grow out of hitting people when we’re upset as children,” Dick says from the floor. He’s still crying. “The ones that don’t are abusive assholes.”
Tim collapses back onto the couch. No one moves to hurt him, but Tim is acutely aware that he’s under attack. “My parents weren’t abusive.”
“Bruce’s court case says otherwise.” Jason gives him that sad smile again. “I’m sorry we didn’t consider they hurt you in other ways too.”
“They didn’t!” Tim shouts. How did it come back to this? Tim somehow tricking the Waynes into thinking he’s a neglected, abused child in need of help. How can he stop this?
“Don’t you fucking lie to me. Not about this. I know. I know.”
“I’m not,” Tim cries. His hands curl into tiny balls in his lap. His knuckles tremble.
Jason fixes him with a disbelieving stare. Tim is beginning to think that the violent green fury in his eyes is not directed at Tim, and that matters. “You’re saying your parents never hit you?”
“Define hit,” Tim snaps, and regrets it the instant the words are out. “No! They didn’t. I mean–they, like, kicked me a couple times. But that didn’t hurt. It never hurt, even at the time. And it wasn’t often enough.”
“What’s often enough?” Jason demands.
“I mean–” Tim falters. “Sometimes the people who love you hurt you. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Yeah,” Jason agrees, but even as he says it Tim suspects disagreement, expects betrayal. “Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t come in time. Sometimes they don’t help when you need them the most. Sometimes they say things they regret. Sometimes the people who were supposed to raise you just aren’t good enough.”
Tim doesn’t think they’re talking about the Drakes anymore.
“But they don’t hit children.” Dick is standing now, looking one second from dragging both of them into a group hug. Looking out of his mind with anger. Tim knows this anger, though. It is Dick Grayson at his most protective. Angry on behalf of Tim.
“Let me ask you something.” Jason again. Tim’s eyes are bouncing between his big brothers like an Olympic table tennis match spectator. He feels like a cornered rat. Jason’s the wolf, sniffing for weakness, waiting to strike. “You love your parents, right? Did you ever kick them?”
“No, but maybe when I was a ba–”
“Did they ever make you so mad that you lost control and hit them?” Jason hounds. “No? Not even when you were a kid?”
Tim shakes his head again, mutely. Funny how lies make him run his mouth but the truth scares him silent.
“Then why couldn’t they do the same for you?”
“Why are we even talking about this?” Tim deflects desperately. “It happened, like, five times in my whole childhood. My whole childhood! It stopped–” When Tim outgrew his parents. “Years ago! It’s not a big deal! I get that it was bad, okay? I know it was bad, I–I hated it, but it"s like, it"s like harrassement. It has to be a pattern and it just wasn"t a pattern. Why are you making it such a big deal? We should be talking about Jason!”
“Fine,” Jason snaps. “You wanna talk about me? I didn’t hurt you ‘cause I lost control. I did it cause I wanted to. ‘Cause I wanted to teach Robin a lesson ‘bout what it meant to wear a dead boy’s suit. ‘Cause I was fucked in the head. And it made sense until it didn’t.”
“No.” Tim doesn’t know where Jason is going with this, but he is suddenly perfectly sure that he is going to lose his brother if he lets him continue talking. “No, no, no–”
“Red Hood isn’t–”
“Shut up,” Tim hisses. Jason is Tim’s brother and Red Hood is Tim’s enemy. Jason can’t take that from him, can’t take it back. “Stop it. Shut up.”
“An alter ego. He’s me. I’m him.”
“Shut up shut up shut up–” Tim finds his hands pressed over his ears. How childish, how naive of him. But acknowledging that Red Hood, who hurt Tim so much, is the same person as Jason who cares about Tim so much? Impossible. Intolerable. Tim has coped so far, has survived thus far, by keeping the two far apart in his mind.
Jason pulls Tim’s hands away from his ears, but he does it gently, despite sloe green, despite death and revival and the voices that cry for violence. He doesn’t lose control. He never lost control. A scream builds to uncontainable levels in Tim’s lungs.
