Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason’s eyes shot open, and all he could see, through a liquid swirl of green, was Talia al Ghul looking down intently over him. He burst up out of the water, and something primal in him tried to struggle, tried to scream, but Talia wrestled him out of the water and held him down, one hand firmly clamped over his mouth. “Shh,” she said. “Shh. You must make no noise.”

After a few minutes, the worst of whatever it was passed, and Jason merely lay in her arms, shaking. Talia pulled a towel from somewhere Jason couldn’t see, and began to briskly dry him off. It felt like knives scraping his skin. “Can you stand now?” she whispered, or at least he thought she whispered; it was sybillent, but seemed loud, as did every echoing noise throughout the dark cavern they were in. Jason nodded weakly. She stood, helping him to his feet, and thrust a heavy robe over his head, and ill-fitting sandals onto his feet. The clothes and the shoes burned his skin. “Quickly. Quickly and quietly.” Talia took his hand in hers and guided him into a dark passage.

They had no light, but Talia seemed to know her way, and Jason and Bruce had done training drills like this—blindfolded, not in natural darkness, but he was able to follow her guiding touch without stumbling too badly. After some interminable distance, they emerged from what turned out to be a cave entrance. There was no moon, but the stars were so brilliant—bright enough to hurt his eyes somehow—that after the utter darkness of the tunnel, it was if someone had thrown on a floodlight. He couldn’t help as a tiny mewl escaped his lips.

Talia turned and assessed him. “It will be better soon. But you must stay quiet. There are men on this island not loyal to me. Come now. There’s a boat.”

“Where’s—where’s B?” Jason asked in low voice, unsure which name to use in front of Talia, who knew both of them, in this strange place. He realized it was the first thing he’d actually said since he regained consciousness.

“As far as I know, he is in Gotham. More answers for your questions later, I promise. But we cannot talk here, and we must go now.”

Jason remained rooted to the spot. Talia wasn’t necessarily an enemy, but she wasn’t necessarily a friend, either, depending on how things were between Bruce and her father.

“Jason. Look at me.” Talia squeezed his hand gently. “Do you trust me?”

And Jason did look at her, and for no reason he could name, he felt that he did trust her. He nodded.

“Then let us go.”

Things after that were a blur. The night air was cold, and despite the exertion and the warm robe Talia had given him, he was shivering by the time they made it down to the shore. Talia pursed her lips and whistled like a bird. Not a bird Jason had ever heard, but then again, he’d hardly spent any time out of Gotham, so Bruce had mainly stuck to teaching him the calls of the kind of birds you’d find in the city, to use as signals.

There was an answering call from farther down the shore, and they ventured out of the cover of the woods and onto the open shore. In the starlight, Jason could see that there was indeed, a boat—a rowboat. He looked at Talia disbelievingly. “Really?”

She raised her finger to her lips, but Jason thought there was a hint of a smile on them. She shooed him towards the boat, and he grudgingly, but quietly, clambered aboard, and Talia climbed in afterwards. The man on the shore, the one who had presumably answered Talia’s signal, untied the mooring line from where it was looped around a large rock on shore, and tossed it into the boat. He gave it a strong shove deeper into the water, then waded out and hauled himself in, taking immediately to the oars, with powerful, near-silent strokes.

Jason wasn’t sure how long they were on the water. It felt like hours, and his shivering intensified, now that he wasn’t moving, and was getting damp from the light fog they were passing through. Jason had no idea how the oarsman was navigating, without starlight or the apparent use of a compass, but neither he nor Talia seemed concerned.

Talia noticed him shivering, and dug a thick woolen blanket from underneath her seat, and wrapped it around him. After a few minutes, he started to relax into it. She’d given him no indication that they could talk, so he merely nodded his thanks.

Finally, they made a landing on another shore, one just as unfamiliar to Jason as the one they’d left from, although this one had a proper dock. Talia climbed out first, and helped Jason out. She put an arm around his shoulder and guided him towards what looked like a real road—okay, not much of a road, but still, a road—where there was a car waiting, and a woman in a chauffeur’s uniform next to it. She pulled the rear passenger door open, and Talia gently prodded him to climb inside.

Jason was too tired and too cold and too confused to think of much of anything, but the woman in the uniform opening the car door for him made him think of Alfred doing the same, and he was struck by a sudden, intense, and utterly inexplicable wave of homesickness.

Talia climbed after him into the car. The seating was generous, enough that Jason probably could have lain down, if Talia hadn’t gotten into the back with him.

“We can talk here, if you’d like,” Talia told him. “I think it would be best if we were completely alone, for both our sakes, when we did, but our driver is trustworthy. Or you prefer, you can sleep for now. We’ll be driving for quite some time before we reach our destination.”

“Which is?”

“Somewhere safe.”

Jason wanted answers so badly it made his teeth hurt, but he could barely keep his eyes open. “Later,” he said, and leaned against the car door, asleep almost instantly.

***

When he awoke, he already felt much better, although there was a strange underlying tug of exhaustion that told him he still needed a lot more sleep in the future. He felt warm, and slightly cramped from being partially curled up and not moving for hours, but his head was resting on something soft. As he opened his eyes, he realized his head was pillowed on Talia’s lap, and she had one arm gently curled over his shoulder, over the blanket which had been readjusted to cover his whole body. Her other arm was propped against the window pane, and she was staring distantly out the window. Jason wondered if she’d dared to sleep or even doze herself, trustworthy driver or no.

Talia noticed Jason’s movements and looked down at him. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Jason said. “Is it actually morning?”

Talia glanced at her wrist. “Fifteen hundred hours, local time. You slept about ten hours, but you deserved it. You did very well.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Even if I have no idea what I did well at. Are we almost there? Because I really need to pee.”

“Twenty minutes,” the driver said, from the front of the car.

“‘Kay,” he said. His bladder was protesting, but he could hold out that much longer, and he wasn’t going to ask them to stop the car between now and promised safety, when he didn’t even know what the danger was yet.

Finally, they pulled up in front of a small cottage in a style Jason couldn’t place. What the heck. Either Talia would tell him where they were (and what was going on already), or she wouldn’t, and he’d have to take matters into his own hands. They climbed out of the car, Talia snagging a couple of large bags Jason hadn’t noticed earlier in his exhaustion. Talia bent over the driver’s side window and said something Jason couldn’t hear to the driver. The woman bowed her head respectfully, and drove off.

As Talia unlocked the front door, Jason said, “This is the somewhere safe?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Only our driver and I know the location of this particular house. And now you,” she added, eyes crinkling with humor, “if you had the first idea where we were.”

“About that…”

Talia gestured him in, and pulled the door shut behind him. She held up one finger for silence as she did what Jason recognized as a quick, perfunctory sweep of the cottage for bugs, disappearing for a short while into unseen rooms. After he found the bathroom (where a welcome change of clothing awaited him), Jason took the time to look around the main room, which was actually pretty cozy. There was electric lighting—although based on the pile of firewood in the front of the cottage, Jason had a feeling that was a wood burning stove over against the wall, next to a large, divided porcelain sink. There was food in the pantry: bread just losing oven warmth, cured olives, slabs of cheese, and a huge bowl of fresh cherries. Jason suddenly realized upon seeing them that he was ravenously hungry, and he couldn’t help but grab a handful and start chewing on them, spitting cherry pits into his palm.

Talia laughed as she re-entered the room and found him spitting cherry pits into his palm, looking for somewhere to dump them out. “Well, you are a growing boy, I suppose,” she said. “The cottage is clean. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had any reason to believe this place was compromised, but as your father would surely be the first to tell you, you can never be too careful.” She walked over to the pantry and pulled out the bread and an unmarked bottle of something viscous and pale yellow, carrying them over to a broad wooden table with a scarred surface. “If you’ll get the cheese and the olives and the fruit out, we can eat while we talk,” she said. She produced a large knife from somewhere and began slicing the bread.

When they were sitting on either sides of the corner of the table, dipping bread into a dish of glossy yellow olive oil, Talia said, “To answer perhaps your first question, we’re in Greece. Specifically, we’re outside of a small town some distance from Athens. We just came from an island whose name you’re better off not knowing.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it contains a Lazarus Pit, and my father guards the locations of those so fiercely he would kill you if you knew it. Even I shouldn’t have known it. He would certainly kill the boatman who took us there, even if I never told the pilot the reason for taking us there.”

“I don’t remember going there,” Jason said, uncertain.

“I didn’t expect you would,” Talia said, regarding him solemnly. “You’ve been terribly unwell for a long time, Jason.”

”Did you put me in the Lazarus Pit?”

“Yes, Jason. It was not my first choice, but my hand was forced.”

“Does Bruce know I’m here?”

“No.”

Jason swallowed. “So this wasn’t his idea or anything. He has no idea where I am.”

“No.”

“How did I end up with you, then?”

“Do you trust me, Jason?” Talia asked him again.

And again, somehow, the answer was still yes. He nodded.

“The simplest version was that we found you...wandering. You were ill. We took you in.”

“How could—he would never—” but as Jason tried to remember anything concrete before opening his eyes in the Pit, all he could think of was a terrible fight with Bruce about something. And leaving. He’d left, hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember why, but he was almost certain he’d left of his own volition. And surely Bruce would never throw him out, but he might let Jason leave…

“I’m afraid that it gets considerably more complicated, Jason. It would help to know what you remember.”

Jason closed his eyes. Mad laughter, fear, terrible fear, bitter regret… “The Joker,” he choked. “I was in a warehouse with the Joker. He was beating me.” He hunched over himself, appetite thoroughly lost.

Talia grazed a touch along his back. “I don’t have all the details of the story, but the broad outline, as I understand it, is that somehow, the two of you—you and my beloved—found yourselves in Ethiopia, where you unexpectedly encountered the Joker while he was orchestrating a terrorist attack. You were separated, and while my beloved was away thwarting the attack, the Joker got you alone.”

Jason was shuddering now. “There was a bomb,” he keened. “He beat me until I couldn’t move and then locked me inside with a bomb…”

“Ah,” Talia breathed, sounding sad. “So that was how it happened.”

The thought of a yellow-haired woman with bright blue eyes suddenly wormed its way into the front of his head. “There was a woman there, too,” he said, confused.

“Oh?” Talia said. “I had no word of a woman there. If she was there, it was nothing our people found noteworthy enough to pass along.”

“Maybe she helped me get out?” But the thought of her made him feel nauseous. Maybe she’d been trapped there with him, someone he hadn’t saved.

“Jason,” Talia said. “Look at me.” Jason reluctantly dragged his head up to meet her eyes. “You didn’t make it out.”

Jason’s throat went dry, and he could barely croak out his next words. “What do you mean?”

“You died in that warehouse, Jason.”

And the world went green.

***

The next coherent memory Jason had was of waking up, stretched out on a soft bed, each hand clenched full of the folds of the thin quilt underneath him. Talia was sitting in a chair by the bed, sipping from a steaming cup. “There you are,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”

“What was that?” Jason asked, addressing the ceiling. A moment later, he said, “Sure.” Talia rose and returned a minute later with a second mug in her hand. Jason pushed himself into a sitting position against the headboard, and took it from her. Jason wondered if they drank Assam tea in Greece, or if Talia had brought this with her specially. “Was that a joke? Me dying?”

“It was not a joke. And that episode was an unfortunate side effect of the Pit. One of several reasons it was my last resort. It will wear off eventually.”

“So am I dead now? Am I being escorted into the afterlife by a simulacrum of...freaking Talia al Ghul?”

“I assure you, you’re very much alive, Jason. More so now than any point since…well.”

“The Pit?” But that didn’t quite make sense. “You said you found me wandering around, sick.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you used the Pit to cure me of that.”

“Also correct.”

“And Bruce doesn’t know where I am.”

“No.”

“Does he even know I’m alive?”

Talia shook her head.

“Why didn’t you tell him?!” Jason shouted, nearly spilling his tea onto the bed. “Does he—was he that angry?” Jason stumbled off the bed, tripping over his own feet. “Talia—” his heart was in his throat, and he stopped dead in his tracks—“did he change his mind about me?”

“Shh,” Talia said, seizing Jason by the arm and guiding him back into the bed. She cupped his face with a hand and Jason sagged against the headboard, trembling. “Listen to me. You’ve been with us—my father and me—for over a year, now. When we found you, you were wandering the streets of Gotham, with little evidence of consciousness. We weren’t looking for you—no one was looking for you. It was an accident. You were recognized as Robin by a low-level street thug with enough wit to sell that information to someone above him in the fetid food chain of Gotham’s criminal class. My father was—curious. He’s interested in all forms of life extension. And there you were, alive, physically intact, despite having died and been buried a year prior.”

“So you took me in, to, to what, experiment on me?” The word buried made him shudder.

“To observe you. That was my father’s reason, yes. I had my own reasons.”

“Like what?” Jason said, bitterness creeping up his throat.

“You are my beloved’s son,” Talia said simply. “I was explicitly ordered to stay away from him, and I dared not go against my father’s wishes. Not then. But I could watch over you. And that is what I did.”

“But you broke ranks now—why?”

“My father gradually lost hope that you would ever recover yourself enough to provide insight into the nature of your resurrection. He was prepared to—” Talia stopped. “He had no interest in you beyond what he hoped to learn from your return from death. I do.”

“Because I’m Bruce’s son.”

“Yes. And because I have cared for you for a year, Jason, and I find myself unprepared to stop now.” Talia took Jason’s hand in hers. “I am sorry to have subjected you to the Pit. I would have preferred to wait—unlike my father, I saw signs of improvement in you, no matter how halting. But when I made the decision to flee with you, I knew this was the only chance we would ever have at the Pit. And if I was wrong, and had passed up that single chance—if I was wrong, no one would ever thank me for refusing it. No one would be able to.”

Jason sighed raggedly and closed his eyes, but left his hand in Talia’s. “What now?” he said. “Do we have to keep running and hiding from Ra’s forever?”

“What do you want to do, Jason?”

“I want to go home,” he said in a small voice, feeling tears welling up behind his eyelids. “I want Bruce. I want my dad.”

“Then that is what we will do,” Talia said, squeezing Jason's hand. “We go to Gotham.”

Chapter Text

It irritated Bruce to receive Talia’s request to meet in the suite of a high-end Gotham hotel—although one that was not among her usual preferred hotels, which he found curious—mainly because he hadn’t even realized she was in the city. He always liked to know what was going on in his city, especially when it involved people as dangerous as the al Ghuls. He contacted Oracle, asking her if she had any reports of League activity in or around the city, and from the slightly miffed tone of her negative response, he knew Barbara felt the same way.

“All right, then. Have Nightwing on standby somewhere near the hotel. She asked for the day suit, not the night suit, but I don’t like the idea of going in blind to this meeting without some kind of back up.”

“Not Robin?”

“No. He’s not ready for the League. But I wouldn’t say no to any Birds of Prey, if you have any lying around,” he said dryly.

“I’ve got Spoiler on hand, but she’s not ready for the League, either.”

“Then keep them home, Oracle.”

“Roger that, B.”

***

Bruce knocked on the door of the suite, which was not visibly guarded. He knew she wasn’t registered under her own name—she’d given him a suite number and an instruction to bypass reception, although of course Barbara had looked into the hotel registry and found the room was rented to the innocuous-sounding Zahra Brown. But even when Talia traveled under an alias, she very rarely did so alone, with no guards or entourage at all. She was a dangerous woman in her own right, but one with many dangerous enemies, and even the al Ghuls had to sleep sometime. Curious indeed.

Talia took her time about opening the door, presumably having paused to check whatever nigh-invisible security system she was relying on in lieu of guards. She indicated with her head that Bruce should enter, and he stepped in. She closed the door behind him and locked it thoroughly. “You should know there are noise-canceling and signal-disrupting devices in this room,” she told him. “My intention is not to cut you off from whatever backup you have undoubtedly arranged for this meeting, but I cannot be too careful right now.”

Bruce shrugged. Nightwing was positioned so he could keep a close eye on the windows of this suite. Talia had closed all the shades and drapes, of course, but if worse came to worse, he could always break a window. He seated himself casually on the couch. “This is paranoid, even for you, Talia. Let me guess—you’re in danger. Maybe even here to seek my help?”

Talia inclined her head as she sat in an armchair across from him. “I am, in fact, in danger, and it’s not unrelated to why I’m here. But it’s not your help I’m here for. I am here to restore something you lost.”

“And what might that be?” Bruce said, with raised eyebrows.

The door that led from the sitting room to a bedroom creaked open, and a familiar, impossible voice said “...Bruce?”

It couldn’t be.

The owner of that voice was two years dead.

Bruce had cradled his mangled body in his own arms, carried him home, buried him in the cold ground and left him there. Bruce couldn’t even breathe as the door opened wider, and the face and form that went with that long-lost voice appeared in the doorway. “Bruce,” the couldn’t-be voice said again, and through his haze, the part of Bruce that had once been a father noted that the voice he knew so intimately was thick with tears, the sound of a boy who desperately needed comfort.

“Jason,” Talia said, slightly scolding, over her shoulder, “I asked you to wait until I had a chance to speak to him.”

“I’m sorry,” the sound of Jason’s voice said. “I couldn’t.” And then the body that owned that voice rushed forward and hurled its arms around Bruce.

Was Jason heavier than he had been, two years ago, the last time Bruce had held him in his arms? He hadn’t even meant to put his arms up around this boy who couldn’t possibly be Jason, but there they already were, crushing him so tightly against his chest that Jason gasped. It’s a trick! his mind screamed at him; a League trick! The al Ghuls are manipulating you!, but if that was what it was, it was successful, because if Talia had laid a gun against the base of his skull right at that moment, Bruce couldn’t have moved to save his life, not if it meant loosening his grip on Jason or moving his face from where it was buried in Jason’s hair.

“Bruce,” Jason said breathlessly, and tapped him on the shoulder as if he was tapping out of a spar.

Bruce forced himself to relax his iron grip enough to let Jason take a deep breath. He lifted his head and tilted Jason’s head back to look at his perfect, undamaged face—a little less round than it had been, before.

“How,” Bruce said, helplessly, not sure who he was asking.

Jason bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he said, and Bruce could tell that that distressed him.

Bruce looked over Jason’s head to Talia, the calmest person in the room, although there was something in her eyes that told him that she wasn’t quite as collected as she seemed. “I don’t have all the answers,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything I can. And before you even ask, I will tell you now: there is no doubt in my mind that the boy you hold in your arms is the boy you lost two years ago. I understand you’ll want to make your own assurances, but I swear to you on the lives of all my family that this is not a trick.”

“I trust her, Bruce,” Jason said, looking back and forth between them. “She helped me. She risked everything to help me.”

“Why?” Bruce asked Talia.

“Beloved,” she said, almost reprovingly. “You know why.”

***

Bruce made the snap call to relocate to the Manor without bothering to inform Nightwing or Oracle of why. They’d probably go on and on about his judgment being compromised, and how he couldn’t trust an al Ghul; cast doubt on Jason’s inexplicable presence, point out that it was undoubtedly some kind of trick. All of which was perfectly valid, and none of which Bruce was willing to deal with at the moment. If Jason was real, and right, and Talia was telling the truth—and whether or not he ought to, he believed both things—they were in danger from Ra’s, and Bruce would prefer they were all safely on Bruce’s most protected territory, where even Ra’s would hesitate to set foot, out of both courtesy and practicality.

He probably should have warned Alfred, though. They exited the hotel through the garage, for maximum discretion, and when Alfred saw who accompanied Bruce and Talia through the elevator door, the hand that had been on the latch to open the right rear passenger door fumbled.

“Oh my Lord,” Alfred said, in a voice so weak it was as if there was no oxygen in the room at all.

Jason had twitched at the sight of Alfred standing by the car, and then he was shaking off Bruce’s hand on his shoulder and darting towards Alfred, crying “Alfie!” He swept Alfred into a hug, and just as Bruce’s had, Alfred’s arms came up automatically to return the embrace. “I’m so sorry, Alfie, I never should have run away. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Well, just so long as you don’t do it again,” Alfred said softly, which was possibly the most inane thing Bruce had ever heard him say, but who could blame him, under the circumstances? Alfred glanced helplessly at Bruce and Talia. Bruce made a baffled face in return, and Talia merely sighed.

“It’s a long story,” Talia told Alfred. “We can share more of it once we’re on safer ground.”

Alfred looked to Bruce for confirmation and Bruce nodded firmly. “All right then, young Master Jason, into the car with you,” Alfred said, with just a pale shadow of his normal assurance. Jason climbed in, and Talia followed him.

Bruce closed the door after her before touching Alfred’s arm. “I’m sorry for springing this on you without warning,” he said in a low voice. “I found out barely half an hour ago. Can you drive safely?”

Alfred nodded shakily. “If you’ll give an old man half a minute to catch his breath, sir.” And then he gave Bruce a quick hug. “If it’s real, it’s a bloody miracle,” he murmured into Bruce’s ear.

Bruce nodded agreement against Alfred’s shoulder, then detached himself and walked around to the other side of the car so that Jason ended up in the middle seat between Bruce and Talia. After a minute, Alfred slid himself into the driver’s seat, and they were off.

***

Bruce had left the Manor as Bruce Wayne, in Bruce Wayne’s car, not Batman, in the Batmobile, and that was how he returned, albeit with a fuller car than when he’d left. And so there was a slight delay, as Bruce and Talia and Jason entered through the Manor’s front door, and Alfred brought the car around to the garage to park it, before everything went absolutely to hell.

Dick had returned to the Cave at Oracle’s signal, and noted via the security system that more people had come back to the Manor than he’d been expecting. Dick had the presence of mind to change back into civvies before he came practically charging up out of the Cave, through Bruce’s study and into the Great Hall, hungry for answers.

“What the hell, Bruce,” Dick said aggressively advancing on Bruce and Talia. “Why did you decide to bring her back here without so much as an explan—holy shit!” Dick froze as he saw the smaller figure between them. “Jason?”

As soon as the name passed his lips, he regretted it.

The boy who looked almost exactly like Jason, and who could not possibly be Jason said, haltingly, “Hi, Dick.”

Dick could practically feel his brain shorting out. He’d been here before, more than once, and it made his gut twist. This cruelty, this mockery, this base manipulation of identity.

“What the hell did you do?” Dick demanded, rounding on Talia. “What kind of twisted game is this?”

“It’s no game, Richard,” Talia said, with the smoothness Dick was convinced she brought out just for him, knowing how much he loathed her for it. “I’m here for one reason only: to restore Jason to his family, as he asked me to.”

“Jason Todd has been dead for two years, you sick bitch,” Dick snarled at her. “I don’t know how you engineered this, or what you did to Bruce in that hotel room, but this is the ugliest stunt I’ve ever seen you pull.”

“Don’t call her a bitch!” not-Jason yelled at Dick, and Dick thought the kid might have lunged at him if Talia and Bruce hadn’t both put restraining hands on his shoulders. “All she’s done is help me!”

“Everybody calm down,” Bruce said very loudly, at the same time Alfred finally made his way up from the garage.

“What an excellent notion,” Alfred said, and Dick couldn’t believe it, but Alfred seemed to be buying into this transparent ploy just as Bruce was. “Perhaps you should all proceed to the Cave to start working on the assurances we discussed in the car, and I’ll bring down tea and cocoa.”

Maybe Alfred was just playing along until he could could drug the lot of them, and figure out what was going on with Bruce, and where this imposter had come from. Dick glanced over his shoulder at Alfred as he followed the little group, but if that was the plan, Alfred betrayed nothing by his face.

(If Dick had been right about Talia and Jason, it might have been a good thing, but as things turned out, it was deeply unfortunate that Dick had completely forgotten that Tim was still in the Cave, and in uniform.)

Not-Jason had been distracted on the way down the stairs, craning his head up to talk to Bruce, but once they were on the main level, he glanced around, as if to familiarize himself with the Cave, and his eyes landed on Tim, still dressed as Robin, seated in the chair at the Bat-Computer, head hunched over his elbows, propped up on the desk, evidently talking to Oracle.

“Who’s that?” the kid said in a loud, shrill voice, pointing at Tim.

Nobody who really knew Bruce could think of him as contained or expressionless, but Dick was pretty sure even a total stranger would be able to see Bruce’s face in that moment, and correctly interpret his expression as oh hell.

“That’s Robin,” Dick told not-Jason, harshly. “That’s the real Robin.” He turned to Talia, and said, “If you were hoping to just slip this kid in as Batman’s partner to replace Jason, you should have done your research. Batman already has a partner.”

The first moment Dick started to doubt his own judgment was when the kid’s breathing turned distressed, and then started to slide into full-blown panic attack as he fell to his knees.

“If you could SHUT UP FOR ONE DAMNED MINUTE,” Bruce growled at Dick, as vicious as he’d ever heard him, and then, lowly, to Talia, “You didn’t tell him?”

“Would you have wanted me to?” she snapped back. “Here, help me get him over to a bed.” As Bruce hoisted not-Jason in his arms—it couldn’t be Jason, though, could it?—and carried him towards the medbay, Talia matched him stride for stride, saying soothing things to not-Jason-maybe-Jason about breathing along with her.

