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Jason's body didn't feel like his body.
He'd been staring at his knee since he'd gotten back from patrol an hour ago, trying to get it through to his subconscious that it was his knee and not some random limb he could somehow control. It was his knee — he knew it was his knee — but he couldn't convince himself of that. He hadn't even tried with any other part of his body. He felt vaguely ghostlike, almost floaty.
When he was eight, he'd skinned his knee. The memory was a little fuzzy, but he was pretty sure he'd tripped on something while playing at the park. His mom had taken him on one of her good days. It had stung. He'd had worse injuries later.
It took him a moment to put together why he was thinking about that now. There should have been scar tissue, on his knee. A little white line, from where the scrape was the deepest, and mottled skin that never quite tanned the same way as the rest of his leg.
Absently, he reached for the Sharpie he'd left on the coffee table a few days ago, after abandoning his attempts to sort and label the assorted teabags scattered haphazardly through his cabinets. He drew the line first, then sketched out the edges of the scar tissue.
It looked a little more like his knee now. It still wasn't. The body it was attached to was still unfamiliar.
Now that he was thinking about it, there should have been a line on the side of his left palm, running from the base of his pinky almost to his wrist. He'd been careless with his first switchblade. He was lucky he hadn't needed stitches.
He drew another line down the side of his palm and felt a little better.
As soon as Jason looked down and thought, Whose feet are those? he knew he was out of it.
He wasn't sure where he'd left his usual Sharpie, but he'd been using a red one to touch up a few scuffs on the Red Hood helmet before he'd left for patrol, and it was still on the kitchen table.
His earliest scars came first. The little mark on his jaw from when he'd fallen on a table corner when he was four. The skinned knee. The switchblade scar on his hand. The thin line on his arm from slicing his bicep open climbing through a broken window a few weeks before he'd met Bruce.
Then his scars from being Robin. A knife wound on his thigh. Marks on his middle and index fingers from using a pair of brass knuckles incorrectly. Another knife wound by his shoulder. A wide mark on his calf from when he was grazed by a bullet. And more normal things, too. A gash on his right palm above his lifeline from trying to pick up the pieces of a broken vase. A burn on the outside of one pinky from a kitchen accident.
After an hour, Jason had drawn on every single scar he'd had before he died, and he still didn't feel like the body he was controlling was his.
Which was fine.
It was better than a lot of side effects of violently dying and being violently resurrected. It was better than the nightmares, the flashbacks, the panic attacks, the sleepless nights and paranoia-filled days. The phantom pains in his shoulder, his hip, his knee. But it still wasn't great.
If he'd survived the Joker, it would have left him with scars.
There would have been one on his shoulder, where the crowbar had been driven in over and over— and on his legs, because he remembered how they refused to hold his weight— and burns, from the bomb that had gone off.
I should look at the autopsy files, he thought, and when everything in him didn't immediately balk at the idea, he got up to get his laptop.
It didn't take him long to hack into the coroner's records and find his file.
He knew enough to stay away from the photos. The written record and his own memory would be plenty to fill in the blanks.
Jason uncapped the Sharpie and started to draw. His shoulder. His knee. The cuts and burns across his chest and side and forearms. The notch on his cheekbone, worryingly close to his eye. He'd worried about triggering himself by reading the report, but something about the sharp alcohol smell of the marker and the cold tip against his skin was keeping it from happening. And it did feel like his skin again, at least, even though the hand holding the marker wasn't his.
He finished the last line of the jagged cut just above his left hip and let out a long breath. That was better. Not back, not all the way, but better. His body was his. Not really him, but close enough.
There was one thing missing, he realized. The Y-cut from his autopsy.
Jason wasn't exactly sure where that went, but he knew who would know. He texted Tim.
Where does the ME cut open bodies?
Tim texted him back a diagram a few minutes later.
Jason copied the lines onto his own chest. There. Every scar he should have had. Every mark the Lazarus Pit had erased.
This was how he should have looked. This was him.
He pulled a shirt over his head and went to bed.
It couldn't have been more than half an hour later when someone started pounding on his apartment door.
"It's fucking—" Jason rolled over to check his clock— "three AM."
Whoever was outside didn't seem to care.
He got up and threw the door open, sending the visitor lurching unexpectedly forward as the surface they were hitting vanished.
"What the hell, Dick?" he asked as his adopted brother — who lived thirty-something minutes away in another goddamn city — stumbled into his apartment. He caught Dick's shirt and forcibly righted him. "The fuck are you doing here?"
"You accessed your autopsy report," Dick replied.
"How do you know that?"
"Barbara." Dick said it like it should have been obvious. "She set it up so she'd know if anyone tried to access it. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." Jason let go of him, shoving him back slightly.
Dick was back in his space almost immediately, collecting his hands and inspecting them closely in the dim light filtering in from the hallway. His face was tight with something Jason couldn't identify as he studied the tips of Jason's fingers.
"Jesus Christ, Jay."
He shoved Jason's sleeves up past his elbows. Jason, utterly baffled, just stood there for a moment before brushing him off.
"What's wrong with you?"