“The Lazarus Pit isn’t a secret evil me. It’s more like a voice. That influences me, sometimes. But I’m still me.” Jason looks directly into Tim’s wet blue eyes, and with all the apology of the executioner, breaks Tim’s heart. “I hurt you. And–I’m sorry. And you don’t ever have to forgive me. But you have to know. That was me.”
And then the speech is over. And Tim has lost a brother.
Jason sits back down. Tim doesn’t know what he thinks they have left to talk about. Haven’t they gotten it all out? Nevertheless, Tim sits as well. Falls into the couch. If Dick has a confession to make, then might as well hear it now.
“Why are you still here?” Tim asks dully.
Maybe Jason means it about not losing control. Maybe he’s sincere about wanting forgiveness, wanting to be Tim’s brother. But if Tim can’t separate Red Hood and Jason, he wants no part in it. He needs Jason to be a good thing. Like Dick is a good thing. Maybe it’s pathetic and selfish, but Tim needs this one thing to be black and white.
“In–the manor?” Jason braces his hands on the armrests. “Or you mean like–at all? ‘Cause I’d understand if.” His eyes drop to the floor, uncharacteristically shy. “If you wish that.”
“He doesn’t–” Dick interrupts, right before Tim realizes that Jason means if you wish that I’d never come back.
“No!” Tim blurts out. He can’t believe what he was saying earlier about black and white, this is true black and white. If his choices are no Jason and yes Jason, he’ll take Jason any day, even if it means he’s Red Hood. “How could you–of course I’m happy you’re back, you’re Jason.”
“But you have to pretend I’m the Jason who died to be around me,” Jason says, somewhere between grim and apologetic.
Like it’s his fault that he’s not the same kid who had yet to be murdered, trapped in a coffin, thrown in the Lazarus Pit, or put through the torture of League training.
“No, I don’t. I know you’re not. You’re Red Hood. You’re Jason and you’re Red Hood.” Tim nods firmly. “I just have to get used to it.”
Now Jason just looks pitying. “You don’t have to.”
“Right, and I didn’t have to agree to Bruce’s adoption plan, and get my and my dad’s name dragged into the news.” Tim’s lips twist down. A sneer? Maybe he’s just sad. “But I wanted to. Can’t I want things?”
“Of course, why–I–I didn’t–” Jason stutters. “But do you. Do you?”
Tim’s fingers curls into his knees. “I–I want–” I want you. He said the same to Bruce when shown the adoption papers. It is no less embarrassing the second time around. “Why can’t you just. Why can’t we.”
“Why can’t we all just be friends?” Dick, noted villain-whisperer, nods sagely.
Tim cuts away from Jason to deliver an exasperated look to Dick, and finds Jason giving him an identical exasperated glare. “How do you know you won’t change back?”
Jason blinks. “Change back how?”
“You said it–made sense. What you were doing.”
“Yeah.” Jason sinks in his armchair, overwhelmed by shame. “It doesn’t anymore.”
“Well–what if starts to make sense again?”
“It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know!” Jason looks to Dick for help again, but Dick can’t explain the Lazarus Pit for him. “You have to–” Jason deflates. “You don’t have to believe me. But it’ll never happen again.”
In the months since their truce, Jason hasn’t attacked Tim once. Not even after the warehouse, when he dragged Tim through the sewers, away from the bomb Tim accused him of lying about. He called him Robin. Said go home. And walked away. Like an older, wearier version of the fifteen-year-old Robin who told Tim to go home, shrimp.
Maybe that’s exactly what Jason is. More jaded, more violent. Still trying to do good. Maybe it’s up to Tim to be the naive one.
“You promise?”
“Yeah, kiddo.” Jason manages a reassuring smile. It is deeply out of place on Red Hood. But not so strange for Jason. “I promise.”
Tim nods twice. Dick is crying again, but this time from joy. Probably. Hopefully. “Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“You still look like a skunk.”
Jason runs a hand through the white stripe in his hair. “Whatever ya say, shrimp.”
Maybe it’s not forgiveness. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. But Jason takes it anyway.