Dick stayed where he was, watching them, and starting to wonder if he’d made an awful mistake.

Tim, attracted by the commotion, came over to stand by Dick. “Uh, what the heck is going on?”

“I have no idea,” Dick said, hollowly.

Chapter Text

When Alfred made his way down into the Cave with a tray full of hot beverages and light snacks—including the little crustless finger sandwiches Master Jason had always so adored—he found Tim and Dick bent over the computer, in a furious, near-whispered consultation with Oracle; Bruce and Jason in the medbay, with stony-faced Bruce drawing a blood sample from a Jason who was much quieter and paler than he’d been when Alfred left them upstairs; and Talia al Ghul sitting in a chair by a table, well away from the medbay, legs neatly crossed, gaze level on Jason.

Alfred would have preferred to speak with Bruce first, but Talia was on the way, and she was the only person in the room who didn’t seem to be upset. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow as he offered her the tray.

“A pot of Assam,” she said, with a slight inclination of her head. “What an elegant solution. You didn’t drug the cups, did you?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to take your chances, Ms. al Ghul,” he told her.

She laughed, and picked a teacup at random and filled it from the pot, foregoing cream or sugar, and took a few small sandwiches on a plate. “Jason was...taken very much by surprise to find Timothy Drake over there wearing a Robin suit.” She sipped her tea. “This is very good.”

“I see you did not take it upon yourself to inform Master Jason of that particular development?”

“I thought Jason deserved to hear about it from his father,” Talia said, peaceably. “Who was I to try to explain a new Robin to him? Although if I’d known we’d be walking straight into Timothy Drake tonight, I might have reconsidered.”

“Neither Master Bruce nor I realized Master Tim would be here,” Alfred said, anxiety pooling in his gut. “He was instructed to stay home tonight. We mistakenly thought he would take that more literally than he did.”

“The whole disaster was compounded by some, shall we say, ill-conceived remarks on Richard’s part.” Talia nibbled on a sandwich. “But I’ll leave it to him to explain himself to you.”

“May I ask why you’re over here, rather than with Master Jason, who I cannot help but note has displayed a certain attachment to you?”

“Bruce is running blood samples and so forth, for those aforementioned assurances. Nothing we didn’t already do in the League, to be sure we were—to be sure. But you must run your own, and it will be easier to trust your results if I haven’t had any opportunity to dip my hands into them.”

“Sensible.”

“I’m a sensible woman, Pennyworth,” Talia said with a small smile, and heaven help him, Alfred thought it was genuine. But it faded as she gazed at Jason again, who looked quite miserable from where they were. “You should go to him,” she said, quietly. “He missed you. He called for you in his sleep, sometimes.”

“Yes, of course,” Alfred said. “Another sensible suggestion.”

***

Jason was staring vaguely in the direction of the computer, although from his current angle, Bruce didn’t think he could actually see Tim or Dick, which was probably for the best. Bruce could tell Jason was unhappy about Tim’s presence in the Cave, not to mention Dick’s asinine comments, but he didn’t know what to say to comfort Jason or to reassure him, and Jason wasn’t demanding answers yet, so Bruce said nothing, and delayed the inevitable by carrying on the task of setting up the machines that would carry out the blood typing and the DNA test.

Bruce saw Alfred descending into the Cave with a tray. After a few minutes’ conversation with Talia, Alfred made his way over to the medbay, tray in hand.

“Refreshments, sirs?”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce said. He scanned the contents of the tray, then paused, disappointed. “No coffee?”

“I’m afraid not. There is tea, Master Bruce.”

Bruce pulled a displeased face, but poured himself a cup of tea anyway, and took a few finger sandwiches.

“Master Jason?”

Jason blinked a couple of times, and looked over at Alfred. He still looked miserable, but seemed to relax minutely when he registered Alfred’s presence. He took a cup of cocoa and a sandwich, but instead of eating or drinking, he just stared at them. He set them down on the table next to the bed where he was sitting, cross-legged, and buried his face in his hands. “This is all I wanted since I woke up,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands. “I kept thinking about coming home and eating Alfie’s cooking again, but if I try right now I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up.”

Alfred glanced at Bruce in distress. “What happened, Master Jason?”

Instead of answering, Jason jerked his head out of his hands and glared at them both. “I’m real, you know. I am. No matter what stupid Dickface says. I’m real. And I really am sorry about running away, that was stupid, I know. I don’t even remember why I did it.” Bruce could see tears forming in his eyes. “But how could you? How could you just—how could you just replace me? Like I didn’t even matter?”

And now the tears started to fall, as his face crumpled, and watching Jason’s heart break was like being knifed in the gut.

Bruce had been knifed in the gut more than once. He knew exactly what it felt like.

“Jason, no. It wasn’t like that. I promise.” Bruce sat down on a chair, and drew it up to the bed. He reached up to interlace one of his hands with Jason’s. “Whatever you’re thinking, it wasn’t like that.”

Alfred had set his tray aside, and laid a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Master Jason, I imagine that your experiences since we lost you could easily fill an entire novel. As could our own. And when we have a chance, we shall sit down and compare our unwritten novels. Until then, let me say this: you were not replaced. No one could ever replace you. You were missed, and mourned, by more people than you know. We are overjoyed to have you returned to us.”

Bruce squeezed Jason’s hand. Jason hiccuped twice, and took a deep, slow breath. He reached for the hot chocolate, and sipped it. He looked up at Alfred. “It’s really good, Alfie.”

***

Alfred was storming over to the computer with a heavily laden tray in his hands and blood in his eyes, and Dick had to take a deep breath to prepare himself.

Bruce’s admonishment had been harsh, but immediate. Whether it was deserved was what Dick was unsure about. Jason Todd was dead. Jason Todd had been dead for years. And it was sick and wrong for Talia to play on Bruce’s weaknesses the way she so obviously had.

Dead was dead. Dead didn’t get better. Dead people didn’t turn up in a hotel room, accompanied by assassin seductresses, and demand to be brought back home and escorted into your most secret and vulnerable spaces. That was what shapeshifters and liars did. It was all so over-the-top and so obviously a ploy that the mere fact that Bruce seemed to believe in it left Dick feeling that he was being gaslighted.

But...Alfred didn't have Bruce’s same weaknesses. Alfred was the voice of reason, the voice of caution, the voice of sanity.

And for some reason, Alfred seemed to believe that this impossible child was Jason.

Alfred dropped the tray of rapidly cooling refreshments onto a clear part of the desk, with an audible clatter. Tim openly stared. Dick winced.

“A word in private, Master Richard,” Alfred said, in a chilly voice.

“Alfred, hold on a second,” Tim said, reasonably. “Everything about this is nuts, right? Jason...is dead. Someone is messing with us. Talia is messing with us. Shouldn't we all be be at Defcon One right now? Whoever this guy is, he’s in the Cave.”

Alfred took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You are both young,” he said, firmly. “I am not. I am an old man, and I have seen many things. Not this, not until today, but the world is much stranger and more full of mystery than I think either of you know. I believe that that boy is Jason Todd, and that the tests will bear that out, and that he should be welcomed back into his own home without reservation.” He turned a gimlet eye onto Dick. “A word.”

***

After Alfred dragged Dick off for what Tim assumed was some sort of ass-reaming, Tim was reduced to messaging Oracle.

R: It’s practically chaos here. B & a have lost their minds. Talia’s just chilling in the corner like it’s friday night? wtf?

O: Where’s Nightwing?

R: A’s yelling at him

O: Why?

R: not sure

O: If someone doesn’t pick up the phone I’m calling in the cavalry

Tim stood up from the computer abruptly, and made his way cautiously over towards the medbay. On the whole, he was a lot more scared of Batman than he was of Alfred, but Alfred had his mean face on right now, and Bruce didn’t. From a safe distance, he announced, “Oracle says she’s going to call for major backup right now if you don’t answer your phone.”

Bruce jerked his head up away from that of the kid sitting on the bed, looking annoyed. “I’m sorry, Jay, I have to,” he told him. The kid nodded. Bruce pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his slacks and thumbed at it, as he wandered off a bit.

“Hey,” Tim said, to the kid who couldn’t actually be Jason Todd. Could he? He did look sort of like him, Tim thought about it, trying to match the face in front of him to his vague memories of Bruce Wayne’s adopted son. They’d met, Tim was sure. But this face was too thin.

The kid glared at him, wordlessly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tim said lightly. “This isn’t my fault.”

The kid glared harder.

“Can I just ask...what do you think you’re doing? I mean, what’s the plan? You have to know you’re not going to get away with this?”

The next thing Tim knew, he’d been clocked in the head by something heavy, and the kid was bounding off the bed with an enraged howl, pinning him down with inhuman strength and slamming his fist towards Tim’s nose.

I knew it, he thought dully, as liquid trickled down his face into his hair.

And then someone was hauling his assailant off of him. He turned his head slightly and saw that it was Talia al Ghul, holding the kid upright in an expert armlock, and jabbing fingers somewhere near his neck. The kid went limp, and Talia straightened and sighed. She lifted the kid’s limp form up with visible effort, and deposited him back onto the bed he’d been sitting on before he attacked Tim.

Tim picked himself up slowly. He brushed at his forehead and realized that the liquid on his face wasn’t blood, but tepid hot chocolate. He bent down and picked up the empty mug. He was definitely going to have a bruise from this, and he mentally cursed. Another injury to hide from his father.

“Is he going to be okay?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if he actually cared; it depended on whether the kid was a co-conspirator, or just a pawn.

“He’ll be fine.”

“Is that going to happen again?”

“Not to you, if you keep your distance,” Talia said, coolly.

“Why did you bring him here?” Tim asked, with irritation. “Who is he? What’s your game, lady?”

Talia looked down her nose at him, and wow, Tim had never experienced that metaphor so literally before. He wished she wasn’t several inches taller than him. “Jason asked to be restored to his family. I trust you won’t interfere further with that end, child.”

Tim picked himself off the floor and retreated towards the computer, and solid ground.

***

“What in the name of all that is holy are you thinking?” Babs said, fuming. “Bruce, this is insane.”

“Retinal scans and fingerprints are already in the system for you to check, Oracle. And I’ve just started blood and DNA. You’ll see the same results I do, when I do.”

“You have Talia al Ghul in the damn Cave. Assuming that the report I got from Robin and Nightwing is accurate?”

“We’re keeping Talia away from the tests.” Bruce paused. “Why don’t you come around and see him for yourself?”

Babs laughed. “That sounds like terrible infectious disease protocol.”

Bruce’s voice went cold. “Keep an eye on the test results. Feel free to let me know if I’m wrong.” He shut off the comm.

Babs cursed a blue streak, then pulled up the retinal scans and fingerprints.

The results were already in, and...damn her if they didn’t match up perfectly to Jason’s profile, the restricted one from Bruce’s files. The blood and DNA would take longer, but the evidence was already starting to pile up in Bruce’s favor.

Or in Jason’s favor, rather.

Babs pushed herself back from her desk and rested her head in her hands. It was much too soon to believe in impossible gifts, she thought to herself. Much too soon. And once you started believing in miracles, where would it end?

She found herself already wanting to believe.

Babs grabbed her cell phone and dropped it in her lap, and then retreated from her desk and wheeled into the kitchen. She ran a glass of water, drained it, then ran another, before she set it aside and started to cry.

***

Jason had woken up from her nerve strike, and then nodded off again in the bed where Talia had left him, which didn’t surprise her—he was carrying a deep sleep fatigue he’d never overcome on their fraught, secretive journey from Greece to Gotham. So was she, but she had far more practice managing it, and less emotional fatigue than he.

Bruce approached her. He looked tired, too. “The blood tests check out,” he said.

“The DNA?”

“It will take another day or two.” Bruce sighed. “I don’t expect to be surprised. This is just…”

“Caution,” Talia said. “We did the same.”

Bruce grunted. “We’re going to sit down and talk about that in excruciating detail, Talia. Soon. Now.”

“Of course,” Talia said, and tried to calm her heart. Everything she had done, she reminded herself, she had done for her beloved. She’d done it for love. She had nothing to fear.

Bruce leaned against the bed opposite Jason’s, the same as Talia.

“I wanted to wait to ask him,” he said, softly. “But the hell with that. Tell me everything.”

“All right,” she said, and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid the mechanism of his resurrection remains a mystery. That was what drew my father’s interest, when we discovered Jason’s existence. But in all the time he was with us, we never gained any understanding of how it happened. He was catatonic, completely non-verbal, although he was able to walk around, dress himself, feed himself if he was given food. He was...physically adept. But unaware. He himself,” she gestured at Jason’s sleeping form, “has no memory of it. His memories are still badly jumbled.” She sighed.

“How long?”

“We found him a year ago. I suspect it was longer than that. Exactly how long, I can’t be sure. He was recognized by a petty thug who he’d once encountered as Robin—you and your partners have distinctive fighting styles, beloved—and when our agent investigated, he heard stories from Gotham’s homeless that suggested Jason might have been wandering the streets for months. They remembered him because of his generosity in sharing food, even in his semi-conscious state. My suspicion is that he never left Gotham.”

She could practically see the questions swirling through his mind like storm clouds.

“Talia...if I was to exhume Jason’s grave, what would I find?”

“Nothing,” she said simply. “Nothing but an empty, damaged casket. We looked, when we were attempting to verify his identity.”

“Someone...dug up his grave?”

“Beloved,” Talia said, putting her hand lightly over his own. “We believe he dug himself out of his grave.”

Bruce yanked his hand away, his jaw clenching and posture going stiff, the way it always did when he was struggling to contain an emotional reaction.

“The forensic evidence suggested—”

“The forensic evidence is hopelessly compromised, at this point,” Bruce ground out. “I don’t suppose you brought any of your findings along with you?”

“There wasn’t time,” Talia said. “My priority was in bringing him here, safely.” She clasped her hands together, looking down, trying not to mind his tone. “There’s other evidence. Since he awoke, he’s started having nightmares—nightmares he wasn’t having while he was catatonic. He dreams about pounding on the roof of his coffin, about breathing dirt. He’s displayed signs of claustrophobia—he never had that fear before, did he?”

Bruce shook his head, grimly.

She almost dreaded to mention this next detail. “And then there were the scars on his fingers.”

Bruce turned abruptly, almost snatching at one of Jason’s hands to inspect it, as if he hadn’t already seen them. “There’s nothing there now,” he said, almost triumphantly.

“No,” Talia said. “Not anymore.”

“There’s not even a hint of damage to his hands, past or present,” Bruce said. He paused. “You said he awoke—he mentioned waking up, before, but he didn’t say where. You had him for a year, yet you only brought him back here now. What happened, Talia?”

“I ran out of time,” she said quietly. “I would have waited for him, beloved. I always hoped he would recover on his own—catatonic or not, he showed signs of some awareness. He was able to distinguish me from others—he could fight, and fight well, when someone made a threatening gesture towards him, but I could strike him openly, and he wouldn’t react.” She curled her arms around herself. “When I spoke of you to him, he wept. But my father did not believe as I did, and he tired of waiting for answers. He was preparing to dispose of Jason.”

“Dispose. How—”

“He said Jason was to be sent away and cared for, out of respect for you. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps it was simply a ruse to remove him from my care and redirect my attention while he was dispatched in a more permanent fashion. In any case, he meant Jason to be discarded and forgotten forever, like a broken toy with no more value for anyone.” Talia only realized that her voice had gotten louder and sharper when Jason mumbled and stirred in his sleep in front of them. She consciously dropped her voice. “I could not let that happen. And it drove me to do something desperate and reckless—but effective.”

“Talia, tell me...did you put Jason in a Lazarus Pit?”

“Yes, beloved,” she said. “I did. And as I had hoped, it returned his mind to him in an instant.”

Bruce stared at her, and for once, she found his expression truly inscrutable.

“His memories are still puzzle pieces, but they are coming back to him; he grows sharper by the day,” she told him, trying to keep any defensiveness out of her voice. “The Pit restored all that was lost to him. And so it has restored all that was lost to you.”

And so I have restored all that was lost to you, beloved.

“The Lazarus Pit has side effects,” Bruce said distantly, turning his gaze back to Jason.

“Yes,” Talia said. “He has already had episodes of Pit madness, when he was provoked. There will be more, before the effects fade. I regret that. But I do not regret what I have done.”

Jason stirred in his sleep again. Bruce and Talia stood, shoulder to shoulder, watching him, and not looking at each other.

Chapter Text

Jason’s room was almost the same as how he'd left it.

The blue-and-white knit blanket folded at the foot of his bed was the same.

The bookcases held all his own books.

When he opened the drawers in his dresser, his clothes were all still there—but they smelled like mothballs.

His painstaking, hand-written repetition of verb tenses for his German homework was missing from his desk. His notebooks had all been neatly closed and shelved next to his textbooks, in a bookcase.

Jason sat down on the floor of his room, which was still his room. But it wasn’t quite the same.

Things were not the same.

Jason put his head into his knees and sat, unmoving, for a very long time.

***

“Fingerprints,” Bruce said, tossing a folder at him. “Retinal scan.” He tossed another. “Blood. DNA. All from our own tests. Done here, in the Cave, under my supervision. Talia was nowhere near them. It’s Jason. We may not know how this happened, but it’s time for you to admit that it’s real. I need you with me, not fighting me.”

“I’m worried about you, Bruce,” Dick said, tiredly, from the couch across from Bruce’s desk, dropping the folders in a stack next to him. “Look...I understand that you’re still grieving for Jason, even now. And that you want to believe in this. But this is crazy. Jason died. The Joker murdered him. We buried him. And then we had to get on with our lives. All of us. Now, out of nowhere, Talia al Ghul, who I trust not one fucking inch farther than I can throw her, shows up with an unbelievable story about finding Jason wandering around Gotham—your city, the one you patrol almost every night—and a kid who looks like he could be Jason, and you swallow it whole? This is not like you. Come on. Where’s the crazy-ass paranoiac who raised me?”

He threw in that last line to try to defuse some of the tension between them, but it didn’t work. Bruce only scowled at Dick.

“Look those over carefully,” Bruce said, ominous as a storm cloud, “before you say one more word to me on this subject.” He stood up from his desk and made his way to the door. He paused in the doorway. “There’s enough evidence here to convince a judge. Which, at some point, I hope it will. It should be enough for you. But remember, if you will, Dick—you barely even knew Jason.”

Dick flinched.

“So don’t you ever dare try to tell me whether or not I’m capable of recognizing my own son.” Bruce’s voice was colder than Dick could ever remember hearing him.

“Bruce…” Dick put the folders down on the cushion next to him. “Dammit, Bruce. Will you at least tell me what you’re planning to do now?”

“I’m having Jason’s grave exhumed,” Bruce said over his shoulder, and slammed the study door violently behind him.

“Sonuvabitch,” Dick snapped, and viciously punched an innocent couch cushion.

Then he picked up the folders Bruce had thrown at him like projectile weapons, and started reading, because no matter how dubious he was about all this nonsense, this was evidence, and Bruce had trained him too well to ignore evidence.

Some part of him had expected the results to be obviously faked. Or to be negative, and reveal that Bruce was hallucinating the answers he wanted to see, the ones that told him his lost Robin was magically alive and in front of him. But everything looked, well...fine. Exactly what Bruce seemed to think it ought.

Dick fished his phone out of his pocket, and called Babs.

“Hey,” she said, when she picked up. She sounded tired.

“Have you looked at the test results?” He didn’t bother to specify which test results. This was the most pressing case at the moment.

“Yeah,” Babs said. “It all looks on the up and up. I don’t see any irregularities; I don’t see any indication of tampering.” She audibly yawned. “Dick, I’ve been up for two days, I’m exhausted, and I’m going back to sleep now, okay? I’ll deal tomorrow.”

“Sure,” he said, and hung up. It was 3pm in the afternoon, but Dick couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything like a normal schedule.

The child who claimed to be Jason was in Jason’s old room upstairs, the last he’d heard, anyway. Maybe it was time to talk to him.

Dick tossed the folders to the side.

***

He heard a soft rapping on the door. “Jason?”

Jason, lying on the floor, propped up on his elbows and deep into the party chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, again, startled, and rolled into a sitting position. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Dick.”

Jason’s hand flew up automatically to his mouth. After a second he choked out, “Go away.”

“Please, Jason.”

“I don’t want to talk to you!”

“I’d like to talk to you, though,” Dick said. “Jason? Please. Come on. I’m sorry about the things I said before.” His voice took on a coaxing tone.

Jason grabbed the tan-and-white bookmark off of the floor and shoved it into the middle of the book, where it couldn’t be seen, and then tossed the book aside. He drew his knees up to his chest, and took several deep breaths before he relaxed into criss-cross legs. “Okay, fine.”

Dick turned the handle and came into the room. He glanced down at Jason’s book. “Tolkien, huh? I loved those books when I was your—” he stopped abruptly. He dropped down to the floor, and sat cross-legged just a few feet away from Jason. “Hey, Jay, do you remember when we first met?”

Jason didn’t, at first. He had to stop and think about it. It felt like very long ago, and the memory wasn’t comfortable. Jason exhaled. “Yeah. I screwed up a drug bust, and you were there. You chewed my ass out over it.”

Dick lips twitched. “That’s...not wrong.”

“But...later...you gave me your old Robin costume.”

“Yeah, I did,” Dick said, and now he was outright smiling. “You earned it.”

Jason smiled back, tentatively.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“Who is he?” Jason blurted out.

“I’m sorry?”

“The new—the new—” Jason choked on it. “Him.”

“Ohhhh, uh.” Dick seemed surprised to be asked. “His name is Tim. He’s a great kid, Jay, really. Smart as the dickens. He’s such a great Robin. You should be proud. He’s really carrying on the legacy. I bet you’d like each other.”

Jason felt like all the blood was draining out of his body. He could scarcely move a finger. “Get out,” he mumbled.

“Jason?”

“Get out!” He dragged himself onto to his feet, feeling like there were weights on his limbs. “Get out!” Somehow, he managed to pick the book up from off the floor next to him, and hurl it at Dick’s face, hitting him solidly above his eye.

“Dammit!” Dick yelped. “Jay! Calm down! Calm down!”

Jason screeched, and launched himself at Dick, as everything went cold and green. All of his thoughts were bleeding away into an icy, verdant rage. He clawed at Dick’s face, pounded on his skull, kicked at his ribs. And then, distantly, he felt himself being hurled on to the bed, while Dick shouted something over and over again.

He saw Alfred appear in the doorway, then dart out again.

And then Talia was there. Jason trembled with the desire to strike out at her, but before he could, she put a hand to his neck, and he fell into soft darkness.

***

“What was that?” Dick asked, trying to settle himself, in the face of Jason’s terrifying temper tantrum.

“A nerve strike. It’s perfectly safe,” Talia said. “As long as you can monitor the target afterwards. Sometimes it stops the breath. But the side effects are easily reversible.”

“I mean—what was that.”

“Pit madness,” Talia said.

“Also…’it stops the breath’? Are you completely nuts?”

“It needs only monitoring, Richard.” Talia rolled her eyes. Dick was ready to punch her himself, but just then Alfred returned with a syringe in his hand. “Thank you,” Talia told Alfred, putting up a peaceful hand. “We won’t be needing that at the moment.”

“Thanks, Alfred,” Dick echoed Talia. “I think we’re okay for now.”

Alfred lingered for a moment, looking at Jason, sprawled across the bed. “If you’re both very sure.” Dick thought Alfred’s eyes lingered a little longer on him than they did on Talia.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Talia sat on Jason’s desk chair; Dick leaned against his desk.

“You did this to him,” Dick said.

“If you mean that I gave him his life back—yes I did,” Talia said. But she sounded defensive.

“You put him in the Lazarus Pit. You burdened him with that. With what I just saw.”

“Please, Richard,” she said, coldly. “As if you ever cared.”

“Excuse me, lady?” Dick bristled. “Of course I cared. He’s my brother, you heartless bitch.”

Jason’s breathing hitched, and both Dick and Talia’s attention was briefly diverted.

Once they’d assured themselves that Jason was breathing normally, Dick said to her, softly, “Of course I cared. Jason wore my colors. With my blessing. We share—we share a father, in Bruce.” Dick shut his eyes for a moment. “I mourned him as a brother.”

Talia looked coldly at Dick. “You tell me that,” she said. “Tell him. He knows almost nothing of you.”

“That’s not my fault,” Dick said, crossly. “Bruce was the one who kept us apart. He didn’t even tell me Jason existed. We only met a few times before he died.”

Talia looked unimpressed.

“I had my own damned life, okay?” Dick snarled. “I was practically a kid myself! I was barely out of Bruce’s shadow. I was trying to make my own life. And then I came back to the old homestead for a visit, and there was this new kid there. A new Robin, out of nowhere. Sure as hell, no one asked me about that. And Bruce even adopted him, and he never asked me—” Dick stopped himself, chest heaving. “Why do I even bother,” he said, with a sigh.