"With me? Jason, you—" Dick gestured at him helplessly, and Jason finally placed the look on his face as carefully controlled fear. "You accessed your autopsy report, you asked Tim where a Y-cut goes, and I show up and you've got bloodstains on your fingers—"
"Bloodstains? Dick. Really?"
Dick grabbed Jason's hand and held it up, showing Jason the red that littered his fingertips. "You've got marks on your arms and your legs, and under your eye— why would you— why did—" He broke off.
"It wasn't my body," Jason told him. "I mean, it didn't feel like it was."
"So you decided— all your scars— and the autopsy scar too?" Something fractured in Dick's expression, before his whole face softened into neutral calm. "Where are your guns?"
"With the rest of my stuff, under the bed. Why?"
He didn't get an answer. Dick dropped his hand and started towards his room.
"Dick?"
Jason followed him, reaching the doorway in time to see Dick going methodically through his suit, putting every weapon he had into a neat pile on his bed.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"This is all of it? No cooking knives? Steak knives?"
"Y— why?"
Dick swept the pile into a bag, zipped it, and headed for the door.
Jason blocked him. "Are you putting me on fucking suicide watch or something?"
"Jason…"
That was the voice Dick used when the smaller Bats were out of it from fear toxin. When he had to reset a dislocated shoulder or splint a broken bone. It was gentle and careful and steady.
"Oh my God, you are." Jason couldn't help the startled laugh that escaped him. "Did Bruce put you up to this? Has he finally decided to do something about how unstable he thinks I am?"
"Bruce doesn't know anything. How do you think he'd take it?" Dick tried to duck past him a second time. "Jason, you need to let me check the rest of your apartment."
Jason didn't move.
"Please, Jay. I'm just trying to keep you safe."
"From who? Myself?" He decided to take Dick's silence as confirmation. "Come on, Dick, I barely did anything."
"You call this barely anything?" Dick seized his hand again, showing Jason the red line across his palm. "Doing this to yourself? You can't just do this, Jason."
"It's fine. It's not even the first time."
Dick made a choked noise.
"Dick, it's fine. I'm fine. I just needed to stop dissociating."
"That doesn't mean you should—" He cut himself off sharply. "We can talk about it in the morning, when you're feeling better."
"I'm pretty sure I'm doing better than you are right now, Dickhead." He flipped on the overhead light. "We can talk about it now."
Dick dropped the bag full of weapons with a dull thunk.
"Dude, be careful, there's delicate stuff in there," Jason said automatically.
Dick continued to stare at him.
"What?"
"You're not— it's not— you're not bleeding?"
"Not as far as I know."
He reached out and ran his fingertips over the lines that littered Jason's forearms. "Then what is it?"
"Marker," Jason told him. "Did you hit your head or something?" He tilted Dick's chin up to check his pupils.
Dick batted his hand away. "You used a marker."
"Yeah, a Sharpie. It doesn't rub off as easily as pen. Why?"
Instead of answering, Dick lunged forward. Jason blocked the door again, but Dick wrapped him in a hug instead.
"Whoa. Dick. What's wrong with you?"
"We're still going to talk about this later," Dick said into his shoulder. "I'm just— you weren't hurting yourself. Christ."
It took Jason a moment to work backwards from that statement. The suicide watch. The ink on his fingers Dick had mistaken for blood. The near-panicked pounding on the door.
"No, I wasn't. It was a marker, Dick."
"I know."
"It's a little concerning that the cop doesn't know blood when he sees it."
"I didn't exactly stop to consider the fact that you were using a Sharpie instead of a fucking knife." Dick's voice cracked, and Jason had brought his arms up to hug him back before he even recognized what he was doing.
"I didn't even think about that," Jason admitted.
Dick's grip tightened. "Don't you fucking dare, Jason."
"I won't. I promise."
"Good."
"Are you planning on letting me go anytime soon?"
"Sorry." Dick released him, but kept a grip on his shoulders, holding him at arm's length. Jason noticed the dark circles under his eyes for the first time.
"Long night?"
"Long week."
"But driving all the way from Blud in the middle of the night probably didn't help," Jason pressed.
Dick shrugged. "I was worried."
"Sorry."
"Don't be." He yawned. "I should probably text Babs and Tim, tell them you're alright."
"What?"
"They were worried, too," he explained. "We weren't sure what you were doing, but— it couldn't have been good."
"I'm fine."
He gave Jason a look. "Most fine people don't look up their own autopsy reports, Jay."
"That's probably because most people don't have autopsy reports to look up. I'm good, Dick. Really."
Dick nodded and yawned a second time. "Sure. We can talk about it— shit, I should head back. I have work in the morning."
"Should you really be driving this late?"
"Well, I'm not going back to the Manor at three in the morning. Bruce would have a heart attack."
"He is getting up there in years," Jason agreed.
Dick punched his arm lightly. "You know what I meant."
"You could stay here," he added. "I don't mind. The couch is Tim-approved."
A smile flickered across Dick's face. "You're sure you don't mind?"
"As long as you don't try to take my kitchen knives."
"Deal."