“I care for him,” Talia said, softly.

“What?”

“I care for him. A part of him is mine, now.” Talia gazed down at Jason. “I have watched over him for a year. He knows me better than he knows you. He trusts me as deeply as a child trusts her mother. He is more mine than yours.”

Dick stared at her. “Okay. You’re the one who needs to get out now.”

“I'm not going anywhere, Richard,” Talia said, with actual heat. “It’s just as you said—I did this to him, when I chose to expose him to the Pit. It falls on me to watch over him while he deals with the aftermath. Jason is my responsibility.”

“Jason is a perfect excuse to hang around Bruce and try to worm your way into his good graces,” Dick bit out. “Why is it that every word out of your mouth sounds like a manipulation?”

“Because you don’t like me,” Talia said. “You never have.”

“With good reason.”

“If you truly consider yourself Jason’s brother, you'll think of his best interests, and not take your antipathy towards me out on him.”

On the bed, Jason stirred and blinked. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked at them in momentary confusion, before things seemed to fall into place for him.

“Hey there Jay,” Dick said, cautiously. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired.” But Jason rolled into a sitting position. “Uh, you should probably put some ice on that.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of his forehead.

Dick touched his own, remembering that Jason had clocked him pretty hard with the book before he’d jumped him. He found tenderness and swelling. He grimaced, although not because of the pain, which was nothing compared to the sort of thing he was used to. “Yeah, I’ll get an ice pack in a bit.”

“I did that, didn’t I,” Jason said, looking at the ground.

“‘Fraid so.”

“The Pit’s influence will wear off eventually, Jason,” Talia said, gently. “You were only exposed once. Until then, we must simply weather the effects.”

“I dunno, Talia.” Jason wrapped his arms around himself. “I feel like it’s getting...worse.”

“These incidents are no more frequent than they were before. Worse in what way?”

Jason pressed his lips into a thin line. “Nightmares,” he said, succinctly.

Dick made a sympathetic noise. “That’s not necessarily the Pit, though, Jason.” He looked at Talia for confirmation, irritated that he needed to, but—she was certainly the most educated person in this room about the effects of the Lazarus Pit; if anyone would know, she would. She nodded. “You’ve been through some bad stuff. Anyone would have nightmares.”

“I think Richard is probably correct,” Talia said. “It’s not impossible that the effects of the Pit are exacerbating things, but you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Your mind is only now beginning to catch up. You are only remembering things now.”

It galled slightly, to be in agreement with her, but—maybe she wasn’t wrong about setting aside his issues with her for Jason’s sake.

Not that he wouldn’t be watching her like a hawk anyway. Bruce’s judgement was clouded on Talia at the best of times, and even moreso now that she’d delivered his heart’s desire to him. Dick was still half-convinced that, real or not, bringing Jason here was a move in a larger game. But maybe in the little things, she was genuinely helping him. It was true that he trusted her. It was also true, and this irritated him immensely, that Jason trusted Talia more than he trusted Dick.

“Where’s Bruce?”

Digging up your grave, to help prove that you’re you, Dick thought, and did not say aloud. “He’s out. He’ll be back later.”

“What about Alfie?”

“He’s around somewhere. Do you want to go find him? Maybe ask him to grab me an ice pack?”

Jason rolled his eyes elaborately. “Yeah, sure. I owe you, I guess,” Jason said. He slid his feet off the bed and stood up carefully, as if testing his balance, and then trotted out the door.

“Sooooo….you’ve been doing that Vulcan neck pinch thing every time he’s had a Pit incident?”

“Yes. There aren’t many safe ways to subdue someone quickly without risking permanent physical damage, as you undoubtedly know. This is one of them.” She smirked at him. “There are some benefits to my lifestyle, Richard,” she said.

“My name is Dick, Talia.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“You said sometimes it makes people stop breathing, and that is the dictionary definition opposite of safe.”

“As I said, the effects are easily reversible. It suffices for this purpose.”

“Convenient as hell,” Dick said. He glanced over at her. “I don’t suppose you could teach it to me?”

Chapter Text

As soon as Bruce slammed the garage door behind him, he knew he was making a mistake.

He wanted to storm down to City Hall, demand for them to dig up Jason’s empty grave, shove the living Jason in their faces, and shout at them, here he is! My son! He’s alive!

But he couldn’t actually go through with it. It was too soon to invite outside scrutiny. They didn’t need the attention of the authorities or the media. Not until...not yet.

“Clark,” he said loudly.

Two minutes later, Superman was leaning back against the Jaguar XK, smiling. “What do you need, Bruce?”

“Could you...look at Jason’s grave, and tell me what you see.”

Clark’s eyes widened in surprise, but instead of asking questions, he nodded briskly, and disappeared.

It took less than a second.

The next thing Bruce knew, he was surrounded by ice. The Fortress. Clark had taken him to the Fortress. He was looking at Bruce with open concern.

“I just asked you look, Clark.”

Bruce looked around the grand room, memories of the one time he’d brought Jason here crashing into him. Jason had been in complete awe of it all. Meeting Superman again. Meeting Diana for the first time. The sheer scale of the icy Antarctic architecture.

Watching Jason’s eyes widen at it all had made him laugh inside.

Although Mongul’s attack had put a damper on things.

And Jason had done so well, that day. He’d kept a cool head in the crisis, and come up with an effective plan in the face of a planet-crushing superpowered being who had fought both Superman and Wonder Woman to a standstill. Bruce had never been prouder of him. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever told him that.

“Yes, I know,” Clark said. “But I don’t think this is normal, do you?”

Bruce swallowed. “What did you see?”

“It’s empty,” Clark moved to take Bruce’s arm, but Bruce evaded him. “The coffin was shredded.”

“Can you tell...if it was from the inside or the outside?”

“It looks like it was from the inside, Bruce,” Clark said, gently. “Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh my God, it’s true,” Bruce said, and sat down on one of the benches opposite a portrait of Jor-El and Lara. “What Talia said...”

“Talia? Talia al Ghul?”

“Yes. Jason is alive,” Bruce said, through numb lips. “He’s alive. Talia found him. She brought him back to Gotham. She said—she said they thought he’d dug his way out of his grave.”

Clark gawped at him. “Are you sure? Sure that it’s really him?”

“We’ve done DNA tests. We’re sure.”

“My God,” Clark said, a little blankly. “Would it be all right if I—may I see him?”

Bruce wondered if Clark was also remembering that birthday when Jason had saved all of their lives by dropping the Black Mercy on Mongul. It didn’t seem so long ago, anymore.

He wanted to say no. It was too soon, Jason wasn’t ready for anybody but family—but he already felt exhausted and defensive, and saying no might create the impression that he was worried Jason’s veracity wouldn’t hold up to Clark’s suspicion.

He had just opened his mouth to say yes, when Clark’s face suddenly tightened. “Hold that thought. There’s been an earthquake in the North Pacific Ocean. Got to go.”

And then Bruce found himself stumbling slightly outside the front door of the Manor, still feeling the breeze from Clark’s departure. He leaned against the door to steady himself, and then opened it, feeling vaguely sheepish about the whole thing.

***

“I saw that the DNA is in,” Babs said, scratching her head, and stretching her arms up towards the ceiling.

“Are you convinced, now?”

Babs hit mute on the comm, then shoved most of a piece of cinnamon raisin toast into her mouth and slurped half her coffee. She hit unmute. “I’d like to actually see him.”

“What happened to infectious disease protocols?”

“I assume everyone has had all their shots by now,” she said. And then, “I’m sorry, Bruce. You shocked me. This is insane. I know that you know that.”

‘Yes,” Bruce said. “It’s madness. But it’s also real. And he’d like to see you, too.”

“I could be there this afternoon.”

***

She parked in the garage. Bruce had retrofitted every entrance to the Manor to be wheelchair accessible, not long after Babs had lost the use of her legs, but when she traveled on her own, it was simplest to use the garage and the elevator.

On the elevator, she ran her hands nervously along her torso and down her thighs. She had chosen to believe in this impossibility, but the idea still rattled her.

The elevator pinged, and she wheeled herself out into the kitchen.

And then she smiled.

Alfred and Jason, sitting at the kitchen table, shelling walnuts together, Jason chattering away while Alfred smiled indulgently. For an instant, it was as if someone had rewound the past two years, and that none of the pain of those years had befallen them. She could almost imagine standing up from her chair, strolling over to the table, and telling Jason it was time to take a break from hanging out with Alfred and open up his algebra textbook. (He’d had a lot of catching up to do before he was ready to re-enroll in school, thanks to having dropped out halfway through the fifth grade, although Bruce, Alfred, and Babs had all found him an apt and willing pupil.)

Alfred noticed her first. “Welcome, Ms. Gordon,” he said.

“Babs?” Jason said, turning around and looking over at her hopefully.

Babs opened her arms, and Jason picked himself up out of his seat and ran towards her, throwing himself at her so hard that her chair rolled back a few inches from the force of his impact.

“Oof,” Babs said. “You’re heavier than you used to be.” As she wrapped her arms around Jason, feeling her eyes burn, Alfred rose from the table, and discreetly exited the kitchen, walnuts in hand. Well, he’d already had his own reunion, she supposed. Barbara hugged Jason so fiercely, so long that the nerves in her arms started to buzz. “Okay,” she said, when she was sure her voice was steady and cheerful, “Enough already, you’re crushing me.”

Jason released her and backed off. But he was grinning. “You look amazing!”

Babs looked at him and reminded herself that the last time Jason had seen her, she’d been in rehab, still struggling with her new reality, and much less physically capable than she was now. “I’ve been working out, kiddo,” she told him. She gave him a gun show, and he laughed, childishly.

How old was he really? she wondered. Bruce’s report suggested that Jason had only regained full consciousness a month or so ago. His exact physical age was imprecise. He’d died at fifteen. According to Talia al Ghul, he’d clawed himself out of his own grave at some point after that, but the details were sketchy. He might well still be mentally fifteen, even if he was taller and heavier than he’d been.

“Bruce said you were in Greece,” she said brightly. “How was the food?”

“It was good,” Jason said, as if they were just catching up after a vacation abroad. “It was really good.”

“Tell me about it.”

Jason tapped his chin. “We had rice wrapped up in leaves. And fried squid. And fried cheese with honey on it. It’s amazing, Babs—”

“We’re getting take-out, right now,” Babs said, and Jason dissolved into laughter again as she pulled out her phone and started searching for local Greek restaurants. “I can’t listen to you talk about good food and sit here hungry.”

Any desire Babs felt to interrogate Jason herself about his time away evaporated in the face of his apparent cheerful mood. The details she’d gleaned from Bruce were horrifying, and she suspected this was a rare bright spot. If Jason wanted to talk about what he’d been through, she’d listen, but she vowed not to push him on anything he seemed reluctant about. Life had always had a sparing hand when it came to giving Jason Todd moments of happiness.

***

Jason stabbed his fork into his pastitsio. “We never had that in Greece,” he said, somewhat dubiously.

“I’ll take it,” Babs said, reaching out for the container.

Jason pulled it out of her reach, hopping up on a counter. “I didn’t say I didn’t want it.” He jammed a forkful of ground beef and macaroni and bechamel into his mouth. “But you can have some if you want…?” he offered, belatedly, through a mouthful of partially-masticated pasta. Babs made a “gimme” motion at him, and he tipped the carton down enough that she could scrape some down onto her plate.

“Greek lasagna,” she said, and took a bite, moaning slightly. “I should do this more often.”

Jason removed himself from the counter and sat back across the table from her, sneaking a fork in to steal a bite of lamb souvlaki from her plate. “Have you ever been to Greece?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said. “You’re quite the country-hopper now, though. I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jason said. He looked down at his food, shoving a neglected wedge of spanikopita across his plate. “But I can’t remember why I left.” He looked up at Babs, vaguely hopeful.

Babs cursed Bruce out thoroughly in her heart, and threw in Alfred and Dick and, what the hell, Talia al Ghul for good measure. Jerks, all of them, letting this slide until it fell on her. (Unless he’d really never asked any of them? Bruce had said that Talia said that Jason’s memory was swiss cheese right now, and only coming back in bits and pieces.)

She stalled. “What do you remember, Jason?”

Jason put down his fork and closed his eyes, thinking carefully. “Bruce and I had a fight. I ran away from home. I took a plane somewhere.” He shuddered. “The Joker.” His eyes opened, but they stared at the wall, not at Babs or at his food. “There was a woman. She was blonde. She was important.”

Babs bit her lip. “Was that Sheila Haywood?”

Jason redirected his gaze at her. “Sheila?” He suddenly gasped, and shoved his food away violently. “Oh no.”

“Jason?”

Jason had curled over in his chair, and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut. “Is she all right?” he asked, in a muffled voice.

“Jason, can you relax for me a little bit?”

Jason shook his head. “Sheila?” he croaked.

Babs angled herself so that she could reach Jason without stretching. She stroked his back. “I’m sorry, Jason. Sheila is dead.”

Jason moaned, and his torso shuddered underneath her hand. He sat up, taking huge gasps of air. He wiped at his eyes. Babs rested her hand on his knee.

“She was my real mom,” he said.

“I heard,” Babs said. “I’m so sorry.”

Jason rubbed at his eyes again. “At least I finally remember why I ran away in the first place. Willis’s book.”

“Do you remember anything else about fighting with Bruce?” Babs asked.

Jason scrunched his face. “Uhhhhhh...I think it something about me jumping the gun during a bust. And hitting a guy too hard. I...broke his collarbone. Bruce was mad about that. And…oh.” Jason blanched. “That guy. The diplomat’s son, Felipe Garzonas. Bruce thinks I pushed him, doesn't he?” Jason’s breathing sped up again. “Is that why he got a new Robin? Even if I hadn't...I hadn’t…he was going to replace me anyway, wasn't he? That's what Dick meant when he said that other kid was the real Robin, not me.”

What the hell?, Babs thought. Obviously that couldn't have been what Dick meant, but whatever the actual context, it didn't sound good. She made a mental note to talk to Dick later. “Jason, no. Listen to me. I'm the one who’s been around to see what was going on, okay? So you should listen to me. Everything you just said is wrong.”

“Bruce didn't believe me when I said I didn't push him,” Jason said bitterly. He looked up at her. “Do you?”

Babs studied his face, the mix of defiance and misery. “I never had the opportunity to ask you myself,” she said neutrally, buying herself a little time.

The truth was, she had wondered. And so had Bruce. He feared the possibility enough to cease investigating, even as he'd considered benching Jason as Robin indefinitely. Jason’s insecurity on that front didn't come out of nowhere. She nerved herself up. “Jason, did you kill Felipe Garzonas?”

“No,” Jason said without hesitation.

And then he opened his mouth and out poured a torrent of words.

“I thought about it, I did. Some part of me wanted to. That piece of shit, Felipe—he raped Gloria Stanson. He raped her twice before I even...we had evidence, but the GCPD wouldn’t touch him because his dad was a diplomat. Babs, he called Gloria at home right in front of us—” Jason’s voice choked. “He terrorized her into killing herself,” he continued, and tears were running down his cheek. “By the time I got there, she’d hung herself because no one would help her. Not the cops, and not us. We didn’t help her. I didn’t help her.” Jason buried his head in his hands. “Why didn’t I help her?”

“What did you do?” Babs asked, softly.

“Sick freaks like that,” Jason continued, starting to calm slightly, “It's not about getting their rocks off—it's about having power over other people. Hurting people. For Felipe, making her Gloria kill herself was just as as good for him as raping her. And Bruce said we couldn't do anything about it at all, except to have him deported. So what, he could go back and hurt more women back in his own country? Like that was justice? And what's the point of Batman and Robin if we can't go after the kind of monsters the law won't touch?”

Jason clenched his fists, then stood up and started pacing.

“I have never hated anybody as much I hate that sick fuck. I've never been angrier than I was that day. Yes, I went after him. I wanted to find him, I wanted to beat the shit out of him for what he did to Gloria, and every other woman he ever hurt. I wanted to grind his face into the carpet while I promised him I'd hunt him down to the ends of the earth if he ever put his hands on another woman.

“I didn’t mean to kill him, Babs. I didn’t push him. I didn’t try to back him off the balcony.”

Jason looked utterly miserable.

“But I didn’t try to catch him when he fell.”

It sounded like truth, to Babs.

Everything in that torrent of words had seemed passionately sincere. If he was lying, it wouldn't bolster his case to admit to having wanted to kill Felipe, having intended to beat him. Jason was too smart not to know that.

She was relieved to know Jason still had that level of restraint, enough not to act on that desire, even though she herself felt far less strongly about Bruce’s hard line than he did. If Babs ever, say, found herself with the Joker in a dark alley and a pistol in her hand, she sure as hell wasn’t going to shoot to wound. She knew she'd be able to live with herself afterwards. But Jason was still young, and he could be impulsive. Killing someone was a line he had no business crossing. Not now, hopefully not ever.

“I believe you, Jason,” she said softly.

***

“Save the grilled vegetables,” Barbara said, sounding tired, cheek propped up on arm. “They might not look like anything, but they’ll reheat okay in the oven.”

“I’m aware, Ms. Gordon,” Alfred told her, gently scooping the limp remains of fried coins of eggplant and zucchini into plastic containers.

“Alfred—can I ask what the hell went down the night that Talia brought him back?” Barbara asked. “Jason said some strange things about Dick and Tim that I can't make sense of.”

Alfred scraped the last of the tzatziki sauce into a tiny dish, wiped his hands, and turned around. He leaned against the kitchen counter, and sighed. “As you are no doubt aware, Master Richard has an intense dislike of the al Ghuls.”

Barbara nodded.

“He is naturally mistrustful of Talia al Ghul. He was…doubtful about the veracity of Master Jason’s existence.”

“He thought she was tricking us?”

“I'm afraid so.”

Barbara put her hand on her forehead. “Jason said…that Dick said something about Tim being the real Robin. He damn near had a panic attack in front of me, Alfred. I don't suppose you know anything about that?”

Alfred picked up a dishcloth, and fingered it, restlessly. “It was shameful,” he said, looking at the sink. “Shameful and cruel. Master Richard mistakenly but truly believed Master Jason to be an imposter, and he treated him accordingly. Master Tim rather understandably took his cues from Master Richard. The whole situation was unfortunate.”

Barbara made a low hissing sound in her teeth. “Didn't we raise them better?” she said.

Alfred laughed in spite of himself. “Not well enough, I'm afraid.”

Barbara drummed her fingers against the side of her chair. “Jason is a mess,” she said. “Understandably. It would be strange if he wasn't. I've been trying to convince him that Bruce didn't replace him with Tim because he messed up somehow.” Her eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head. “Dammit!” She sat back in her chair, sighing. “But what do I say? ‘It wasn't because you screwed up, Jason, it's just that you were dead.’”

Alfred sat down abruptly, setting aside the dishcloth, and pressing his hands against his eyes.

Babs made an apologetic sound.

“I’m at a loss, Ms. Gordon,” he said. “This is beyond my ken. I have buried so many people that I loved. I buried Jason. My grandson. And yet, somehow, miraculously, he is here, now, needing me—needing us—more than ever before.” Alfred trembled, clutching his hands on the table. He bent over. “What do I do?”

“Oh my god, Alfred,” Babs said. She seized his hand. “We’ll get through this together. That's the only way.”

Alfred clutched her hand like a lifeline.

***

Bruce blinked, when he opened the door to his darkened bedroom, and found Jason sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed. “Jay?”

“I didn't kill him.”

“Jason, what are you talking about?”

“I know that you think I killed him.” Jason’s arms were wrapped tightly around his knees. “I didn't. So if that's why you don't want me to be Robin anymore, you’re wrong.”

“Jason, what are you talking about?” Bruce was bewildered.

“Stop doing that! I hate it when you play dumb. I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I didn't even touch him.” Jason bowed his head on his knees. “I wanted to. He was fucking garbage, Bruce. He hurt women for fun.” He lifted his miserable face up to Bruce’s. “And I'm not sorry he's dead. But I didn't kill him, and I didn’t go there planning to kill him, no matter what you think.”

Bruce sat down next to Jason, stretching his legs out in front of him, and rubbed his hand up and down Jason’s hunched spine, while his mind churned. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right, Jay-lad.”

He tried to remember the things they'd been arguing about, before Jason’s death reduced all of them into garbage, turned their fights into cheap theater best forgotten.

Felipe Garzonas, the serial rapist with diplomatic immunity. He’d be classified as one of Batman’s uglier failures of justice if he hadn’t died.

If he hadn’t fallen from a twelfth-story balcony that had also held Robin.

Of course. Obviously. Bruce should have realized right away—of course it would be foremost in Jason’s mind, when Jason had no conscious memory of the last two years.

And of course, Bruce had wondered. Worried. Worried he’d failed Jason in some profound, terrible way; worried for Jason’s mental and moral development, worried for what Jason’s future might hold, if he really could kill. Wondered if he shouldn't be getting Jason psychological counselling, instead of letting him channel all his feelings into Robin.

But after Jason died, Bruce stopped caring about all of that.

What if Jason had shoved a vicious, unrepentant rapist off of a balcony? It wasn’t as if he’d would have to carry the burden of killing anymore. It wasn’t as if Jason would ever be able to cross that line again. If he'd needed help, it had been too late for him to get it. Bruce’s beautiful, brave, compassionate son was dead. Nothing else had mattered.

Nothing else had mattered for such a long time.

Bruce pulled Jason tight against his side, and kissed his forehead. He still really hadn’t come to grips with this—hadn’t Alfred called it a miracle?—this true miracle. A miracle that he embraced wholly, with open hands. His heart’s desire, here, leaning against him as they sat together on the floor. He wasn’t strong enough to question it.

Let Dick wonder, let Tim. Let Barbara wonder, and Clark, too. Let them all wonder and investigate. They would come tell him later if he was wrong. For now, Bruce had Jason sitting next to him again, and that was all he cared about.

“If you say you didn’t do it, I believe you, Jay. But you need know that—all that had nothing at all to do with Tim taking on Robin.”

“Then why?” Jason keened.

“I was broken,” Bruce said, softly, trying to remember exactly how it had come about. “Too broken to be a good Batman, after you died. Tim saw that. He was trying to fix me.”

“Did he?”

“No.” Bruce shuddered, from head to toe. “No one could ever fix me. Losing you was the worst thing that ever happened to me, Jay. It was the worst thing in the whole world.”

When Jason started to quietly cry, next to him, Bruce held him tight, and made no effort to stop himself from following suit.

Chapter Text

“So we think it's actually Jason?,” Tim said. “Not an imposter?”

“Yeah, that's what all the evidence is pointing to,” Dick said. “Even Oracle is on board, and she thought B was nuts, at first.”

“And you? You're convinced, too?”

Tim's cell beeped at him, and he pulled it away and winced at the message on the screen: "Battery Low. Please Charge Me." He was down to one percent. He started digging around on his desk for a charger; there had to be one somewhere around here, hiding under the empty soda cans and the scattered papers.

“Yeah, I think so.” Dick sighed. “Honestly, Tim, I didn't know Jason all that well. Not like Bruce and Alfred did. But this kid—he seems like the one I knew. Maybe he’s a little moodier. I think Jason was a pretty cheerful kid before. But, I mean, he died.”

“‘Moody.’” Tim snorted. “That's an understatement. He threw a mug at my face and then he tried to break it. I had to tell Dad I got into a fight at school.” The phone beeped again, and Tim cursed under his breath.

Dick laughed. “Yeah, he did something similar to me, only with a copy of Lord of the Rings.”

“Whoa,” Tim said. “The collected edition?” Aha, there it was—but the charger wasn't plugged into anything, and as his fingertips brushed it, it slipped over the back of his desk.

“No, just Fellowship.”

“Well thank god for that. If he'd clocked you with the collected, your pretty face would be ruined and you'd probably never get laid again,” Tim said, jamming the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he crawled underneath his desk.

Dick sighed again. “Talia called it Pit madness. She said it’s a temporary side effect of exposure to the Lazarus Pit.”

“Holy shit, is that how—can it do that?" Tim sat up in surprise, bonking his head on the underside of the desk in the process. "Ow. Raise the dead, I mean. I thought it just, y’know, healed wounds and extended the lifespan. Oh my god, did the League, like, dig up his grave and steal the body, because that's some spooky zombie movie shit—”

“I have no idea if it can. But that isn’t what happened, apparently. Talia claims a League operative found Jason wandering the streets of Gotham, catatonic. They kidnapped him and held him for a year—Ra’s was pretty interested in the whole resurrection aspect—and when it was apparent he wasn't going to get better on his own, Talia stole him and put him into a pit in secret. Which is a major no-no in the League; those pits are for Ra’s and Ra's alone. And as soon as he was awake, Jason asked to come home, so...here we are.”

Tim whistled. “I don't know what sounds more unbelievable, the idea that Jason just, what, crawled out of his grave one day and wandered off, no known catalyst, or the idea that he could have been here in Gotham and none of us noticed.” He paused. “Also, it's a little suspicious, isn’t it, that we only have Talia’s word for all this, and Jason conveniently has no memories of any of it.”

“Hey, look, I don't trust Talia either. She's a snake who always has her own agenda, which usually includes cozying up to Bruce. But hers is the only word we have right now, and we can't dismiss it out of hand. Not when she's our only current source of information about what happened to Jason. Not to mention she's our best source of intel on the effects of the Pit.”

“Yeah, that freakout—it was unreal, Dick. I know he was Robin, and Bruce trained him hard, but he was like, freakishly strong. I'd barely said two words to him when he jumped me.”

“Some kind of berserker rage, yeah. He flipped out at me when I was telling him about you, so...I have a feeling it's a trigger for him. You should probably keep your distance from him until we get that under control.”

“Too bad,” Tim said, disappointed. “I’ve always wanted to talk to him. The real him. About being Robin and stuff. Bruce hardly ever talks about him, except to tell me to be careful so I don’t end up like him.”

The last thing Tim heard Dick say, just before the phone finally died, was “For the love of god, Tim, do not repeat that to Jason.”

***

Tim made his way down the stairs into the Cave. Things had been...weird, lately. Every time he showed up at the front door, Alfred let him in, as usual, but there was some fussing in the background. Keeping Jason away from him, he guessed. And Jason’s memorial case had vanished overnight. Tim had gone to it to unload his thoughts—doing that with the real Jason (what a thought!) was evidently off the table indefinitely—and it hadn’t been there. Today, Bruce was in the Cave, and hunched over the computer, but he ignored Tim while he suited up.

That wasn’t unusual.

Tim took up his staff and ran through some warm-up exercises. He went for fifteen minutes or so, and Bruce still hadn’t so much as looked up in his direction. “Hey—Bruce?”

Bruce continued to ignore him.

That was unusual.

Tim was starting to feel concerned. He walked over to the computer, where Bruce was working through a list of GCPD search results; it looked liked Bruce was investigating old reports about vagrancy. “Hey, Bruce?”

“What.” Bruce’s tone was flat and uninviting.

“Uh, so….are we going out? You’re in the suit and everything.”

“Not tonight.”

“Bruce, come on.” Tim was trying to hide his anxiety, but it was rising in him like a fountain. “Things are weird right now, I get that. Jason is alive. That’s weird. We didn’t have a plan in place for this, because it’s crazy, and no one could have seen this coming. I’m just trying to get a handle on things, right now. That’s all.”

“Not now,” Bruce said, stabbing at the keyboard, bringing up another page of results.

“Come on,” Tim said, frustrated. “Bruce. Batman. I’m asking you: am I still Robin? Are we still doing this, you and me?”

Bruce ignored him, and scrolled with intensity.

“Look, can I go out tonight, or what—”

“Fine,” Bruce rasped without looking at him. “Go.” He leaned back from the desk for a moment. “As long as you don’t go alone.” He looked away from the screen for just a moment, at Tim. “Not alone.”

Tim huffed. “I can handle things on my own. But Nightwing is already out there, and so is Spoiler. So I won’t be on my own.”

“Fine,” Bruce said again, his eyes already back on the computer screen.

Tim thought he heard the last syllable of “careful” somewhere down the tunnel.

Or maybe he just imagined it.

***

When Tim was gone, Jason descended the steep stairway where he’d been hiding, barefoot and silent, and made his way over to the computer, where Bruce sat, still hunched and staring at the computer. He pulled himself up onto the desk.

“You picked him,” he said, the words bitter in his mouth.

“I haven’t made any decisions,” Bruce said, stiffly, and closed the screen he’d been looking at.

“You picked him. He’s the Robin you want, now. Not me.”

“No.” Bruce stood up so suddenly his chair went spinning back, and threw his arms around Jason, tucking Jason’s head underneath his chin. “No.”

Then his legs seemed to give out underneath him and he collapsed, dragging down Jason with him off the desk and onto the floor.

What the hell, Jason thought, staggering under Bruce’s weight, which was heavy enough even without the cape and cowl.

Bruce was clutching at Jason like a lifeline, and Jason...Jason was starting to lose his shit. “Come on, come ON, get up, old man,” he muttered, pushing at an undemonstrative Bruce. Jason forced himself to his feet, and dragged Bruce over until he was leaning up against a wall. Bruce’s hands were clamped over his face and Jason realized that Bruce was crying. He wasn’t making much noise, but his chest was heaving. “Oh crap.” Jason staggered back over to the computer, and typed in the SOS code to alert Alfred that he was urgently needed in the Cave, then he abandoned the computer and went to sit back next to Bruce.

It wasn’t actually the first time Jason had ever been with Bruce while Bruce had a major breakdown. Just last year, he’d resorted to slapping Bruce in the face. He briefly considered trying that again; it had worked last time. “Come on Bruce,” he crooned, instead. “Come on.”

Bruce was still crying, curled up against the wall, violently shaking, still being disturbingly quiet about it.

It felt worse to Jason than the other times he’d seen something like that. Fear gas, okay, he understood that. Fear gas was awful. But at least fear gas was something that someone (Crane) did to you, and then the effects wore off and you could forget about it.

But Bruce had lost it, just now, out of nowhere. He hadn’t been on patrol, and Jason wasn't sure if he even had been for days. Hadn’t been exposed to toxins, or poisons, or mind control. He’d just been exposed to Jason.

(Should he do a blood draw? Should he leave that to Alfred?)

Things that came out of nowhere upset Jason. Dad kicking over the coffee table because Mom hadn’t emptied the ashtray. Coming home one day to find Mom unresponsive on the couch—the first time he’d realized that she was sick—the gun in Sheila’s hands—

Wait, where had that image come from?

The computer was yelping at him, but it didn’t sound like Alfred, so Jason ignored it.

A minute later, Alfie came running down the stairs towards them. Jason let him do a quick visual check of Bruce, and then Alfred made a stop at the computer.

“Why didn’t you update Oracle when you called for me?” Alfred asked, as they hefted Bruce between them, trudging towards the elevator. Bruce was bearing much of his own weight, but he was unsteady.

“What the hell is Oracle?”

“Ah,” Alfred said, sounding regretful, even with an armful of vigilante. “That was my oversight, Master Jason. I’ll bring you up to speed when we have—umph!—a moment.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Jason said, shaken. “The—the other kid went out, and I came down, and I didn’t even yell and then he just grabbed me and dropped like a fucking stone, Alfie.”

“Oracle will call them back home if we need them, Master Jason.”

“I don’t know what Oracle is!” Jason shouted, as they dragged Bruce from the elevator and began the long, arduous journey from his study up the stairs to his bedroom.

“Oracle is Ms. Gordon,” Alfred said, grunting. “She was determined to reinvent herself after the Joker shot her and robbed her of the use of her legs. She is—unf!—an inspiration to us all, and a technical resource without peer. We all rely on her for strategic planning and research.”

“Babs?” Jason half-gasped, as they dragged Bruce into his bedroom and deposited him onto his bed. They each sat down onto chairs opposite the beds. “She never said.”

Alfred rested his elbows onto his knees. “I imagine she was trying not to burden you, Master Jason. Or to push too many of the changes of the past two years on you all at once.”

Jason shoved both of his hands into his hair, and then took them out again. “Is Bruce going to be okay?”

Just then, Bruce put up an arm, grabbing at Jason’s face, trying to drag him back against himself.

Jason let himself be dragged. He rested his head on Bruce’s chest. “Bruce,” he said, right into Bruce’s collarbone. “Wake the fuck up. You’re freaking everybody out.”

Bruce made an indiscriminate noise.

Jason curled his arms around Bruce’s neck. “Get it together, Bruce. Please. Please.”

Bruce started to sit up, crushing Jason in his arms.

“Hey,” Jason gasped, “I’m here, Bruce. I’m—”

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said sharply.

Bruce released Jason abruptly, and Jason fell back onto his knees.

Jason stood up, staggered away a couple of feet, and sat down. “Alfred,” he said, shakily, “I don’t think Bruce is okay to patrol.”

***

“It is my opinion, Master Bruce, that you’re not fit to patrol.”

“I agree,” Babs chimed in, via laptop.

Well, supposedly that was Babs. All Jason could see on the screen was a stylized green digital face, and the voice was clearly coming through a modulator. Guess that was “Oracle”. “You’re compromised right now, B. It’s unsafe. For you, and for anyone you interact with.”

“The city isn’t safe without me,” Bruce grumbled.

“We have Nightwing, we have Robin, I have the Birds. Take a break, B. Take it for you, take it for your lost bird. But seriously...take a break.”

Alfred primly pressed the exit button on the laptop, ending the call.

“That sounded like an order,” Jason said.

“It was a suggestion,” Bruce said crossly. “I don’t take orders.”

Jason, who had watched Alfred give Bruce de facto commands many times, and seen Bruce obey them, rolled his eyes and made jazz hands. “He doesn’t take orders!” And then he waited, until he heard just the slightest chuckle from Bruce’s direction.

***

Once Jason felt sure Bruce had pulled himself back together and wasn’t going to suddenly break down crying in front of him again, he slipped out the door, mumbling something about making tea. Truthfully, he just needed a few minutes alone to compose himself.

Bruce was the strongest person Jason had ever met, and Jason found that immensely reassuring. It made him feel safe. But every now and again, he would see a crack there, some sort of vulnerability, and it frightened him down to his bones, frightened him in ways he couldn’t even describe. There wasn’t anything wrong with Bruce physically, he didn’t think; there was no fear gas or mind-altering substances; he hadn’t just escaped from days of physical torture and brainwashing. Whatever that was...it was about Jason. Jason had brought that out in him, without even trying.

It was the worst thing in the world, Bruce had said.

I was too broken to be a good Batman, Bruce had said.

But at some point, with—with this Tim guy’s help, and with Dick back in Gotham, and Babs running tech support, apparently, Bruce had managed to become a good Batman again. He’d gotten over Jason enough to function. And now that Jason was back, suddenly Bruce wasn’t functioning anymore.

Had he made everything worse by coming home? Had his return just ripped open a wound that had begun to heal?

Jason was so caught up in these thoughts that he didn’t notice Talia coming up the stairs until he ran straight into her. He stared at her, too startled to apologize.

Talia looked more amused than annoyed, but then she seemed to realize something was wrong, and the amusement in her eyes was replaced by concern. “Jason?”

Jason’s voice shook as he said “Did I—did we—did we make a mistake?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it a mistake to come here? To tell Bruce that I was alive?”

“Come, Jason,” Talia said, guiding Jason to sit on the steps next to her. “What brought this thought on?”

“Bruce—he had a major freakout just now. We were in the Cave—he’d sent that Tim kid out as Robin, and I said something dumb to him about him wanting Tim, not me.” Jason scrubbed his hand across his face. “And he grabbed me, and then he started crying, and just kind of...collapsed. We had to drag him upstairs.”

Talia made an abortive movement and glanced up the stairs, not that she could even see the doors to his suite from where they were sitting. “How is he now?”

“He’s better. Alfred made him lie down. And we all ganged up and said he couldn’t go out tonight.” Jason sighed. “But I think that this is my fault. Not just for saying that, but being here. It seems like things were going okay here for everybody. And now I’m screwing it all up.”

Talia touched Jason’s cheek. “Oh my sweet child. You have no idea of what you speak.”

“I have to concur with Ms. al Ghul on that, my lad.” They looked up to see Alfred descending the stairs. Much to Jason’s surprise, Alfred sat down on Jason’s other side. “You can not conceive, Master Jason, of how immense and terrible the loss of a child is to a parent. If you did—and I hope you never will—you could not think for a single second that you would have been doing Master Bruce a favor by staying away from him, or from us. He is overjoyed to have you back. And he is also overwhelmed, because this is an overwhelming situation. I promise you, he will sort himself out with time. And I can also promise you that you made the right decision for all of us, Master Bruce especially, by coming home.” Alfred looked at Talia. “Thank you for bringing Master Jason home to us. It will not be forgotten.

Talia nodded, solemnly.

Chapter Text

“I wasn’t actually planning on going out tonight,” Bruce said, as soon as Jason had left the room. He was sitting back up again, but only so he could strip out of his costume. He flopped back down into the bed, face-first, as Alfred picked up up the pieces.

“Is that so, Master Bruce?” Alfred said, shaking out the pieces of costume with slightly more force than necessary, before folding them.

“I've been researching.”

“What, pray tell?”

“All kinds of things,” Bruce said into a pillow. “For instance, how to legally re-establish the identity of a person who’s been declared dead.”

“Of course,” Alfred said. He stopped folding. “Yes, that might be difficult. As Master Jason didn’t—he didn’t just—” Alfred faltered. “There’s the coroner’s report, to begin with.”

Bruce shuddered, and clutched the pillow.

“I'd had it in mind that perhaps you might ask Ms. Gordon to tackle that particular problem,” Alfred said, quietly.

“That's not a bad idea. Let’s do that.” Bruce rolled back over onto his back. “I’ve mostly been searching for evidence,” he said. “Signs. Anything. Anything to fill in the gaps in Talia’s narrative, or to confirm what she has told us. She…” His voice faltered for a moment. “She said they think he was in Gotham for awhile before the League took him. Right here in Gotham.”

“Yes, I know. I confess, it’s an unsettling thought.”

Bruce laid his arm over his face. “Alfred, do you remember that night—must have been, oh, fifteen months ago—when I got the stuffing beaten out of me in a gang fight? You were scolding me over it—”

Alfred’s mouth went dry. “—and you said that you'd been distracted. Because you thought you saw Master Jason. Which couldn’t possibly be. Obviously, you had been hallucinating.”

“Alfred,” Bruce said softly. “In my hallucination—he wasn't dressed as Robin.” After a long pause, Bruce said, “I think that it was real. I think that it was actually Jason. He couldn't find his way back to us because he wasn't in his conscious mind. But I was. I saw Jason, and I did nothing.”

“It might not be true, Master Bruce,” Alfred said gently. “It might indeed have been a phantom conjured by your mind, a product of your grief.”

“But it might be true. If it is, it's yet another way that I've failed Jason.” And then, “My God, Alfred. Jason’s memory is littered with holes and blank spaces, but Talia says his missing memories have been coming back ever since the Pit. What if it's true, and he remembers it? What if he remembers seeing me, how I just left him there on the streets to freeze and to starve—”

“Let us hope that if that is the case, Jason never regains those memories,” Alfred said firmly. “No matter how much we may want answers, perhaps some things are best left forgotten.” Alfred tucked the costume into a digitally locked chest in the closet, then stood. “Get some rest, Master Bruce.”

***

Bruce was just starting to nod off when he heard the light knock on his bedroom door.

He debated for almost a minute about getting up, in anticipation of punching the possible intruder in the face, or just saying, “Come in,” on the grounds that every single person on the property at this moment was pre-approved.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened and closed quietly.

“Beloved,” Talia said, softly. “I’m sorry to intrude. Jason said you’ve been unwell this evening.”

Bruce shoved himself upright on the bed, while he switched on a lamp, and blinked blearily. “Talia.”

Talia took a seat near the door. “How are you feeling?”

A number of responses ran through his head, including why do you care and what’s your goal and what do you want to do with my son.

And, thank you, thank you, thank you.

That was probably exactly what he thought he was meant to feel.

Exactly what he did feel.

And he was grateful.

“I’m fine, Talia,” he said.

Talia regarded him with the facade of unshakable calm she normally saved for mixed company, not when it was just the two of them alone. “Jason was alarmed by your...difficulties, earlier.”

“Jason will be fine.”

“Jason needs stability and the assurance that his caretakers are able.”

“He’s my son, Talia. Thank you for bringing him back. But it’s not up to you to dictate his needs to me now.”

“Jason has been in my care for a year,” Talia said, with an edge to her voice. Was the facade breaking? “I did not bring him here just to return him like a lost pet. I meant to reunite father and son. If you’re no longer up to the task, I’ll take him away again, and find a better place for him this time.”

Bruce didn’t actually remember rolling out of bed and throwing himself at Talia. Or putting his hands around her throat. Or Talia knocking him out with an antique lamp. All of that came later.

***

Someone was talking, quietly.

He was lying on something firm, and there was a gentle hand on his shoulder. “...but this is cool,” the person said. Jason.

It was Jason. Jason. Still alive, still real, still here. Would that ever stop being a shock? Every time he saw him again, it was like waking up out of a nightmare. “You and me, together in Batman jail.”

Bruce abruptly rolled into a sitting position, realizing that he was on a bunk as his feet hit the ground. He forced himself onto his feet.

“Hey, come on, big guy—” Jason sprang to his feet and tugged at Bruce’s arm. “Relax. I was joking, mostly.”

Bruce glanced around. “This is a holding cell, Robin.”

Jason visibly twitched.

“...Jason?”

Jason put his hand up, turning away for a moment. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” He looked back at Bruce. “Can you sit back down? I need to check you for concussion symptoms.”

Bruce did. As he did, it occurred to him that he was wearing only boxers, and Jason was in a t-shirt and jeans. “Where are we?” Things looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place his location.

Jason waited until Bruce sat back down on the bunk. “We’re back in the Cave.” He huffed. “Had to drag you all the way upstairs and then back down again. It’s fine. You just...had a little breakdown. Maybe two breakdowns. We thought it would be better if you couldn’t punch anybody for awhile.” Ah, yes. Bruce was normally on the other side of the door of these cells. Jason pulled a penlight out of his pocket, and Bruce dutifully let him flash it into each of his eyes to see if his pupils retracted normally. Jason made a pleased noise. “Your eyes are okay.”

“You’re in here,” Bruce observed.

“Well, we’re not too worried about you punching me. But you sorta tried to strangle Talia. Then she clocked you in the head with a lamp, which is why we were checking for a concussion.”

“Why would I...”

Oh.

It wasn’t the clearest memory, but he could remember Talia vaguely threatening to take Jason away from him again. Posturing, probably. She had limited resources here, and he didn’t think Jason would go willingly even if she tried. So why had he reacted so badly?

He tried to remember the things that had happened before that. He’d been researching. He’d spent ages searching for any sign of Jason’s presence in Gotham after his still-unexplained...why was it so hard it was hard to wrap his mind around the concept?

Jason’s resurrection.

Jason’s strange, unexplained, miraculous, mysterious return to life. Bruce had no doubt of Jason’s death. The memories remained horribly vivid, even now. It was the reversal that bewildered him.

It was a happening that no one, least of all Bruce himself, had any understanding of or explanation for. He believed it was real; he had no idea how it could be. Half of him wanted to accept it without question; the other half was obsessed with unraveling the mystery.

So he’d thrown himself into hunting for clues, signs, anything, anything at all. Anything that could illuminate what happened between the day he’d buried his son, and the day that son was recognized, alive, but broken, above ground.

It was poring over police records, looking for reports of anyone who could have met Jason’s physical description that had done it. Bruce tried to stay emotionally detached as much as possible in his work as Batman, for the sake of objectivity. He failed at it more than he would ever admit.

With every vagrancy report, with every casual detail in every report the GCPD had made about the state of Gotham’s homeless, the thin veneer of detachment had eroded.

Homelessness had been terrible enough for Jason when he was a child. Twelve years old, but bright as a star, sharp as a freshly honed razor, and determined not to starve. For six months, Jason had been utterly alone, and somehow he had survived.

That was the child who’d returned to the street where Batman’s car sat on concrete blocks, ready to take the fourth tire, before Batman caught him red-handed and came up with a solution that worked for them both.

Young, untrained, and raw as he'd been back then, living without a roof over his head or the security of knowing where his next meal would come from—at least Jason had always had his wits about him.

Jason at fifteen had been brain-damaged. They thought.

(Physically adept, but unaware, Talia had said.)

Jason, stumbling his way through Gotham’s streets without his sharp mind to guide him. Hungry and cold, exposed to the elements, vulnerable to all of Gotham’s human predators.

Physically adept, Bruce reminded himself.

But also, unaware.

They didn’t know how long that state of things had gone on. They only knew that it had happened, and that Batman had somehow never come across Jason, wandering silent and alone through the streets and alleys of Gotham.

The thought had left Bruce heaving over a garbage can.

(Only Bruce and Alfred knew that maybe Bruce had come across Jason. Maybe. Maybe. They would never know if that was real. They would never know if grief had created a hallucination, or grief had masked a truth that none of them was prepared to handle.)

Jason, sitting on the desk, swinging his legs, saying he’s the one you want, not me. Jason, somehow convinced that a world could exist where Bruce didn’t want Jason by his side.

He was clean and healthy now; muscle on his arms and legs and chest. He’d even grown some. None of the scars or burns Bruce remembered from before. You don't want me, Jason said, bitterly, and it was terrible; and the memory of the burned body, and the constant aching loss that had never gone away; Jason, his own Jason, back where he belonged, but saying you don’t want me.

I want you! I love you! Bruce had silently wailed.

And then he’d simply...lost his mind.

Bruce couldn’t even imagine trying to explain any of this to Jason. Instead, he put his hand out and cupped the side of Jason’s face. Jason gazed at him trustingly, never mind that Bruce had violently assaulted his erstwhile caretaker not long ago. There was concern in his face, but Bruce knew it was concern for Bruce’s wellbeing, not his own.

Jason’s faith in Bruce remained unbroken, after everything. What had happened to make Jason doubt Bruce’s faith in him? Was it just the disaster with Garzonas? Was Jason really so wrapped up in the identity of Robin that he didn’t understand how important Jason was?

He gently pushed Jason’s hair back from his face. It’s not as curly as it used to be, he thought with a pang. He wondered if that was the Pit. Or was it just...time? Was this always what Jason was going to grow towards?

“You need a haircut,” Bruce said, ruffling Jason’s hair.

Jason snorted and produced his penlight again. “I think I’d better double-check your pupils, boss.”

“I’m okay,” Bruce said, although he let Jason do it anyway, letting Jason angle his head and pull back his eyelids. “Do you know—” He swallowed. “You need to understand that you’re so much more than Robin to me, Jason. You always were, from the day we first met. Even before I saw you fight...I saw something in you. I knew that you were going to make something of yourself, if someone would only give you the chance. I’ve always believed that. I still do.”

The amusement vanished from Jason’s face and his gaze was intent on Bruce.

“I won’t ever send you away, and I won’t let anyone take you away from me again.”

Jason wrapped his arms around Bruce’s neck and buried his face against his shoulder. “I was worried about you,” he mumbled.

“I’ll be all right.” Bruce returned the embrace, hugging Jason tightly to him. “I’m okay now. And we’ll figure something out about Robin. I’m sorry I’ve been putting off dealing with it. That’s not fair to you or to Tim.” Jason stiffened at the name, but Bruce just squeezed Jason harder, and after a moment, Jason relaxed. “I’ve just been...preoccupied.”

As Bruce released him, Jason hopped up onto the bunk beside him. “Trying to figure out...y’know...how?” His tone was subdued.

“In a nutshell.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“I didn’t want to make you talk about something that might be painful for you if I could help it, Jason. But is there anything you can remember that you didn’t already tell Talia?”

Jason shook his head.

“It’s all right.” Bruce rubbed Jason’s back. “I know things are still coming back to you.”

Jason sighed, and leaned into it, but there was something troubled in his gaze.

Chapter Text

“Come with me,” Sheila said.

She was walking away from him, so he ran to catch her hand.

“Mom?”

“Come with me.” Her eyes were very bright and very blue. Her blonde hair bounced when she turned her head to look at him.

“Mom, I can’t,” Jason said. “I have to wait for my dad.”

“Come with me.” Her face was half in shadow. “There’s something you should see, Robin.”

They were in a huge room with vaulted ceilings and elaborate decorations. Jason knew this place, somehow.

Sheila lit a match, and leaned her cigarette into a bonfire, while the Joker strolled into room, with his impossibly long, white face, casually swinging a crowbar in his hand, laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing.

“Sorry about that, kid.” Sheila sucked in a lungful of smoke and blew it out again at Jason. It wreathed his face, little tendrils of smoke curling and dancing in front of him. Laughing at him. “Looks like you chose the wrong person to trust.” She rested the barrel of her gun on his temple. “Maybe next time.”

The Joker’s smile split his face in half, right before he raised his crowbar and caved Jason’s chest in.

***

Jason woke up.

He was breathing so hard and fast that he was terrified by it, and he turned on to his side and curled up, clutching his legs, hoping to make it stop.

His bedroom door banged open. “Jason?!”

Jason wanted to answer, but he couldn’t stop hyperventilating.

Dick knelt next to the bed, and laid one hand on the pillow next to Jason’s face, and the other, feather-light, on Jason’s ribcage. “You’re okay, Jason.” he said, gently. “Can you breathe with me?”

He couldn’t. He was too caught up in the vivid image of the Joker looming over him, laughing laughing laughing as the crowbar came down on him. “Nnnn,” he managed.

“Come on,” Dick said. “Breathe in. I just need you to take one breath, slowly, okay?”

Jason did it.

“Good. You’re doing such a good job, Jason. Now breathe out, okay?”

He almost choked, but somehow he did it.

“Great job. Okay, can you do it again, for me?”

Jason shook his head.

“I know you can, Jase. I know you can do this. You can breathe for me.”

Jason took a slow breath in. Then he had to let it out, because he had to, and Dick wanted him too.

A slow breath in. A slow breath breath out.

They kept doing it, until Jason’s breathing was back to normal.

“Is it okay if I hug you?” Dick asked.

Jason shook his head again.

“Okay, I won’t then. You were screaming, Jay. Were you having a nightmare?”

He nodded dumbly.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nnnn. No. No.”

“Okay, that’s fine, Jason. But I’m going to sit here for awhile, if you don’t mind.”

They stayed that way for a while, Jason laying on his side, on the edge of bed, with one arm wrapped around his knees, and the other around his face, and Dick quietly sitting next to him.

***

Bruce was staring at the computer in the blank way that Alfred had come to learn indicated disconnect, not disinterest. Alfred deposited Bruce’s coffee onto the desk, and nudged the chair slightly with his ankle, so that it swiveled away from the monitor.

Bruce blinked up at at him.

“Your coffee, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, indicating the mug on the desk. “What has you so occupied this evening?”

Bruce swiveled back to the desk and scooted over. He took up the mug, and drank a third of it all at once. “It’s this Robin thing, Alfred,” Bruce said, sounding drained. “Jason’s been so upset by it. Tim is worried, too. And I’ve been wondering if...well, I mean, I can’t just take Robin away from Tim.”

“Master Tim did work very hard for it, Master Bruce,” Alfred said.

“He did,” Bruce said, softly. “He stepped up, without being asked.” He crossed his arms and stared down at the computer screen. “Jason didn’t give it up, though.”

Alfred bit his tongue, according to long practice.

“He—” Bruce’s voice choked. “I can’t take it away from him, Alfred. Not again. Look at what happened the last time.”

Alfred abruptly sat down on a chair, remembering the previous instance when he’d counseled Bruce to pull Jason out of the field. The disastrous outcome of his advice.

He pressed a hand to his forehead. “Master Jason isn’t well, Master Bruce,” Alfred said, feeling sick himself. “He’s still suffering from violent nightmares and those...attacks. His memories remain compromised. I should hardly have to point out to you that Master Jason has been deeply traumatized by his experiences, and that the last thing he should be doing just now is plunging back into situations where he must endure or dispense even more violence.”

“Alfred—”

“Give him time, Master Bruce. Master Jason needs time. He needs peace and safety more than he needs Robin.”

***

“For now,” Bruce told him gently, “just for now, Jason, I need you to not be Robin.”

Jason trembled, and his fists spasmed. He glanced over at Talia, standing near the wall. She shook her head slightly.

“No!” Jason said. “NO! I’m Robin! You made me Robin! You, you—”

Talia strode over and grasped Jason by the hand he was starting to raise. “Come, Jason,” she said, and pulled him out of the room by the hand.

Jason let her. Bruce was relieved.

Bruce wondered if that should bother him.

***

Jason sank back against the wall. His face was wet, and he felt hot all over. “He didn’t pick me,” he mumbled.

Talia ran her hand through his hair. “Oh child,” she said, and her voice became wistful. “If things were different, I’d whisk you back to my own country and train you myself.”

Jason looked over at her. “Really?” he said, dubiously.

“Truly. You have boundless potential, Jason. That was always clear to me, from the moment you came into my care. It would have been an honor.”

“Thanks, I guess.” The thought was strangely pleasing, even though he had no desire to take her up on the idea.

“But you chose to come back here, and this is what your father feels is best for you right now. A time of peace, and healing.”

Jason sighed hugely. “I’d rather be Robin.”

***

“Bruce said it’s just for now,” Dick said. “It’s not permanent. We’re all all just...dealing, Jase.”

"I don't know why you of all people think I should be okay with this,” Jason snapped. “You weren't even Robin any more when Bruce made me Robin, and you were still all pissy about it."

No,” Dick said, as peaceably as he could. “You’re right. I was a jerk. I’m sorry.”

It hadn’t been his finest moment. (Although—Bruce could have asked him. Bruce could at least have at least told him. Dick had been left to find out about both Jason’s adoption and the new Robin from the news, and he still wasn’t happy about that. Okay, things had been tense between him and Bruce, and they weren’t exactly talking, but you made exceptions for major life events, right? Like, “just so you know, I adopted a child, and he’s wearing your colors.”)

“You left,” Jason said, flopped across his bed, his face buried into the blankets.

“Excuse me?” Dick said, calmly.

Jason looked up at him. “You left. You didn’t want to be here anymore, so you left! You left him alone!”

Dick sat very carefully next down to Jason on the bed. “It wasn’t my idea to leave,” he said to Jason. “It was Bruce’s.”

“I don’t understand,” Jason said, raising his head around to stare at him. “He said that you left.”

Dick sighed. “It’s a long story, Jay.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes.

“He replaced me,” Jason said, and his voice was pure misery. He buried his face back onto the bed. “He says I’m so important to him, but I was Robin, and he replaced me, as soon as I was gone”.

Dick peered at Jason out of the corner of his eye. “He replaced me, too.”

Jason jerked his head up. “Yeah, okay, but you left!”

“I didn’t just leave, Jay. Bruce fired me.”

“Why?” Jason’s voice shook slightly, even on that one word.

“It’s complicated.”

From the betrayed look on Jason’s face, Dick was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to get away with just that for very long. He sighed hugely.

“Because I was growing up, Jay. Bruce thought I was spending too much of my time with my friends, and not enough with him.”

Jason stared at Dick, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “He wouldn’t do that!” And then Jason’s face started to crumple. “...would he?” Jason started to clench and unclench his hands. “Dick—do you think he’s mad at me because I ran away? Because I didn’t listen hard enough?” Jason buried his hands in his hair, but Dick could see tears snaking down his cheeks. “I was supposed to wait for him, and I didn’t. And people died. I died. My mom died.”

Dick dared to put a hand on Jason’s back, and Jason didn’t shrug it off, hallelujah. “I’m sorry about Sheila, Jason. I’m...I’m sorry about...everything, but I guess you’re here and she’s not, and it sucks that you didn’t get more of a chance to know her.”

“I mean,” Jason said, in a low voice, scrubbing at his cheeks, “at least I got to meet her. I got to find out why she gave me up.” Jason turned over his shoulder to look up at Dick. “It wasn’t her fault, you know. She didn’t want to leave me.”

“Okay,” Dick murmured, rubbing Jason’s back.

“She had some trouble in Gotham, so she had to leave. And she couldn’t come back. So she had to leave me with my dad, and my mom.” Jason said, in a wobbly tone, “And I finally got to meet her for real. And she was…” His voice faltered. “She was nice, but…”

“What?” Dick was concerned about Jason’s abrupt hesitance.

Jason shook his head. “It’s stupid. I don’t think it could have really happened.”

“Jason…?”

“I keep remembering that Sheila had a gun. And it wouldn’t be that strange, you know? She was working somewhere dangerous. And if I was was, y’know, an ordinary person who ended up in the same room with the Joker, and I was packing, I’d pull a gun on him too. Except what I remember is that she was pointing it at me.”

What?

“What?” Dick said. “That’s weird.”

“I know, it doesn’t make any sense.”

It certainly didn’t, and now Dick’s detective senses were pinging. “Jay, can I ask you something?”

Jason shrugged.

“Do you remember why you decided to go up against the Joker alone?”

Jason opened his mouth, and closed it again. “No,” he said. “I don’t remember going in. I remember meeting Sheila and talking to her. I remember being in the warehouse.” Jason shuddered hard, and Dick tightened his arm around him. “I remember the Joker—hurting me. And I can remember Sheila being there, too.” Jason sounded confused. “Maybe he grabbed her? Maybe that’s why I didn’t wait for Bruce to get back, like he said to.”

“Maybe,” Dick said. It certainly would explain why Jason had chosen to confront the Joker by himself, without backup, if he’d known his mother was in imminent danger. Dick knew he would have done the same; any of them would have. But that didn’t really square with Sheila having a gun when Jason got there—the Joker and his men would have made sure to disarm her if they’d kidnapped her. Unless she’d somehow gotten the better of one of them and stolen his gun, which didn’t strike him as terribly likely.

Maybe it was time to do some digging.

***

Dick was knee-deep in files when Bruce came down into the Cave. Bruce said his name, but Dick just waved his hand evasively. He was sorting through financial records, and they were juicy.

Eventually, Dick tore his gaze away from the screen. Bruce was across the Cave, fiddling with some piece of equipment.

“What’s on your mind, Dick?” Bruce said, mildly.

“Sheila Haywood,” Dick said. “Bruce, that woman is shady as hell.”

“Oh?” Bruce said. His voice went abruptly dark.

“She’s—she was wanted by the police. The GCPD was five minutes away from getting a warrant for her arrest when she fled the country. She was running a pill mill. A bunch of her patients died from overdoses of the opioids she prescribed—which she did in dubious amounts, for dubious reasons. And there were also allegations of theft.”

Bruce was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Look for her financial records when she operated in Ethiopia. If she lied and stole in Gotham, it’s possible she did it there, as well.”

Dick started to type in new search parameters, and then stopped, and swiveled away from the desk. “Bruce—the other day. Jason told me he was having memories he couldn’t make any sense of. He said had a memory of his mother pointing a gun at him.”

Dick wasn’t sure what it was that Bruce had been holding in his hands when he spoke, but he heard it snap. “All the more reason why we need to know,” Bruce said. He dropped the remnants on the table, and stalked over to stand behind Dick, resting a deceptively light hand on his shoulder, watching the screen as Dick continued to search.

***

It took almost another hour before Dick hit paydirt. “Look at that!” Dick crowed, scanning a spreadsheet. “Bruce, she was robbing them blind.”

Bruce squeezed his shoulder. “Good job.” He paused. “Keep digging. Look into her time in Gotham. Look for anything that could link her to the Joker.”

“You think they could have had some kind of connection?”

“It’s an avenue worth exploring.”

The avenue was worth exploring, as it turned out. Dr. Sheila Haywood’s prescriptions could only be filled at certain pharmacies in Gotham. Pharmacies, that, with some digging, Dick was able to establish, all had a connection to a shell company that had a connection to another shell company that had a connection to Ace Chemicals. Haywood prescribed the pills; a company that the Joker was financially involved with provided them.

“Bingo,” Dick said softly, leaning on his elbow and staring at the screen.

“What?” Bruce said, instantly engaged.

“Come look at this,” Dick said, motioning him over. “I’ve found a trail between Sheila Haywood and the Joker. Bruce—there’s a real chance that they worked together before the Joker turned up in Ethiopia while she was there. I don’t think it was a coincidence that he was there with her.”

There was a loud gasp, and the sound of light feet pattering up the stairs.

Bruce and Dick stared at each other for one horrified second, then Bruce hurtled up the stairs after Jason.

After a few blank moments, Dick sat down at the desk, pulled out his phone and texted Babs.

thik i traumatixd j agan :(

After two solid minutes minutes of “…”, Babs eventually replied, what did you do?????

Dick closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and typed, i think his mom might have hurt him.

Babs texted, WHAT DID YOU DO

Dick hit the call button, and Babs picked up on the first ring. “I found out something bad about Jason’s mom and I said it out loud and I think he overheard it,” he said, bluntly. “It wasn’t on purpose.”

“Is someone with him?”

“Bruce.”

“Okay,” Babs breathed. “Fill me in.”

“It’s...a doozy,” Dick said.

“You called me to talk to me about Jason,” Babs said, ominously. “You do not shut me out after that. Fill. Me. In.” She paused. “He likes me more than you, Dick.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Dick grumbled.

“I’m not. I’m just saying that he trusts me more than he trusts you.”

Dick sighed. “It’s ugly, Babs,” he said. “Turns out that Jason’s long-lost biological mother, Sheila Haywood, apparently used to run a pill-factory in Gotham. Until she killed several of her patients via overdose. Then she fled overseas and became a relief worker, which sounds all very humanitarian of her, except that she was robbing her employers.”

“Oh my god,” Babs said.

“It gets worse,” he said gloomily. “We think she might have been in cahoots with the Joker.”

Dick thought he heard the sound of a dish shattering.

After a long moment, Barbara said, “Richard John Grayson, please tell me that was an ill-considered joke.”

“C’mon, Babs,” Dick said. “You know I would never joke about him.”

Not to Babs, anyway. Or to Bruce. Or to Jason, come to think of it, now that that was something that could actually happen.

***

“Jason?” Bruce knocked on Jason’s door maybe a little bit harder than he should have.

Something loud thunked at the door in response. “Go away!”

“Jason. I’m going to come in. I have to.”

Bruce opened the door, and Jason, face scrunched with misery, hurled Cold Sassy Tree at Bruce’s face with deadly accuracy.

Some part of Bruce’s brain noted with pleasure that time and—no, just, time, only time—hadn’t degraded Jason’s excellent hand-eye coordination at all.

Bruce caught the book and set it aside, carefully. He shut the door behind him.

Jason’s head was buried in his knees. “I only just found her. You can’t take her away from me. Please don’t take her away from me.”

“Jason,” Bruce said as gently as he could. “I’m here for you, son. No matter what happens. No matter what we find out.”

“That shitheel thinks my mom was working with the Joker, Bruce. He’s crazy. I know he doesn’t like me, but he can’t just say stuff like that!”

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Bruce said, settling on the floor next to Jason, leaning back against the bed and stretching his legs out in front of him. “It is true that we’ve found evidence of a connection between your mother and the Joker.”

If he’d had the choice, Bruce might have chosen not to tell Jason about it, not now, perhaps not ever. The woman was dead. Why burden Jason that way? Except, of course, that it was Jason’s peculiar memories that had inspired Dick to go digging in the first place. Maybe, if it was necessary for Jason’s peace of mind, somehow...but Bruce would rather have shielded him from a sickening truth.

If he’d had the choice. But Jason had overheard them, and he didn’t.

“It’s not true,” Jason insisted. “It can’t be true.”

“I know this is hard, Jason, and I know you don’t want to hear it. But Dick has been investigating her, and Sheila Haywood has—had—a criminal past. She was wanted by the GCPD, and with good reason.”

“She—she said she had some trouble in Gotham,” Jason said in a faltering voice. “That’s why she had to leave. To leave me. But so what?” His tone grew defiant. “When you met me, I was lifting wheels, and you gave me a chance anyway.”

Bruce hummed agreement.

“Besides, why does any of this even matter? She—my mom—she died. She’s dead. Why was Dickface even looking up my mom in the first place?”

“He was worried about you, Jay. He said that you remembered something disturbing about Sheila. Something that didn’t sound quite right. He said that you remembered Sheila having a gun aimed at you.”

“Well, I was remembering it wrong, Bruce” Jason said. “I—I got hit pretty hard in the head, you know.”

Bruce knew. Jason’s skull had been cracked open. Bruce could still see the blood and the bone, when he closed his eyes.

Jason set his mouth tight. “I just think she would’ve deserved a second chance,” he said.

“She had one, kiddo. She had a chance to rebuild her life overseas, and she wasted it when she decided to embezzle from the relief organization she was working for in Ethiopia.”

And beside him, Jason stiffened and went white as a sheet.

“Jason?”

“Oh no,” Jason said, his voice trembling. “Oh no. No.”

“Jason? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Jason shook his head violently, even as his face started to crumple. Bruce put a gentle hand on Jason’s arm. He was shaking like a leaf. Gently, Bruce drew Jason into his arms, and Jason didn’t resist. He buried his face in Bruce’s shoulder, and from the hitch in his breath, Bruce could tell he was moments away from tears.

Bruce stroked Jason’s back. “It will be all right, Jay-lad. Whatever it is, it will be all right.”

“It won’t. It can’t,” Jason whispered. “You’re right. Dick is right. They were working together.”

“You remembered something?” Bruce drew Jason’s head back a little so he could see his face.

Tears slid down Jason’s cheeks, and he nodded, miserably. “When you said she’d been embezzling. Oh my god, Bruce. She—she told me she’d been stealing! She told me! I can’t believe I didn’t remember. She told me that right after she took me to the warehouse.”

“She...what?”

“After you left,” Jason said, squeezing his eyes shut, “I know I said I wouldn’t go after the Joker. I wasn’t gonna. But I couldn’t just leave my mom alone, and she was so upset—so I went to her and I told her that I knew she was in trouble, that even if he had something over her, I could help. We could help. She didn’t believe I could do anything, so…I told her I was Robin.”

“Oh,” was all Bruce said, with truly heroic restraint.

Jason’s fists clenched. “She didn’t believe me until I...I showed her my uniform. And then she did believe me, and it was like a light went on. She said—Bruce, she said she had something to show me, and then she took me to the warehouse. I told her we couldn’t go in there because he was there, but she said it was okay, because he’d already gone.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “She lied.”

Chapter Text

Bruce’s re-entrance to the Cave was like a hurricane making shore.

“Talia’s with him,” was all Bruce said, as he thudded toward the gym area.

Dick hadn’t expected Bruce to be in a good mood, but...wow. He took a moment to text Tim—stay home tonight i MEAN it—and then watched wide-eyed while Bruce beat the ever-living shit out of a sandbag.

The one-sided fight ended with Bruce’s hands shredded and raw, and mounds of bloody sand spilled all over the practice mats.

“When Alfred sees this, he’s going to kill you,” Dick said.

“Hnh.”

“Come on over to the medical bay, Bruce,” Dick said wearily. “Let me take care of your hands.”

Bruce’s bloodied knuckles were embedded with sand. Dick had to pour a couple of gallons of distilled water over Bruce’s hands to get all of it out, before he wrapped them with anti-bacterial gel and clean bandages.

“Stop rolling your eyes.”

“I will not,” Dick said, “You deserve this. You spent an hour making mincemeat out of your hands, Bruce. Want to tell me why?”

Bruce turned his face away. “It’s worse than we thought, Dick.”

“How could it be worse,” Dick said, wearily.

Bruce shook his head.

Okay, it’s actually worse than we thought.

“How much worse, Bruce?”

Bruce rested his face on his bloody, bandaged hands, silent.

“Bruce Thomas Wayne, if you don’t tell me now, I will go upstairs and I will drag it out of Jason himself.”

That was a bold-faced lie. He wouldn’t. But it got Bruce’s face up out of his hands, staring at Dick in horror.

“Don’t—” Bruce managed.

“Just bring me up to speed, Bruce, okay?”

“He remembered,” Bruce choked out. “He remembered that she...sold him.”

“Yeah?” Dick asked, swallowing hard. “How did that work?”

“Sheila Haywood. He—” Bruce stopped talking again for a few minutes, eyes closed. Eventually, he said, “He’d been blackmailing her. We know what the Joker had over her. Jason did know she was being blackmailed, but not what about. He just wanted to help his mother. Jason always wanted to help people in trouble, Dick. He always got upset when it was women. Women and kids.”

“Bruce?”

“Sheila tried to trade Jason to the Joker for an end to the blackmail. Jason…” Bruce’s voice broke. “...he’d tried to convince her that he could help her. He told her that he was Robin. But then she lured him into the warehouse where the Joker was waiting, and then she just—watched.”

Dick was stunned into silence. When he finally regained the power of speech, he said, “That goddamned bitch. If she wasn’t already dead, I’d kill her myself.”

It was a testament to how upset Bruce was that he didn’t rebuke Dick for even suggesting it.

Dick knew Bruce well enough to hear everything he wasn’t saying. I should have made Jason come with me. I shouldn’t have left Jason alone with a stranger. How could I have trusted that woman with Jason, knowing nothing about her, or why she gave her son up in the first place?

He put his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “You couldn’t have known, you know,” Dick said. “Neither of you could have seen this coming. It was one hell of a coincidence.”

“If he’d only come to me with that damned list,” Bruce said, raggedly. “If he’d come to me instead of taking off on his own, I could have investigated them all ahead of time. Checked out Sheila’s past.”

“He might still have wanted to meet her. Having a mother—a living mother—meant a lot to Jason. Even I know that.”

“I could have taken precautions. Controlled their interactions.”

Likelier that Bruce would have put down his great big boot and refused to let Jason anywhere near Sheila, if he’d discovered that she had once had ties to the Joker. But this wasn’t the Bruce of old speaking. This was the Bruce who had experienced another shattering loss when Jason’s stubbornness—and Jason’s emotional desperation—ran afoul of Bruce’s unbending authority.

This Bruce would do anything to keep Jason safe and well, even if it meant compromising.

Dick didn’t see the gain in pointing that out, though. It didn’t matter. They couldn’t go back in time.

“I’m not saying that this was inevitable, Bruce. A lot of what happened was just bad luck. But what we should all be remembering right about now is that what happened to Jason wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t his fault, either.”

“I’ve been…” Bruce’s voice was heavy with guilt. “I kept telling myself that if he’d just listened to me. I told myself if I could make all of you listen to me, it would never happen again.”

“It’s not his fault, and it’s not your fault.”

But maybe it’s mine, Dick didn’t say out loud. I knew, I knew what you were like. I knew he didn’t always feel comfortable talking to you. I should have tried harder to be there for him. I should have made myself someone he could come to when you two were fighting. Even if he was too upset with you to go to you for help finding his mother, he should have known that he could come to me.

“It’s the Joker’s fault, and it’s Sheila’s fault. That’s it, okay? No one else’s.”

Except mine.

***

Jason had pried himself off the floor and relocated to the window seat, arms around his knees, staring out the window, when he heard the soft knock at his door. “Jason?”

“It’s okay, Talia,” he said.

The door opened with a click. “My beloved asked me to come and sit with you,” Talia said.

“Yeah. Bruce had to go hit stuff.” He hadn’t said so, but Jason could always tell. He hadn’t been Bruce’s partner for three years for nothing; he knew when Bruce just needed to punch something to express his stupid stunted emotions. That much hadn’t changed.

Talia sat in Jason’s desk chair, angling herself slightly off the window. “He didn’t say why.”

Jason didn’t say anything. He kept staring out into the night sky—what he could see of it. Even out here, the light pollution was bad. Although who was he to talk? Until he’d met Bruce, he’d never even been as far from the city as Bristol County. There were more stars in the sky here than there were in Crime Alley.

There had been more stars in Ethiopia.

Talia waited, patiently.

“Do you remember, when we were in that cottage in Greece, that I said there was a woman in the warehouse with me?”

“Yes, I do.”

Jason trailed his fingers along the the screen window. “She was my mother.”

“Your mother?” She sounded startled. Talia, surprised? That was new. “I had thought your mother had died.”

“That was my real mom, Catherine. Except—that she wasn’t my real mom, she was my stepmother. I didn’t know that. I only just found out.” Jason blinked rapidly. “I only just found out before I left Gotham. I found out I had another mother, a biological mother I’d never met, and I went looking for her. Turns out it was that woman who was in the warehouse with me. Her name was Sheila Haywood. She was a doctor. She’s dead, now. She died in the warehouse. With me.”

“I’m sorry, habibi,” Talia said. There was genuine sorrow in her voice. “You sought her out and then lost her?”

“Yeah,” Jason said, and he couldn’t even swallow for how true that was. “I...I didn’t freak out this time. When I remembered.”

“That’s a good sign, Jason. Perhaps the effects of the Lazarus Pit are finally wearing off.” Talia smiled at him. But there was something in her eyes that made Jason think she wasn’t wholly happy.

He reached out to her, without meaning to. Talia rose from her chair, and strode over to take his hand firmly in her own.

He tugged on her arm, and she came closer to him, and knelt on the floor next to him, and pulled his head down to her shoulder.

“Talia—she—” Jason choked on the words. He pulled back, and she let him go, although she remained kneeling beside him. Jason’s hands flew to his mouth.

Talia waited, patiently.

He put his hands down and said, abjectly, “I don’t think she ever wanted me. She seemed really sad about giving me up, when she first saw me, but then she—I don’t think I mattered to her.”

Talia reached up a hand to gently trace Jason’s jaw, then brushing her knuckles lightly against his hair. “What a fool, then. What could matter more than your own child, your own family? There might be reasons why a parent and a child must be kept apart, but to squander the reunion—” Talia made a disagreeable noise. “Your mother was a fool.”

Jason bit his lip. His eyes were getting hot, and he blinked rapidly, futilely, as tears started to gather again. “Yeah, I guess so.”

***

She’d gone all the way out to the conservatory to be alone. How foolish of her, to think she she could ever be alone in the house of the Batman.

“Might I get you anything, Ms. al Ghul?”

Hand splayed against the glass, staring out onto the back garden, Talia didn’t even bother to look at him. “Perhaps some tea.”

Bruce’s manservant was the intrusive sort. Always poking his head in, unasked, observing, spying, chivvying information to his master. Talia didn’t mind. Pennyworth was loyal, probably unto death, and her family appreciated that kind of loyalty.

She hoped she’d never be called upon to challenge his loyalty. The thought of killing someone who’d given her hospitality was distasteful.

“And you, Master Richard?”

She was too well trained to let her spine stiffen the way it wanted to, but she turned around.

“Sure, I’ll have some tea, too,” Richard said, lightly, as he approached Talia. “Thanks, Alfred.”

The conservatory door closed behind Pennyworth. Richard and Talia looked each other.

“I would kill that woman, if I could,” Talia said.

“Yeah, I know you would,” Richard said. Superior, sneering.

“Wouldn’t you?”

Richard’s jaw snapped shut. She’d hit home. As resistant as Richard had been to accept that Jason was truly Jason, she knew how protective he was of those he considered his family. No doubt the major source of his antipathy towards her; he saw her as a threat to his mentor.

“She betrayed her own flesh and blood,” Talia said, softly. “She had lost a child of her heart for so many years, and then, when she had him back in her arms—she sacrificed him. Not to preserve her own life, do you understand that, Richard? Jason offered her the protection of Robin. If she had accepted it, she would have had that of Batman as well.”

“But she was stealing from her bosses,” Richard said, slowly, “Embezzling from a famine relief organization. And if Bruce found that out, if the authorities had a chance to get involved...she might well have ended up in prison.”

“Yes. But she would have been alive. Her desire to escape the consequences of her misdeeds mattered more to her than the life of her son.”

“Hard to be sorry she’s dead,” Richard said, staring into the garden.

It seemed a staggering admission from him, especially when made to her.

Perhaps Richard was finally growing into role of Jason’s brother after all.

Chapter Text

Ch. 10

“I’d like him to at least consider it,” Bruce said quietly.

“I’m guessing you haven’t mentioned it to him yet,” Babs said dryly, rummaging through her cupboard, looking for the disgusting herbal cinnamon tea Dick had given her three months ago. She wanted something hot to drink, and she was exhausted, and wanted that something to be completely un-caffeinated.

Bruce was silent long enough for the electric kettle to come to a boil. She poured it over the strainer in the pot. “Grab a couple of mugs, will you?”

“I can’t…” Bruce cleared his throat, and rummaged for the mugs. “Therapy helped you.”

“Yes, it did,” Babs said, calmly. “It helped me a lot, Bruce.” It’d probably help you too, you emotionally constipated ass. “Are you asking me to be the one to bring this up to Jason?”

Another long silence. “No. Of course not. I would just hope that you could be...available. To be supportive of the idea, if it happened to come up.”

She said, briskly, “Bruce, I think it would help Jason a lot to see a therapist, if you can find someone you can really trust. But I also think it’s important that you be honest with him about what you’re intending. He’s been lied to a lot, lately, as far as he’s concerned.” She ran a hand through her hair. “He needs to be able to trust you, okay?”

“I understand,” Bruce replied immediately.

I wonder, Babs thought sourly, shaking out tea leaves from the strainer into the garbage can. She knew he never meant to do it, but Bruce’s paranoia and need for control often led to him sneaking around behind the backs of allies and friends alike, and it had only gotten worse in the years since Jason had died. She expected it would take a bigger miracle than Jason’s unexpected return to curb that.

“There are two that the League sanctions...”

That Bruce had personally vetted, was what he really meant, even though he’d probably never deal with either of them in a professional capacity himself.

Getting shot and crippled as Barbara Gordon rather than as as Batgirl had had certain advantages. She’d never been forced to explain herself to anyone. As far as the judicial system was concerned, as far as the hospital and her health insurance were concerned, as far as her therapist and her physical therapist and the newspapers and her dad were concerned, she was just another casualty of the Joker’s war on...whatever it was the Joker hated. The GCPD. Batman. Order. Hell, just Gotham’s messy street plan.

Her dad blamed himself. Bruce blamed himself. Neither of them was entirely wrong, and that pissed her off.

The truth was that she’d already stepped back from Batgirl when the Joker rang her doorbell and destroyed her life.

In the years since the the Joker had ruined her spine, Babs had imagined living her life all over again. She’d let herself daydream, thinking from her earliest childhood memories, all the way to the moment of opening the door to that horrifying split-face and the barrel of a gun she had no chance of avoiding.

And there hadn’t been a moment when she would have changed things. She’d had a good life. Maybe the best life she could have had, until the Joker’s bullet. And even that—if she hadn’t been home, if she hadn’t answered the door, maybe her dad would have; maybe the Joker would have just murdered him. She’d rather have her father than her legs. And maybe, if she’d known what was coming, if she’d opened the door with a weapon in hand—but the Joker hadn’t come alone. Could she have taken three armed men without warning, on her on doorstep? Could she? She’d been retired, out of practice.

(She still woke up dreaming, though, about how she knocked the gun aside, laughed when it fired into the drywall, drove the Joker’s nose back into his brain, and then cheerfully watched him die, because he’d killed Robin. He hadn’t actually killed Robin when he shot her, not yet, but in her dreams, she knew what was going to happen.)

“Like I said, I think it’s a good idea. Just be upfront about it, and don’t spring it on him as a done deal. Let him feel like he has a choice. For that matter—let him have a choice.”

“Hnh,” was all Bruce said. And then, “Thank you. For the advice.”

“Not to change the subject too drastically, but have you decided on a story?”

“A what?”

“I understand all the reasons why you’re keeping Jason on a tight leash, and god knows, he doesn’t need a media frenzy or the cops or CPS or whoever swooping down on you all right now. But eventually, Jason’s going to want to be able to leave the house. Which means he needs his legal identity back. Which means you need a story.”

Bruce closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know that. That’s one of the reasons I want Jason to consider therapy. It’s going to be an ordeal, and I want him to be prepared.”

Babs sighed. “This would be easier if he’d just...disappeared. We could say he’d run away from home, or been kidnapped.” Both of those things were partly true, even. “But there was a body. An autopsy. A death certificate, a funeral, a grave—” She stopped; by the look on Bruce’s face, this was making him feel queasy. “We need an explanation.”

She thought about it for a little while, sipping her terrible cinnamon tea. Bruce turned his mug round and round in his hands, but didn’t drink from it. Probably because he could smell it.

“There was a misidentified body,” Babs finally said. “It’s amazing odds, but apparently there was another black-haired, caucasian teenage boy in that particular famine relief camp in Ethiopia on that particular day. God help him. It can’t be a surprise that everyone assumed the body found in the wreckage was Jason Todd, who had been known to have been kidnapped by the Joker earlier that day, and held in that same warehouse. And with a positive ID from a family member, there was no need to consult dental reports or run a DNA test on the remains.”

“Where’s he been for the last few years?”

“We don’t have to stray far from the truth there,” she said. ”He had head injuries that left him catatonic. He couldn’t identify himself to anyone or ask for help. Hmm. Say the Joker took Jason out of Ethiopia with him, and Jason escaped or was dropped off somewhere in the Middle East. Somewhere where Talia Head, his father’s ex-lover, has interests. Maybe he got better, enough to realize where he was, and realized he could go to Talia for help getting home. Or Talia or someone who works for her stumbled upon him, recognized him, and promptly delivered him to you. Depending on what timeline you want, for medical purposes.”

“Mmm. It’s a good excuse for some convenient amnesia. We’re going to need another body, though. Something appropriately dessicated. It’s going to stir up too much suspicion if the coffin is found empty. Particularly if it’s a damaged coffin.”

“That’s more your thing,” Babs said, shuddering. “Have anything in mind?”

“Clark might be able to provide something with the resources of the Fortress. Or maybe I could persuade J’onn…”

“Oh, good lord.”

But Bruce was nodding decisively. “All right, this is our story. Can you start laying the groundwork for any kind of paperwork or forensic evidence we might need to back it up?”

“Happy to do it,” she said, draining her mug. “And just say the word when you’re ready to have Jason declared legally alive again. Mostly, that’s going to be lawyers, but I’ll help in any way I can.”

Bruce pulled on his suit jacket, getting ready to go.

“I’ll be in touch. Give Jason my love, will you?”

“Of course. And...thank you again, Barbara.”

Twice in one conversation. Maybe they would get that second miracle after all.

***

She wasn’t terribly surprised to get a call from Jason later that evening.

“Hey kiddo, what’s up?” she asked, although she suspected she already knew the answer.

“Bruce wants me to talk to a therapist,” Jason said bluntly.

“Yeah, I know. We discussed it earlier today. I think it’s a good idea. It’s up to you, though.”

“He said—he said that you went to therapy, after the Joker shot you. And that you could probably answer any questions better than he could.”

“Undoubtedly. Fire away.”

There was a long silence. Babs wasn’t sure if Jason was gathering his thoughts, or just nerving himself up to speak. Finally, he said, “Isn’t it weird? Talking to a complete stranger about your feelings and stuff?”

“It might feel that way in the beginning. But therapy is about building up trust between you and your therapist. A good therapist isn’t going to push you open up until you’re ready for it. If your therapist does that, they’re not a good therapist, and we’ll look for another one.”

Jason made a doubtful noise. “I don’t even know why he wants me to do this, anyway. Why can’t I just talk to Bruce about it? We’ve got secret identities and stuff to hide.”

“No one is saying you can’t talk to Bruce, but there are good reasons for also talking to a therapist. Therapists are objective in ways that family members aren’t. And while your therapist is going to care about you, they’ll also be a professional who’s not tangled up in your life the way your friends and family members are. You know how sometimes, there are things you feel like you need to say, but you can’t say them to someone you care about, because you’re afraid you’ll hurt them?”

“....yeah.”

“You don’t have to worry about that with a therapist. You can tell them everything, and it’s safe for you, and safe for them.” She took a drink of water. “Also, therapists are trained to help people sort out their problems. We all love your dad, but you know sometimes he struggles to say things in the right way.”

Jason grudgingly grumbled in agreement.

“A good therapist knows the right questions to ask, and when and how to ask them. And when not to ask questions. They’ve spent time learning how people think, learning safe and effective ways to help people explore painful or complicated feelings.”

“You make it sound like it’s not so bad.”

“Well, it’s not. Or it shouldn’t be. I’m not saying this is going to be easy, but it’s something worth doing. You’ve got a lot going on right now, Jason. We all want you to feel better, and this will help. It helped me, after the Joker shot me, and I had to come to terms with all the ways that changed my life, all the things I used to be able to do that I can’t, anymore. I was incredibly angry, and in a lot of pain. My therapist got me through that, and into a better place.” She sighed. “I’m still angry in certain ways, and maybe I always will be, but I don’t think anybody can blame me for wanting to see the Joker’s head on a pike.”

Jason sucked in a sharp breath. “Waitasec,” he said. “Are you telling me that the Joker is still around?”

Oh boy.

Chapter Text

“How do we know these fiber strands didn’t come from the guard’s uniform?”

Bruce inclined his head at Dick, directing him to answer Tim.

Dick pointed at the fibers in question, which were charred and stiff. “Do you see how they’ve sort of curled up and melted a bit? That means these came from a protein-based fabric, like wool or silk. Fire resistant. The guard’s uniform was cotton, that’s cellulose-based. It would have gone up in a flash, and left behind light-colored ashes.”

Bruce, standing back from where Dick and Tim were bent over the forensic samples from the Marconi office fire—almost certainly arson, which meant murder—grunted his approval. Behind him, the computer chimed, and Oracle’s mechanical voice announced, “Batman, you’ve got incoming.”

Bruce looked over at it. “Incoming what?”

“I’m pretty sure your second bird is on his way down to the Cave right now, and he is not happy.”

“What happened?”

“I was on the phone with him–we were discussing that proposition you mentioned earlier–and I may have let slip that the Joker is still alive and kicking. A fact he was apparently unaware of.”

Bruce went stiff, as Tim and Dick looked at each other in alarm. Jason wasn’t in the Cave very often, and never at night when Tim might be there; it was hard for him to overcome his territorial feelings about seeing another Robin working with Batman. And then the entrance to the Cave burst open, and Jason was barreling down the stairs, jumping down multiple steps at a time in his haste. He ignored Dick and Tim, running straight past them and up to Bruce.

“Is it true?”

“Jay-lad–”

“Is it true that the Joker is still out there, after everything he’s done? After what he did to me?”

“Jason, he’s in Arkham,” Dick said.

“He’ll get out,” Jason said, not taking his eyes off Bruce. “He always gets out. Arkham’s not enough. We put him in Arkham and he got out, and he shot Babs. We put him back in Arkham, and he got out, and he stole a nuke. Putting him in Arkham didn’t stop him from getting out and—Ethiopia—” Jason was shaking from the intensity of his emotions. “Why can’t we stop him?”

Bruce put his hands on Jason’s shoulders, some distant part of him noting as he did that he didn’t have to reach down as far as he used to; Jason was taller than he had been just a few weeks ago. Good God, but the boy was growing fast. “We’re doing everything we can.”

Jason shook his head vehemently. “It’s not enough.”

“What did you have in mind?” Tim interjected mildly from behind Jason. “Killing him?” Dick, next to him, winced.

Jason, still looking up at Bruce, said nothing. He didn’t even blink.

“I can’t,” Bruce said gently.

“Doesn’t have to be you.” Jason’s voice was steady and even.

Bruce hoped to God Jason didn’t mean himself.

“It’s not something I could ever ask of someone, or let them do,” he said. “Nobody should have the burden of taking a life on their conscience.” Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t help his eyes flicking over to Dick for just a moment. Jason couldn’t have missed it, the way he was keeping Bruce fixed in his gaze, but he didn’t react to it, just as he hadn’t acknowledged Tim.

“I get it, Bruce, I do. Batman and Robin don’t kill. I know it would have been wrong if I had pushed Felipe Garzonas off that balcony. That’s why I didn’t do it, even though I’m not sorry he’s dead and I don’t think I ever will be. But the Joker isn’t like Garzonas. He’s not like anybody else. He’s a monster. And he never stops. He just keeps coming and coming, and the bodies keep piling up–Arkham is not enough! Not for him, not anymore!” Jason had been getting more and more worked up through this speech, but then his voice dropped, and he said, softly, “You said it was the worst thing in the world. Losing me. He did the worst thing in the world to you. He’s done it to countless other innocent people. And it’s still not enough of a reason?”

“Jason,” Bruce said, struggling to find the right words, the words to talk Jason down from this. “I won’t lie. I wanted to. I wanted to kill him, after. I seriously considered it.” He looked away. “Clark was frightened that I would.”

Behind Jason, Dick looked up abruptly, shock on his face.

“I thought about killing him, Jason. I planned out the ways I could do it. Because he’d killed you,” he said, quietly. “Because he’d taken you away from me.”

He sighed, a great heaving sigh that felt like his soul was being pulled out of his body by his departing breath, and he took his hands off Jason’s shoulders and cupped his face. “But ultimately, I couldn’t. Not then, not now, not ever. Because if I ever kill—even the Joker—I can’t be Batman anymore. And I didn’t think that was something that you would have wanted...not even in the name of avenging you.”

Jason kept staring up at him, and then, abruptly, closed his eyes, and stumbled forward against Bruce’s chest, letting Bruce wrap his arms around him and hold him. “There has to be another way,” he whispered against the chestpiece of the suit. “There just has to.”

***

“Well, that could have gone a lot worse,” Tim observed to Dick, who was still staring off in the direction where Bruce and Jason had gone. Tim had a feeling Bruce wasn’t going to be back any time soon. Which was fine. Really. Dick was taking the lead on this case anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal if they didn’t have Bruce on hand. And it would be ridiculous to be jealous of how much time Bruce was spending with his newly undead kid, wouldn’t it? Tim was still Robin, after all. Still Batman’s partner.

For now, a little voice whispered in the back of his head. Tim ignored it.

“Hm?”

“I said, that could have gone worse. Considering he’s had freakouts over a lot less. Didn’t even throw anything at anyone’s head.”

That got a pained smile out of Dick. “Yeah, he’s doing better.” He shook his head. “Thank god it took this long for him to realize, though. Can you imagine what it would have been like if he’d figured that out when he was still having berserker rages at the drop of a hat?”

Bodies on the floor, probably.

Dick still seemed distracted, though.

“What’s eating you?”

“What Bruce said about planning to kill the Joker. I never knew that. If Clark thought he might go through with it—things were serious.”

“Maybe he was just telling Jason what he wanted to hear?”

“No,” Dick said, firmly. “Bruce would never lie about something like that. Not about that.”

***

He found her in the old upstairs bedroom that had been repurposed into a home gym.

“Oh look,” he said. “They let you have a sword.”

Talia, in sweats, her hair pulled back in a scrunchie and her sword arched over her head, let her blade whirl downwards, and stopped it stop barely a centimeter off the ground.

Six inches from Dick’s left foot.

“They did,” Talia said.

“Is there another one of those lying around? I could use a spar, if you’re up for it.”

Talia raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t this your house?” she asked, although she kneeled to rummage through the loose equipment.

“Sure,” Dick said. “But it’s not only my house. I share it with other people.”

“How magnanimous of you.” Talia said. She casually tossed a set of arm weights behind her, letting them thump against the wall.

Dick clenched his fist so hard he thought his nails might have broken skin, and reminded himself that he’d sought Talia out for a reason.

Talia came up with a bamboo blade, and threw it at Dick, who caught it easily, and spun it like a baton.

“You kill people,” Dick said, and instantly regretted it.

Talia pulled another bamboo blade out of the mess, and the look on her face was some mixture of exhaustion and frustration. Nice to know he could get under her skin, too. “Yes. I have killed,” she said. “And I will kill again, when it is necessary. When it is merited.”

He considered trying to backtrack, and gave the idea up. “I never could figure out why Bruce was willing to give you the time of day, knowing that.”

“Many of my beloved’s allies and acquaintances have chosen to kill,” Talia said. “It is a rule he only demands of himself and his own.”

“Yeah, and you never really were one of his own, were you?” Dick said, letting a hint of mockery slide into his voice. “Despite your best efforts.”

Talia’s lip curled. “You’re an ignorant child, Richard Grayson.”

“We’re practically the same age.”

“That makes little difference that I’ve observed.”

Someday, some day, Dick was going to have a conversation with Talia that didn’t make his teeth grind. Today was not that day. “Look. I didn’t actually come here for a sniping session.”

“Then what did you come here for?”

“I don’t know how to say this, I just—the killing thing. Talia—how do you live with yourself?”

Talia actually rolled her eyes. She tossed her bamboo blade from hand to hand, and then her knee bent, and Dick was pretty sure he was about to have a bruise. He threw up a hand to signal peace, and Talia relaxed slightly.

“I’m sorry. That was a sincere question, not a rhetorical device,” Dick said. “I once...came very close to killing someone. I actually thought I had killed him. I hated him with all my heart, and honestly, I know the world would be a better place without him in it, but at the moment when I realized he wasn’t breathing, all I could do was look at the very literal blood on my hands and think oh my god, what have I done?”

“In the League,” Talia said neutrally, “We would call that weakness. It is a failure to see the need to kill, but not possess the strength to carry it out without flinching.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.”

There was a pause. Talia ran her finger along the length of the bamboo. Dick studied the stucco ceiling.

“Who was it?” Talia eventually asked.

“The Joker,” Dick said, quietly. “In a fight. I thought that he’d killed Tim. He said he had. And then he taunted me about how he’d killed Jason.”

Talia went rock-still.

“He knew Jason’s name. He used it as a weapon, and it worked. I lost control. And I beat him so hard his heart stopped, and he’d have died if Batman hadn’t done CPR on him.”

Talia stared in something like shock. “My beloved—chose to save the Joker’s life? He could have simply stood back and let him die, and he intervened?”

“It was for me,” Dick said. “So it wouldn’t be on me.”

Talia laughed incredulously. “He indulges you far too much, Richard. I hope your clean conscience weighs as heavily on the scales of fate as all the lives that that poisonous trash will yet take.”

Dick wanted to tell her that it had felt good. That he’d been glad, in the moment. She’d probably respect him more if he admitted that.

He’d never tell. Never.

***

They were sitting side-by-side in the library, Talia tapping away at her phone, and Jason leafing through back issues of Popular Science.

Wow, physics sure had changed since he’d died. He turned the page on an article about how gravity didn’t seem to work for some people, and a game-changing theory about why. Superman was front and center. He tried to stop a stupid grin from splitting his face, and failed.

If only that moment could have lasted longer. Yesterday’s argument still haunted him.

Superman could stop him, he thought.

He put the magazine down.

“Talia?”

“Yes, habibi?”

“Do you think it would be wrong for someone to kill the Joker?”

“Not at all,” Talia said, sparing him a glance, still tapping away at her phone.

“Bruce does. He still does.”

“Sometimes, your father is wrong.”

Jason idly flipped a few pages of the magazine. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, in the most casual voice he could muster.

Talia let the hand holding the phone drop into her lap and turned her full attention towards Jason. “The Joker is a monster who should have been removed from the world long before he had a chance to hurt you, or anyone else. He’s a disgusting pestilence. I have never fathomed why my beloved has chosen to let him continue to exist, while he spreads so much misery and death throughout the city my beloved has sworn to protect.”

Jason leaned against the couch edge, away from Talia, and directed all his attention to the blank wall. “He says he can’t ever kill or he’d have to stop being Batman.”

Talia hummed, thoughtfully. She placed the phone on the coffee table, and, with a finger, sent it spinning in circles.

“I…” Jason trailed off. “I didn’t come right out and ask him. But I know he’s not ever going to do it. He was really clear about that. He says he can’t, and he won’t let anyone else.” Jason paused. “He won’t let me.”

“Is that something that you want to do?” Talia asked him softly.

Jason didn’t say anything at all, and just stared at his hands, and thought.

“I don’t ever want to be the person who kills someone,” he said, finally. “But I still think the world is better off without some people in it. And that makes me feel horrible. Because I don’t think it’s okay to want that without being willing to do it myself.”

“I see,” Talia said. She straightened her spine, and put her finger just under his chin. “Jason...do you know—“

He looked up at her.

She smiled at him. “Oh, never mind, habibi. Never mind.”

Chapter Text

Bruce went searching for Alfred, and found him in the kitchen, putting the last touches on a tray of egg salad sandwiches and cut fruit.

“For Jay?”

It could have been for anyone in the house, but Alfred had left the crusts on the sandwiches, and the pineapple chunks were in the dead-giveaway diamond shapes.

“Yes, sir,” Alfred said, cheerfully, sinking his knife into the last piece of pineapple. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the lad still has quite an appetite.”

“Actually, Alfred, I have.”

“Sir?”

“Alfred—he’s growing too fast, isn’t he? Even for a teenage boy?”

Alfred slowly set aside his knife, and he looked over at Bruce. “I...I have wondered about that, sir. Shortly after he returned home, I took the liberty of purchasing new clothing for him, seeing as he had already outgrown his old wardrobe. But in just a few weeks, he’s outgrown all of the new clothing.” He hesitated. “I’ve also noticed, Master Bruce, that although he’s not currently on the same exercise regimen he was on as Robin, he has the same appetite as when he was. He is growing, sir, and very fast.”

“I suppose it could just be that long-delayed teenage growth spurt…you remember when Dick had his.”

“Yes, sir. Still, sir—if you have concerns, I confess I share them.”

“Willis Todd was a large man,” Bruce said slowly. “Under ideal circumstances, there’s no reason to think Jason wouldn’t have matched him. But...Leslie always thought that after years of childhood malnutrition, his growth was likely to be permanently stunted, and he was unlikely to achieve his full growth potential.”

Alfred made a slightly distressed sound. “Master Jason was always on the small side.”

“And while he did grow in the time he was...away, it wasn’t that much. And once he was in Talia’s care—” He paused. “He wouldn’t have starved there. I’m sure of it.”

“Am I correct in thinking that you suspect this growth spurt could be the result of exposure to the Lazarus Pit, Master Bruce?”

“Maybe,” Bruce said. “I ought to talk to Talia. And now that I think if it, it wouldn’t hurt to have Leslie come look him over, in case there are other physical side effects from the exposure.” Bruce twitched guiltily. “We probably should have told her about this already.”

“She was terribly fond of the boy.” Alfred sighed, rinsing his hands in the sink, before he picked up the phone. “Well, sir, this will make for an interesting phone call.”

***

Alfred had been unusually evasive on the phone, and Leslie wasn’t sure what she was walking into, only that while it was important, it wasn’t an emergency. It was Bruce who met her at the door, though, and escorted her through the Manor, and into the Cave.

“What’s this about, Bruce?” she asked.

“I’m sorry Alfred didn’t tell you more over the phone,” he said. “But if he had, you’d probably have assumed he was under the influence of something. Because this is real—he’s real, and we’re sure that it’s him—but it’s also unbelievable, and we don’t really have an explanation for it.”

And there, finally, was the source of Bruce’s strange behavior:

A boy.

A boy than more than two years dead, sitting on a hospital bed in the Cave’s medbay, swinging his legs awkwardly, and waving at her. “Hiya Doc,” he said, sounding terribly self-conscious.

Did he know that he was supposed to be dead?

She remembered when she’d had her hands in his chest, digging out bullets, sewing up veins, wondering which organs her patient might lose the use of forever that day. Trying to decide exactly how angry she could be with Bruce, before he stopped listening to her. She didn’t think she’d been angry enough.

She knew she hadn’t angry enough.

“Oh my God,” Leslie said. “Jason?” Her voice cracked, and she stumbled forward, and barely caught herself on the corner of the bed.

Jason slithered off the bed and stood against it, stiffly. He was worried, she thought. Insecure. Scared. Maybe scared of her.

She couldn’t help but step close. She reached up, and put one hand on his shoulder, the other on his cheek. “How? How on earth is this possible?”

He squirmed under her hands.

She released him and stepped back, the better to look him over thoroughly from head to toe.

“We don’t know,” Jason said, in a subdued tone. “We think I might just have...woken up.”

“Woken up.”

“Um. Underground.”

Leslie pressed her hand to her mouth in horror, and glanced over at Bruce and Alfred for confirmation. Bruce nodded, his expression grim.

“When?”

“Our best guess is approximately nineteen months ago,” Bruce said.

“And you’re just now bringing this to my attention?”

Alfred cleared his throat. “We ourselves only became aware of this a month ago, when Talia al Ghul brought Master Jason back to us. She had been—caring for him for the previous year. The six months prior to that are currently unaccounted for.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Jason said quietly.

Leslie glared at Bruce and opened her mouth to repeat her previous question. Bruce said, hastily, “As you might imagine, we’ve all been a little overwhelmed by this.”

“I see,” Leslie said. And then grabbed Bruce by the elbow, and dragged him far enough off not to be overheard.

“Dammit, Bruce,” Leslie said. “I’m Jason’s physician of record. It was negligent of you not to have me examine him at the first available opportunity. If you don’t know how this happened, how can you possibly know what side effects there might be?”

“Alfred examined him when he got here,” Bruce said. “Jason was in robust health physical health.” He looked guilty, though.

Good. He should. He’d had no business keeping this from her as long as he had.

“That’s not good enough,” she said. “Alfred is a skilled medic, but he’s not a doctor. I’m not your personal ER, Bruce. I need to know the important things about all of you in advance, if you want me to help you. You cannot just feed me the details you think I need to know after someone’s gotten their skull caved in.”

Bruce made an acquiescent noise.

Leslie turned back to her patient. “Jason.”

“Doc?”

“I’d like to do a full physical, Jason. If that’s all right with you.”

Jason smiled tentatively at her. “Okay, Doc.”

***

Once the exam was done, Leslie again drew Bruce to the side for a private consultation. “All right, Bruce; Alfred was right; he seems to be in perfect physical health. And I’m not a mental health specialist, but all things considered, he seems to be functioning at a high level—although I hope you’re considering therapy—”

“I am. We are. I’ve already spoken to Jason about it, and he’s tentatively on board.”

“That’s good to hear.” Leslie paused. “There are only two things that really jumped out at me as unusual: one, he’s grown considerably since his last check-up. Normally, I’d say he’s coming into a long-overdue teenage growth spurt. But given his medical history and years of malnutrition and neglect, I frankly wasn’t anticipating him having much of one.”

“That’s one of the things that prompted us to bring you in on this. Most of this has been in the past month.”

“That’s...interesting,” Leslie said.

“You said there were two things that struck you as unusual?”

“Yes. The scars.”

“He doesn’t have any.”

“My point exactly,” Leslie said. “I’m sure you haven’t forgotten the incident where Jervis Tetch shot him in the chest four times.”

“Never,” Bruce said, softly but firmly. “I will never forget that.”

And that was the one he actually walked away from, she thought. On another day, she might have actually said it out loud.

“I did my best in surgery,” Leslie said, “but those bullet wounds left prominent scars. Scars that would—should—still be quite visible to this day. But he’s as clean as a whistle, Bruce. And Jason said that he woke up underground, which I take to mean in his coffin?”

Bruce nodded, grimly. “He doesn’t remember it clearly, but—we believe that was what happened.” He closed his eyes. “ We think he dug his way out from the inside.”

Oh God, Leslie hoped whatever therapist Bruce had in mind was a damn good one.

“That should have left extensive scarring on his hands,” Leslie said. “I see nothing there.”

“I believe we have the explanation for that,” Bruce said. “And possibly for the growth spurt as well. When the League of Assassins discovered Jason a year ago, he was apparently catatonic. A little over a month ago, Talia made the decision to put him into a Lazarus pit in the hopes of restoring him mentally. And it worked.”

“A...lazarus pit?”

“Ra’s al Ghul uses them. They’re ancient pools that have the mystical ability to extend the lifespan, heal wounds, even to reverse death if the subject is immersed in short order.”

“Good Lord.” The idea was staggering.

“They’re also severely mentally destabilizing, especially with repeated exposure,” Bruce said. “Jason seems to be doing much better now, but when he first arrived home, he was having violent episodes almost every day. He would be fine, then something would trigger him, and he’d go absolutely berserk.”

“I see,” Leslie said, turning it over slowly in her mind. “And...yes, if these Lazarus pits can heal scar tissue, and—and reverse death, I suppose it’s not madness to think it might be able to...undo the deleterious impact of early childhood malnutrition, somehow.” Something else occurred to her. “Dare I ask what the night-time lineup is like at the moment?” She hadn’t heard anything from the other assorted vigilantes she knew through Bruce; if Jason was back on the streets, she thought it would have made its way back to her.

“Tim is still Robin. For now, at least; we haven’t made long term decisions in that area yet. But Jason’s in no condition at the moment.” There was an unspoken if ever tacked onto the end of that sentence, which pleased her.

Physically, there was probably nothing standing in the way of Jason becoming Robin again, but—that boy had died. Violently. Painfully. Leslie had made herself read the autopsy report; it was the last service she could render to a child who had been her patient, who had been in her care. Who could possibly know what the long term psychological and spiritual aftereffects of experiencing true death would be? There was nothing in the medical literature about that. If Bruce wanted to keep Jason out of harm’s way for the indefinite future, she certainly wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it.

So all she said was, “That’s good to hear. Have you made any long-term decisions in other areas?”

“We’re working on a story—and generating the materials we’ll need to back it up—to explain Jason’s existence, so we can reestablish his legal identity. After that…” Bruce frowned. “Good God, I haven’t even thought about his schooling. Would it even be possible for him to reenroll at PS 35 after this? There’s no way this isn’t to going to end up a media spectacle...”

Leslie was deeply relieved to hear Bruce wasn’t planning on keeping his miraculously revived child a secret from the world forever, spectacle or no spectacle. She felt irked that it had taken him a whole month to reveal Jason’s existence to her—a trusted family friend as well as Jason’s doctor—and she was truly concerned that he would choose the path of least resistance without thinking about how devastating it would be to Jason in the long run to be deprived of his identity and whatever normalcy he could derive from the remains of his childhood. He was still so behind on normal social development; forcing him to live in the shadows could only compound the problem.

“Whatever you decide, make sure he has a say in it,” Leslie warned. “Don’t go off making unilateral decisions about his future or his life without his input.”

“Barbara said the same thing.”

“Then you know it’s good advice, don’t you?”

“Hnh.”

***

Talia lingered in the breakfast room, savoring the scent and steam of her tea. It was her favorite blend of Assam, and one not sold widely in the United States. Someone was going out of their way to order it for her. She wasn’t sure who. Pennyworth, perhaps? Probably not; she knew he wasn’t particularly fond of her. Although then again, it might be a way of showing his gratitude for her part in restoring Jason to the Manor.

Wherever it came from, she appreciated it. It was a comforting note of home in this indefinite exile she had chosen to inflict on herself.

Her father’s agents had followed them all the way to Gotham, but, as she had expected, held back from the Manor. Jason was no longer of interest to her father, and Ra’s was willing to bide his time and wait for his daughter to leave of her own accord. Her own people were similarly holding back, waiting for either a signal from her, or a hostile move from her father’s agents.

But everybody was watching everybody. The minute she left the Manor grounds, there was going to be a small war, and if she lost it, she’d find herself on her knees in front of her father, awaiting his wrath. Death was not out of the realm of possibility, if he decided that she had betrayed him by using a Lazarus pit for Jason.

And if she died…

Pennyworth entered the room, bearing a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper. “This arrived for you via courier, Ms. al Ghul.”

“Thank you, Pennyworth,” Talia said, taking the package. She’d heard the doorbell ring some half an hour ago; she attributed the delay to Pennyworth likely taking the package down into the Cave to x-ray it before handing it over. Unnecessary, but she didn’t resent the precautions; she’d have done the same, in his position. She rose with it in her arms, and headed into the library.

Her beloved was there, hands shoved into his pockets, gazing out the window. Brooding out the window, really. But she hadn’t come looking for him, so she allowed him his distance, greeting him perfunctorily and letting it pass unremarked when he didn’t reply. She unwrapped the package to reveal its contents: a large hardback book with a finely woven black cloth cover, decorated in golden text and intricate geometric border decorations in green and gold.

It was perfect.

She leafed through it, running her fingers lightly over the edges of the gold-leafed pages. She couldn’t help but murmur appreciation over one of the poems in the An-Nasīb chapter.

That aroused Bruce’s attention, and he turned from the window, with a raised eyebrow. She held the book up so he could see the cover.

“The Ḥamāsah of Abu Tannam,” he said. He glanced at the wrapping, which she knew he would recognize. “Treated yourself to my rare books contacts, have you?”

“And occasionally your Amazon account as well, beloved.” One did not need a rare books dealer to find a copy of Leaving Cold Sassy.

“I also noticed a new copy of the Kitab al-Aghani on the shelves.”

“Just a project to occupy my spare time.” It was even true. Deciding on the next set of books was a pleasurable, if significant task. Some of these were books she hadn’t read since she was a child herself.

Bruce sat down on the couch, and then touched the book. “Talia.”

“Yes, beloved?”

“You said he had scars on his fingers.”

She took a moment. “He did.”

“And...he doesn’t have them now.”

“No. The Pit healed them. All of them.”

“Could you—tell me what other scars he had, before the Pit?”

“Ah,” she said, sadly. “When Jason came into our care, beloved, he was examined carefully by several physicians. Some were the League’s, some were exclusively my own. I regret that I no longer have access to those records, but as best as I can recall: he had scars from several bullet wounds to his chest. Nearly every major bone in his arms and legs showed sign of a healed fracture, and several of his fingers. Fractures in his ribs. And his skull,” she hesitated. “I think you know.”

“I do,” Bruce said, in a voice that sounded like ashes.

“There was also soft tissue damage. He was still a great fighter, but—there were moves I saw him try, things I know he was trained for, where he failed or fell short. Where his body clearly failed him, and even in his catatonic state, this seemed to confuse him.”

“That—” Bruce had to stop and clear his throat. “That corresponds with the wounds I observed on his body when I found him. It’s documented in the autopsy report as well.”

Talia mmm-hmmed. “Leading to the logical assumption that whatever restored Jason to life did not erase his injuries. Or at least not fully.”

“If he came back still injured—Talia, he couldn’t possibly have survived without medical intervention.”

“Perhaps someone found him, and delivered him to a caretaking facility? Catatonic, unable to identify himself, no identification on his person—unless someone recognized him, he would have stayed anonymous,” Talia said, thoughtfully. “I wonder…”

“This could actually be a lead.” Bruce seemed to brighten at the prospect. “We’ll start digging into hospital records for the past three years and look for records of any John Does with injuries matching Jason’s. If we’re lucky, we might be able to clear up a little of the time he was unaccounted for.”

***

Bruce had originally intended to look into the hospital records to search for a John Doe matching Jason’s description himself, but a recollection of how badly the vagrancy search had unbalanced him gave him pause. It might be better to hand that off to someone else. Barbara had enough on her plate, but he could task Dick or Tim with it.

It seemed unfair to ask Tim, given the circumstances. And the...the circumstances.

Bruce called Dick.

“Bruce,” Dick greeted him. “What’s going on?”

“I have a research project for you,” Bruce informed him. He cradled the phone in one shoulder as he opened up a laptop. “It may take some time. I need you to start searching through the databases of Gotham’s hospitals and police departments, and look for records of John Does matching the injury profile I’m sending you now. You may need to open the search up to neighboring jurisdictions, to be complete. The time scale is three years.”

There was a long pause, as Dick opened up his own computer, and loaded the files. And looked them over.

“Bruce,” Dick said, in a hushed voice. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Anything we can learn is useful,” Bruce said.

***

Bruce was poring over paperwork in the library when Jason wandered in. Jason sat on the couch, picked up a book from the coffee table—the Ḥamāsah, as it happened—and started flipping through its pages.

Bruce set down his papers and watched Jason, slightly amused. “Getting any of that, Jay-lad?”

“Not really,” Jason said, absently. He turned a few more pages, and then sighed, and shut the book. “All the words and phrases you taught me—I remember them. Talia says my accent isn’t too bad. She’s been teaching me a lot more. But I haven’t really learned the script, yet. So. You know. It’s uphill. A lot of uphill.”

“Talia is teaching you Arabic?” Bruce asked, slowly.

Jason looked over at him, apprehensively. “Is that...okay?”

“Of course it is,” Bruce hastened to assure him. “It’s fine.” He then got up and left the room immediately.

Jason stared at the closing door, and then back at the book.

***

It wasn’t that he minded. He had absolutely no objection to Jason learning Arabic.

Just as Jason had said, Bruce had been the one to teach him the first words of the language. Of course it made sense for Talia to help Jason continue to learn—she’d been one of Bruce’s teachers, hadn’t she? Bruce’s command of Arabic owed a lot to Talia. It made perfect sense that after all her time with Jason, she’d be the one to instruct Jason, too, just as she had Bruce.

But it bothered him, somehow.

***

Dick had been working on the hospital records for two goddamned days. He was pretty sure he’d found results. He was pretty sure they were going to upset Bruce. He was also pretty sure he didn’t want Jason to ever see them, so instead of sending them over electronically, he printed them out, stuffed them into his pocket, and got on his bike.

He parked in the circle driveway, outside the Manor’s front door, and let himself in with his key. He didn’t see Alfred anywhere, so he had to hunt Bruce down himself, finally finding him in his study, hands behind his back, staring through the window onto the grounds.

At the bluebells, maybe.

Instead of announcing himself, he asked, “What’s eating you?”

“Talia has been teaching Jason Arabic,” Bruce said, morosely.

Dick wasn’t sure what floored him more: that Bruce had answered so quickly and succinctly, or that his complaint was so trivial.

“...yeah, and? Jason has a flair for languages,” Dick said, cautiously. “You—” once bragged to me about how fast Jason was learning German; how he already knew Spanish, how he’d picked up so much Portuguese just from trawling the harbor markets “—know that better than anyone.”

Bruce just scowled at the window.

“I think I may have found him.”

Bruce turned around, and Dick handed him a folded set of papers. Bruce scanned them, and with every line, he seemed weaker. Finally, he dropped them on his desk, and then dropped himself into his chair. He turned it away from Dick, towards the window.

“Thank you,” he said, he voice sounding muffled.

Bruce’s thank-yous didn’t come along every day, and Dick let that one burn like a tiny fire in his heart.

“Does it change anything?” he asked.

The only sound from the other side of the desk was a suppressed breath, like the prelude to a sob.

Dick considered crossing to the other side of the room, sitting with Bruce, helping him deal with this. He considered fleeing.

“Bruce,” Dick said, walking towards Bruce. Not running. Never running from this. “Come on, Bruce.”

Bruce was shuddering in his chair. “He asked for me. He asked for me, Dick, and I wasn’t there.” He covered his face with one hand. “He was all alone.”

“It’s not your fault. They didn’t know. They couldn’t have known.” Dick settled against the desk, and put his hand on Bruce’s shoulder, as Bruce clutched the papers. He leaned against Bruce, and he didn’t think he imagined that Bruce leaned back.

“We’ll be all right, Bruce,” Dick said. “We’re all going to be all right.”

Chapter Text

She let her eyes roam all around her. She’d never imagined she’d actually be permitted here, of all places. It was more of a secret than even the Watchtower. “Well, this is just…”

“Big?” Clark suggested. “This way, Dr. Sheridan.” He directed Cecilia down the corridor.

She looked back at him with amusement. “You’re a journalist, Mr. Kent. Use your words.”

“Large,” he said. “Vast, cavernous. Forbidding. Chilly, dismal…”

She was so busy laughing at him that she almost ran face first into the the great grey and black chest of the Batman.

“Pardon me,” she said. They’d met several times before, and she didn’t think she’d be here if they hadn’t. “Nice to see you again, Batman.” He preferred that to Bruce Wayne, she knew. Cecilia had thoughts about that, but he wasn’t the person she was here to treat, today, so they didn’t matter. “I’m here to meet my patient.”

For a moment, the Batman towered over her silently, but then he finally stepped aside, revealing a dark-haired teenage boy, sitting on a table and fiddling his thumbs.

He jumped off the table as soon as he saw Clark.

“Superman?” he said, wide-eyed.

She’d always found Clark to be an expressive person, and it was easy to read him now, as he looked at Jason Todd, formerly Robin, formerly—dead. He was smiling, but there was still something melancholy in his face.

Jason stepped forward, offering a hesitant hand for Clark to shake. Instead, Clark clasped the boy’s shoulders, head bowed over him. “Robin. It’s...it’s so good to see you,” Clark said, sounding choked. “You’ve been badly missed, Jason.”

“Thank you,” Jason said, in a small voice.

***

“They haven’t seen each other for awhile,” Batman said, as they stood a little way back, letting Jason and Clark have what Cecilia gathered was first their meeting, since...the laws of nature had apparently rewritten themselves. She wasn’t entirely used to that sort of thing, not yet, and she wasn’t sure she would ever be.

She asked, “Were they close?”

“No,” he said. “They only met a few times.”

“I’m not a detective, Mr. Wayne—” she said.

“Batman.”

Excuse her, The “—Batman. And it is not my job to run around wrangling clues. It’s to listen, and to help, and to heal. If you want to help your son, you need to be as open as possible with me.”

“They weren’t close, Dr. Sheridan. They didn’t have a chance to be.”

He led her deeper into the cave. A cave—that was the actual word for it. “You’ll work with him here.”

Cecilia made a slow turn, observing her surroundings, setting aside the inclination to awe in favor of professional consideration. “No,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“No. This is too—” cold, scary, literally a giant cave “—public for a session. We’ll need to find something more private.” And warmer.

“She’s right, Bruce,” Clark said, stepping away from Jason, who she could see was wiping his eyes. “This is the kind of place you bring someone when you want to interrogate them, not when you want to interview them.”

Batman’s mouth pinched. “I don’t recall asking your advice on this, Clark.”

“That’s funny, because I do. Not on the venue, but—”

It actually wasn’t unfamiliar, watching Clark and *ahem* the Batman bickering with each other; she’d spent enough time around the League to have witnessed that.

She hadn’t foreseen the newcomer to the argument, though.

An older gentleman in a suit appeared next to her out of nowhere—Good God, was everyone associated with Batman this light-footed? She’d been snuck up on by Nightwing the same way. At least with the Flashes, there was a tell-tale breeze before they ambushed you—announcing his presence with a discreet cough. “Greetings, Dr. Sheridan. Might I escort you and Master Jason upstairs?”

“Alfred?” Batman was apparently extremely displeased by this. “We didn’t discuss this.”

Jason, who had started towards her as soon as the older gentleman spoke, froze at Batman’s words. She made a mental note.

“The conservatory would be best suited, I think,” Alfred said, ignoring the Batman, and continuing towards the elevator. “I am the only one there on a regular basis, so it offers a certain degree of privacy.”

The Batman was glaring, but neither he nor Clark actually made a move to stop him, and Jason seemed willing to follow this Alfred fellow, so Cecilia fell in line.

“Thank you, Alfie,” Jason said, quietly, when they were on the elevator. “But the conservatory? Are you sure? It’s...you know. Yours.”

Alfred said nothing, only rested his hand on Jason’s shoulder as they stepped off.

***

“My goodness,” the doctor said. “It’s lovely.”

Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in here, and it wasn’t just because the amnesia stuff. (He thought, anyway). He’d never been a big plant person—who could keep even a potted plant alive, in a Crime Alley slum? Bristol was practically the countryside, as far as Jason was concerned—and this place, tucked away into the southwest corner of the Manor, rarely graced by Bruce or Jason, was Alfred’s sanctuary.

It was lovely, and very green. There were plants everywhere: hanging from the ceiling, in pots on the ground, on graduated tables. He recognized orchids, he thought, and blue roses. Did roses normally come in blue? He tried to remember his botany lessons with Bruce.

It was funny how much it all didn’t make him think of Poison Ivy. There was...no menace, here. It felt alive, but a gentle, peaceful sort of alive.

He’d been quiet too long. The doctor asked him, “Jason? Is this a place you’d feel comfortable talking with me?”

“I think so,” Jason said, fingering the petal of a rose the color of the sky. He sat down in one of the chairs, and took a deep breath.

“I’d like to tell you a little about me now,” she said. “First of all, you don’t have to call me Dr. Sheridan. If you’d like, you call me Sheila.”

Jason inhaled sharply. After a moment, he said, “I thought your first name was Cecilia.”

She blinked, and then she said, “Yes, my given name is Cecilia. Sheila is a nickname.” She’d used it with her younger patients back when she was a resident. It was easier for them to pronounce.

Jason bit his lip. He was staring at his hands again. “I’d rather call you Dr. Sheridan.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” She resisted the impulse to write that down right away. “As Bruce may have told you, I’m a licensed psychiatrist. That means I have a medical license, and I’m able to write prescriptions as well as administer a variety of therapies. I’m originally from Toronto. I have two cats, and one pet lizard.”

“Is that all?” Jason seemed a little dubious.

“You can ask me questions if you’d like to,” she said. “But our sessions should be focused on you, not on me. Are there any questions you’d like to ask me, before we get started?”

Some people did ask “why a lizard?,” or what her cat’s names were. It often served as an icebreaker.

Jason was all business, though. “All of this,” he said, waving his hand vaguely around the greenhouse. “Does it stay between us, or do you have to tell Bruce what I say?”

“Our sessions are confidential,” she said. “Because you’re a minor, I am obliged to keep your father informed generally about what areas we’re working on, and whether I feel you’re making progress on them, but the specific things you tell me remain just between us. Unless you tell me that you intend to harm yourself or someone else. At that point, I would be ethically obligated to disclose that.”

“Uh,” Jason said. One of his hands had fisted. Impulsively, she thought.

“Are you having thoughts of self-harm, Jason?” She didn’t want to ask that question this early on, but if there was a chance, better to know now.

“No, it’s not like that, it’s like...when you said harming others, do you mean, like, if I said there was someone that I wanted to punch, even though I wasn’t planning on doing it?”

Cecila suppressed a smile. “Only if you really thought you were going to, or were planning to do it.”

“Oh, okay. Because I’m not. Not on purpose, anyway. Sometimes I get these...fits.”

“Lazarus pit episodes?”

“Yeah. I guess Bruce told you all about me, huh?”

“Bruce gave me an—overview of the issues that you’re dealing with. I know about the things that have happened to you, or at least some of them. What I don’t know,” she said, “and that only you can tell me, is what you’ve experienced. If you can see the distinction?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, in a bleak tone. “I definitely can.”

“There is one important question I’d like to ask you, Jason. Can you tell me what it is you’d like to get out of our sessions here?”

Jason frowned.

“Take your time.”

He hunched over slightly, staring at his knees, and then his head swung up defiantly. “I want to be Robin again.”

Chapter Text

Bruce was tucked away in the upstairs library when there was a tap at the door. Bruce discreetly slipped his book (Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us) under the cushion of the couch and picked up a tablet with figures on it. Serious business figures on it. “Come in,” he said.

The door creaked open, and Jason sidled in, oddly diffident. He sat down next to Bruce, but ignored both Bruce’s tablet, and everything else in the library.

Bruce, bemused, flicked through the tablet’s workbooks, more for show than anything else. He ought to be reading them more closely, but...

“Hey, Bruce?”

“Yes, Jason?”

“I know this a really weird thing to ask, but—do you think, when you have some time, you could….take me to see my grave?”

Bruce was startled. This was the first time Jason had so much as expressed a desire to leave the Manor grounds—which might be concerning, but it was also damn convenient, until they had his legal status sorted out again—and a request to visit there, of all places…

Still—as public outings went, it should be a relatively low-key one, with little immediate risk of exposure. And if Jason asked for it, it was because he felt he needed it.

“I think that would be all right. We could go today, if you want.”

“Not like I’m doing anything else,” Jason said, shrugging, sounding a little sheepish about that fact. Then he frowned. “Although just realized I don’t even know where it is.”

“You were buried in Gotham Cemetery,” Bruce said tenderly. “With my mother and father.”

“And—and my mom?”

“Yes, of course,” Bruce said. He was grateful he could be honest about it. But of course Bruce had buried Jason as close as he could to his own parents. His own family.

Jason was his son.

***

It wasn’t until they were pulling through the cemetery gates that it suddenly occurred to Bruce that when Jason had mentioned his mother being buried there that he’d probably meant Catherine Todd. Jason knew she was there, of course; Bruce was the one who’d paid for her gravestone, after realizing that she hadn’t had so much as a plaque, just a plot number next to her name in the cemetery’s records. They’d visited her there together, on Mother’s Day.

Jason couldn’t have known that Sheila Haywood was also buried there.

He quelled a sudden and intense wave of nausea. He wasn’t doing a very good job covering it, though, because Jason had picked up on his discomfort—sometimes he wished Jason wasn’t so damn attuned to the emotional states of the people around him—and was looking over at him with concern.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said in a small voice. “I shouldn’t asked you to do this. I should have asked Dick or something.”

Bruce pulled the BMW into a parking space, and put the car in park. He shook his head, resting his arms on the steering wheel and hunching over it. “It’s not that. Yes, it’s always been...hard to see your grave, and be reminded that you weren’t here any more. The same way it was hard to look at my parents’ graves.” He paused.

That wasn’t true. It had been so much harder to look at Jason’s grave. Because it was his fault that his son was dead; his fault for not having taken better care of him, for not having answered Jason’s needs, not having anticipated Jason’s actions in time to stop him, or to protect him from the consequences. There was a layer of guilt over his grief for Jason there that simply was not present when he thought about his parents. He’d been a child when they died, helpless to prevent their murders. He’d spent his entire life since then turning himself into a force that could prevent that kind of thing from happening, not just to himself or his own family, but to any innocent in the world.

It hadn’t been enough, in the end. Whatever exactly it was he thought he’d made of himself, it hadn’t been enough.

And Jason didn’t need to hear any of that.

“It’s just...well, something slipped my mind when I said I’d bring you here.” He straightened up, unbuckling the seatbelt and opening the door, Jason doing the same over in the passenger’s seat.

They made their way over to the section of the cemetery that held Jason’s plot. Right next to another.

Jason sucked in a sharp breath.

Rationally, Bruce knew, he hadn’t known, couldn’t have possibly have known, back when he’d had them buried there together, in the same service. Couldn’t have known that he was laying his son to rest for all eternity side-by-side with the woman who had willingly led him to his death. But seeing them there together now that the missing pieces were filled in made his gut twist. He could only imagine what Jason was thinking.

“I didn’t know.” His voice was thick with regret. He laid a gentle hand on Jason’s shoulder, and if Jason didn’t acknowledge it, he didn’t shrug it off, either. He simply stood and stared, as if unable to take his eyes off the two matching headstones: JASON TODD, and SHEILA HAYWOOD.

At the time, it had simply seemed like the last thing he could do for Jason, to have his mother buried next to him. Finding his birth mother had meant so much to him. He’d been ecstatic to meet Sheila, thrown his arms around her straightaway, fully ready to love her and welcome her back into his life, without even knowing a thing about why she’d given him up, knowing almost nothing of what she’d done with her life since then. (And Bruce, damn him for a fool, and been prepared to let him. Why, why had he trusted her with Jason, when he knew so little about her? Why had he simply assumed that as a mother, she would never do anything to harm her child?)

“No, I—I think I get it,” Jason said in a raspy voice. “I mean, you couldn’t have.”

“Do you...want a little time alone here?” Bruce asked.

“Yes, please,” Jason almost whispered. Bruce squeezed his shoulder, and then retreated a distance.

***

It was his own grave that he had come to see, wanting to see and touch the concrete reality of it, but whatever closure it might have offered him was eclipsed by the sight of Sheila’s headstone next to his own.

There wasn’t much on it. Just her name. Her birth date and her death date. Jason’s headstone at least had “Rest in Peace,” on it. (Although, boy, howdy, he sure hadn’t.)

He thought of the words engraved on Catherine’s stone angel: loving mother. Words not present here. And maybe that was the way it should be.

Because Sheila hadn’t been. She hadn’t been loving. Was she even really his mother? She’d given birth to him, and that ought to count for something, but—she’d given him up. And okay, maybe she’d had to. If she’d stuck around Gotham when the police were looking for her, she’d have gone to jail. Probably Willis wouldn’t have gone out of his way to make sure that Sheila got to know her baby, especially not with Catherine around to take care of him.

(And she had, Catherine had. Catherine had been a good mom, before she got sick. Jason missed her so much it made his body ache. He missed her hugging him, he missed eating her sausage hash, he missed the sound of her off-key voice, warbling lullabies. Jason wanted to hug her so hard that he sometimes he woke up with his arms aching, and he’d wrap them around his pillow and miss her until he felt sick himself. It had been years, and he still missed her.)

So maybe he couldn’t blame Sheila for giving up on ever getting him back when he was a baby. It would have been pointless. They’d never have really known each other, anyway, and it would have cost her a lot to stick around and try.

Maybe it should have cost her, a little voice whispered in his head. Maybe she deserved to pay that price.

Well. It was like Bruce said. Sheila had had a second chance. Okay, maybe it was a big shock for her to meet Jason without any warning, but if she’d ever really loved Jason, really wanted him, wouldn’t she have...couldn’t she have...

His eyes burned.

“I died because of what you did,” he said out loud, just to hear himself say it.

Sheila’s grave was silent.

“You helped him kill me.”

Jason sat cross-legged on his mother’s grave and stared down her tombstone. “I don’t hate you,” he told the grave. “You made a lot of bad choices, and you hurt me. I can’t...I can’t love you. But I guess I can say...thank you for having me.” He scrubbed a tear off his cheek. “And I just wish everything was different.”

***

“If it helps any,” Bruce said on their way to Catherine’s grave, “There’s another memorial to you, and Sheila Haywood isn’t anywhere near it.”

“Well, hey, you know,” Jason said, in an attempt at gallows humor, “It’s not like I’m actually in my grave anymore, so does it really matter where Sheila’s buried?”

Bruce’s face acquired a pained look.

Thomas and Martha’s graves were on the route to Catherine’s, and they stopped there for a couple of minutes. Bruce didn’t say much, just stood and looked at them—no, not looked; his eyes were closed. Before they left, he reached out and touched each headstone, carefully, with his hand.

When they reached Catherine’s angel, Jason knelt in front of it. “Hi, Mom,” he said, putting one hand up to touch the angel’s white marble foot. “I miss you. Sorry it’s been awhile. I had, y’know, some stuff going on. Probably just as well you missed that, I don’t think you would have liked to see it. Um...I never got the chance to say this—I didn’t even think about it, I was so caught up in the idea that maybe I had another mom out there somewhere—but I know now that I wasn’t yours, that you didn’t give birth to me.”

He took a huge breath. “And I just wanted to say thank you. Because you made me yours anyway. You loved me, and you took care of me, and you wanted me, and that made me your kid more than the other stuff ever could. I understand that now.” His voice wavered, and he felt his throat tighten and his eyes burn. He wanted to get through this before he started crying again. “I know how bad you felt about how rough things got towards the end. I wish I could tell you—I don’t care. It wasn’t your fault, and you were trying the best you could to be my mom, and that’s more than I could say for stupid Willis or Sheila. I love you, Mom, and I always will.” He pushed himself to his feet, and leaned over to kiss the angel’s hand. “I’ll see you later.”

***

They got back into the car, and as Bruce started the engine, Jason slumped over onto Bruce’s shoulder like a burnt-out greyhound. “You said there was something else,” he mumbled.

Bruce left the parking brake on and tucked his chin over Jason’s head. He didn’t think he’d be able to do that very much in the future. He suspected Jason was going to clear six feet, at the rate he was growing.

“Alfred made you a memorial, for the Cave,” he said, rubbing Jason’s back. “Your costume, in a glass case. So we would see you every day. Remember you every day. He put it in storage the night you came back to us.”

Jason was quiet for a little while.

“I’d like to see it,” he said, and then he sat up straight and buckled his seat belt.

Bruce nodded, and put the car into reverse.

***

Fortunately, the Cave was empty when they made their way downstairs—it was the middle of the day on a school day, and oh God, what were they going to do about Jason’s schooling; Bruce still hadn’t come to any conclusions on that front, and at some point, Jason was going to be settled back in enough start asking about it—and nobody was there to ask questions when Bruce led Jason to the storeroom where Alfred had moved the case.

Alfred had thrown a sheet over it—as a precaution to keep Jason from stumbling over this reminder of his own death without warning? To keep off dust? Bruce didn’t actually know—and Bruce tugged it off.

And there it was, in its great, glass dome glory. The green and red and yellow.

Jason gazed at it silently, and then put his hand out and traced the letters of the words on the plaque.

IN MEMORY OF JASON TODD, it read, and underneath that, simply, ROBIN.

“I was Robin,” Jason said, his voice firm and strong, touching the words. “Not just a Robin. I was Robin.”

“Yes, you were.” Bruce said. “Jason—you should know that I had no intention of ever taking on another partner, after you died. As far as I was concerned, Robin died with you.”

“But then Tim came along.”

Bruce cleared his throat. “He...had very strong opinions on the subject. He felt Batman needed a Robin in order to function. He first tried to convince Dick to become Robin again. Volunteering himself for the position was more or less Plan B.”

“How,” Jason said, and one of his fists balled into a fist, “did he even know about Dick?”

“Dick’s quadruple somersault. A Flying Grayson specialty. He’d seen Dick perform it at Haly’s Circus. And apparently as a child, he had a habit of sneaking out of his house and wandering around Gotham, taking pictures. He was particularly fond of getting shots of Batman and Robin. One night, he saw Robin perform the quadruple somersault, recognized it, and made the connection.”

Jason, said, staring at him, “Bruce...that is seriously messed up.”

Chapter Text

To be honest, Jason wasn’t even really supposed to be in the Cave that late Thursday afternoon, but everyone was out of the house except for Talia and Jason. Talia was upstairs in her guest room, fully occupied writing out coded missives to be mailed to her people (Bruce knew perfectly well what she was doing—she’d flat out told him—but chose not to pry into the contents. And Talia apparently felt that doing it by hand and delivering them straight to the mail carrier herself reduced his opportunity to try), and Jason was feeling restless, so he’d gone down to the Cave to exercise.

He wasn’t Robin (right now), but that was no excuse for falling out of condition. He was still sleeping a lot, but more and more, when he was awake, he was full of energy.

He was running through a series of katas when the computer beeped in alarmingly excited fashion. Jason scrambled over to it and accepted the incoming call. It was Oracle.

“Agent A, be prepared, you have incoming wounded—” Babs paused. “Where’s Agent A?”

“Dentist appointment.”

There was a long, frustrated pause. “Are we talking about a routine teeth-cleaning, here, or—”

“He cracked a tooth this morning. He called from the office and said they were giving him a temporary crown. He won’t be back for a couple hours at least.” Jason, who’d had a whole boatload of dental work after coming to live at the Manor, knew that from firsthand experience.

(Funny how the Lazarus Pit had popped his fillings out and healed the cavities they’d once sealed, but left his crowns intact. Doc Thompkins hadn’t known what to make of that. Talia had merely shrugged, and said there wasn’t much in the lore about the impact of the pits on modern dental techniques. Both of them had taken notes. Both of them.)

Oracle’s comm muted for a moment. Jason would have bet ten bucks that it was to mask the sound of her cursing, as if he hadn’t heard worse as a kid. Or said it himself.

“Killer Croc is tearing up the Bowery, and it’s all hands on deck. There was an injury. The good doctor of Crime Alley has her hands full, and I’d rather not hand this over to a hospital unless it’s absolutely necessary. I was really hoping Agent A could handle this.”

“How serious is it?” he asked. He was mentally constructing a chart of medical outcomes vs how much Alfred would suffer if he had to come home with a naked tooth stump.

“Puncture wounds on the left arm, wrenched elbow, possible fractures. He got picked up and thrown against a wall. Bruising, maybe a concussion.” Babs hesitated a moment. “It’s Robin.”

“What about Batman and Nightwing?” Jason wondered if Bruce had known about this when he’d left a few hours earlier, purportedly for a WE meeting, and kept it a secret from him. Whatever. He could ask later.

“Still fighting Croc. They’re both uninjured, as far as I know.”

“Send him over. I can take care of things until either A or the Doc are free to take a look at him.” Jason could totally handle stitches and x-rays, and Alfred could still get a (temporary) working tooth.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

Jason didn’t know whether Babs was more uncertain about his first aid skills, or his ability to stay cool in the presence of the boy who’d taken Jason’s costume and presence at Batman’s side, but he did his best to project the kind of reassuring confidence he’d mustered as Robin, dealing with frightened victims. He’d been pretty good at it, he thought. Batman always seemed to think so. “Yes, I'm sure. I’m here to help, Oracle.”

“Okay, then. Just so you know, though, I’m sending him with an escort.”

An escort? If Batman and Nightwing were still on the scene, fighting, who on earth was free to escort Robin back to the Cave?

***

Steph was seriously trying to keep her cool, but it was hard. She and Robin had been having a nice afternoon, sitting on a roof in the Bowery, swapping notes on a case, when Robin’s comm had suddenly sprang to life, informing them that Killer Croc was on a berserker rampage, and that they were the closest capes to the scene. They’d been told to stick to protecting civilians, and not to engage directly, as Killer Croc was out of their weight class—which, frankly, Steph was well aware of, and had been even before Robin had gotten a little too close, trying to grab a little kid from underneath a door Croc had sent flying, and Croc had grabbed Robin by the arm and sent him flying.

At least Steph had been able to dart in and grab the kid herself, while Croc was occupied with that.

The next thing she could firmly remember, Batman and Nightwing were there, and Batman all but shoved the dazed and bleeding Robin into her arms, along with a terse command to follow Oracle’s instructions to the letter.

Oracle, in turn, had given her a set of coordinates without telling her where she was heading, only vaguely promising that there would be somebody there who could help.

“It’s a good thing I lift and that you’re such a shrimp,” she’d muttered to Robin, essentially dragging him the two blocks to the alleyway where she’d stashed her bike. Robin only grunted.

He was moaning in pain behind her now, awake enough to hold tightly around her waist with his good arm, but not much else.

The coordinates Oracle had given her sent them off in the direction of Bristol, then eventually off-road, and down a long, dark cave tunnel. She pulled her bike up short as she came up against a metal grate blocking the tunnel. She tapped her comm. “Uh, Oracle? We’re in a cave tunnel, and there’s some kind of gate here.”

“Robin knows the entry code.”

Steph was almost surprised that the comm signal worked underground, but if this was one of the Bat-Crowd bases, maybe she shouldn’t be; they probably had the place wired up so that the god-knew-how-many-thick-feet stone walls weren’t an obstacle.

Someone had sunk a lot of money into this cave. Pun fully intended, thank you.

Steph dismounted, leaning Robin and the bike against the tunnel wall, and looked around, finally spotting an electronic keypad on one side of the tunnel. She examined the grate more closely, and realized that rather than the grate simply being embedded into the stone, there was a recess into which it could presumably retract. She prodded Robin. “Rob? Hey, Robin? You need to unlock the door here, before we can get you some help.”

She couldn’t see his eyes, under the white lenses of his domino mask, but he seemed dazed and shocky, and didn’t respond.

“Shit,” she said. “Oracle, he’s too out of it.”

“Goddammit, can this day get any more out of hand…” There a long pause, and then the sound of rapid typing. “B’s going to kill me for this,” Oracle mumbled—it sounded like a mumble, anyway, even through the voice modulator—and then, in a louder voice, “Spoiler, enter the following code into the system.” Oracle rattled off a long code, which Steph obligingly punched in. The grating groaned, and then retracted into the floor.

Steph hopped back into her bike, pulled Robin up behind her, and resumed down the long, dark tunnel.

It was only another minute or two before the tunnel emptied out into a vast, lighted cavern. Well, partially lighted; there were dark recesses in the upper parts, and the sound of the bike’s engine apparently echoed that far up, because Steph could hear a chorus of soft chitters and the rustling of hundreds of wings.

Bats. A whole colony of bats.

What a surprise.

Down on the ground, there was furniture and fancy-looking equipment all over the place, and holy crap, a freaking life-size T-Rex, not to mention the—was that a giant penny? Who the hell did the interior decorating down here?

She was still gaping at her surroundings, having forgotten for a few precious seconds why she was here in the first place, when Robin moaned again, and at almost the same time, a voice from behind them challenged:

“Did Oracle send you?”

She turned around, and Robin almost fell off the bike behind her. Even as she caught him, the boy who’d spoken darted in to help support him. “This way,” he said, jerking his head, and off in a corner, Steph could see hospital beds and equipment. Between them, they carried Robin over there and settled him on a bed.

“You didn’t answer my question,” the boy said.

“Yes, Oracle sent me,” she said. “I’m Spoiler.”

She knew she ought to focus on Robin and the boy in front of her, but she kept having to suppress the impulse to sneak peeks at her surroundings. This place was wild.

“First time here, huh?” the boy said, and there was something knowing in his voice.

“Yeah,” she said. “They’ve never let me…” She trailed off.

She studied him. He was tall, taller than her, and muscular, with dark hair, and a nice face, but the sleeves of his dark green sweatshirt were too short for him, and the waist was riding up over his baggy black sweatpants. Despite his height, she had the impression he wasn’t much older than her or Robin. It could be hard to tell with teenage boys once they started growing, though. “Oracle promised there would be someone here to help him. That’s you?”

“More or less,” he said, blithely.

Gee, how reassuring.

Robin mumbled something, and the boy focused on Robin for a minute before looking up at her. “Were you there? Do you know what happened to him?”

“Killer Croc grabbed him by the forearm—” she made her hand into a claw to demonstrate, “then sort of twisted him around in the air and threw him maybe fifteen feet into a brick wall.” She modeled it. “I didn’t see exactly how he hit—I was busy—but I think he must have hit his head at least a little bit, because he’s been pretty out of it ever since.”

“Did he pass out at any point?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so. He held onto me the whole time we were on my bike over here.”

“Okay, so,” the boy said. “B probably wouldn’t have sent him here via bike if he was worried about a spinal injury, so I’m going to assume that’s not a concern, although the Doc is gonna check anyway, when she’s free. Can you start looking at his head, see if there’s any sign of bruising or swelling?” He disappeared for a moment, and came back a moment later with a penlight, before she could even touch Robin’s head. He looked at Robin’s domino mask and cursed under his breath. “I don’t suppose you know what he looks like under that mask already, do you.”

“No,” she said in a small voice. Robin knew what she looked like. Knew her name, and her family, and her address, but she didn’t know a thing about him outside the suit. She hadn’t even known this place existed.

“In that case...would you mind turning around while I check his pupils?”

Steph turned around. “I guess you already know what he looks like?” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Yeah, I do,” he said. Was it just her imagination that he sounded bitter, too? “Ech,” the boy said. “Yeah, that’s a concussion. Although I don’t see any actual bruising or lumps on his skull yet—how long has it been? You can turn back around now, by the way, thanks for doing that.”

Steph turned back around. “Uh, maybe twenty-five, thirty minutes since he got thrown, I think?”

“He’d have bruises by now. I’m guessing his head snapped pretty hard when he hit the wall, but he didn’t hit it. Speaking of bruising, can you grab me some ice packs from the fridge over there?” The boy pointed towards it. He looked down at Robin. “I’m gonna start taking off your costume, pal,” he told him.

Robin made a noise of protest.

“Don’t worry, you can keep your mask on for now.” The boy’s voice took on a slightly gleeful quality as he said, “And we have hospital gowns to protect your virtue. But I really need to see where you got hit, and that arm is gonna need treatment, and that means your sleeve has to go, okay, buddy?”

As Steph returned with an armful of ice packs, Robin grudgingly acquiesced.

***

Things were awfully hazy, and kind of hurty, but Tim was aware that somehow he was no longer on the ground where he’d landed after Croc threw him, and that he was in the Cave. And that Spoiler, still fully suited up, except for having swapped her uniform gloves for latex, and someone else—oh god, was that Jason?—were muttering over his left arm. Which was completely numb from the elbow down. Oh god. Oh god, please, no. He tried to lift it, but a hand on his elbow was holding it down. He blindly groped with his right hand, trying to feel for his left. Another hand took his right hand and pushed it back down onto the bed, gently.

“Relax,” Jason said in a soothing voice. “It’s just a local anesthetic while we deal with these puncture wounds. They’re pretty deep, and Killer Croc lives in a sewer, doncha know, so Spoiler and I are just trying to make sure they’re all cleaned out. Otherwise, you get an infection, it goes septic, bam, the next thing you know, it’s gotta come off—”

“Hey, don’t freak him out,” said Steph.

“I’m kidding.” Jason said, lightly. “Mostly. The Doc will set him up with some antibiotics when she has a chance. Or Agent A will break into his stash. But seriously,” and the teasing dropped out of his voice, “these need deep cleaning, so keep his arm down, okay?” Tim thought that was meant for Steph, but he didn’t try to move the numb arm anymore.

“Why are you doing this?” Tim had no idea what to think about the inexplicably alive Jason Todd. Whose most direct interaction with Tim to date was still clocking him in the face with a mug full of hot chocolate, and then trying really hard to break his nose. The Jason who was currently standing over him, working on his hurt arm, and giving medical instructions to an unprotesting Spoiler. This was the most surreal experience he’d ever had. Maybe it was a hallucination. He’d hallucinated Jason before. Maybe he had a concussion.

He’d apparently said at least part of that aloud, because Jason wrinkled his nose. “You actually do have a concussion. Try to take it easy.”

“Oh.” Something else occurred to him. “Can I have a blanket? I’m freezing.”

“When we’re done here, maybe,” Jason said cheerfully. “But you’re cold because we’ve got a bunch of ice packs on the area where it looks like you hit the wall, which is basically your upper right back and shoulder, see? You’re probably going to have some bad bruising even with the ice, but hopefully those will stem the subcutaneous bleeding enough that you’ll actually be able to move tomorrow.”

Tim groaned. What am I going to tell my dad? he thought.

Brain to mouth filter still not working, apparently, because Spoiler suggested, “Why not just tell him the truth, with a little light editing? You were on a date in the Bowery, Killer Croc showed up, you got hurt, and the Doc patched you up in her clinic.”

Jason paused over Tim’s arm. “You guys were on a date? Are you two an item?” He looked up at Spoiler. “You could do better.”

“I don’t know about you and Rob, here, but you literally just met me,” Steph said, sounding amused.

“Miss, I can see your upper arm definition through your costume. You could bench press this guy. You can do better.”

“Oh, but Robin is a hero, you know,” she said, playfully, without the slightest clue what minefield she was waltzing into.

“Is that so?” Jason’s voice was mild, but Tim could hear the hot chocolate mugs in reserve.

“Yup. Just this afternoon, he got bashed up trying to rescue a little girl who was trapped under a door.”

That almost jerked Tim back into full consciousness, and he reached over again with his good hand to grab at Spoiler. “Steph? Is she okay? Did you see what happened to her?”

“Yeah, she is,” Steph assured him, batting away at it. Jason took Tim’s wandering hand and pushed it down again. “I grabbed her while Croc was busy putting the hurt on you, and handed her off to a firefighter. She was a little bruised and a lot scared, but she’ll be okay.”

“Oh thank god.” Tim relaxed. Sort of. As much as he was physically capable of doing when his head hurt, both of his shoulders hurt, his torso was freezing, and he couldn’t even feel half of his left arm.

“Do you want some Tylenol?” Jason asked him, and maybe it Tim was crazy, or maybe it was the concussion talking, but it sounded like Jason cared. “You can’t have any NSAIDS or the strong stuff right now, but it might help the headache at least.”

“Please.”

Jason muttered something at Steph, and after a moment she lifted his head to give him pills and a drink of water.

Jason went back to attending to Tim’s arm. “Sounds like you did a good job out there today...Robin.”

Tim turned his head to the side to hide a tiny smile.

He really hoped this wasn’t all a hallucination.

Chapter Text

Dr. Thompkins studied the x-ray they’d done on Robin. She set it aside, then examined the bloodwork the boy had run, and Steph’s hand-written notes. Steph didn’t actually know what was supposed to go in a patient’s chart, so she’d just winged it, based on a combination of things her mom had talked about, and what she’d picked up from ER reruns.

“Good job, both of you.”

The boy beamed. Steph slumped over in relief, and then immediately straightened up. Just in case.

“He’ll be okay?” she said.

“He’s going to need rest and care, but yes, he’s going to be just fine.” And then the Doc stood, indicating that the boy should go with her, and left Steph sitting there with Robin. Who was now doped up, so she didn’t think they’d be having much of a conversation.

“Sooooooo,” she said, and then she wasn’t sure what else to say. She looked all around the great big cavern, with its big ol’ T-Rex, and the giant penny, and the legion of bats—who cleaned up the guano?—“I bet five minutes from now, Batman comes home and throws me out.”

***

“Jason, I was impressed by how much you and Spoiler were able to do for Robin,” Leslie said, arms crossed, leaning against the cave wall. She was in not-too clean scrubs, and she looked tired, if still pleased. “I hadn’t realized you’d picked up this much first aid.”

Jason went pink. “I’ve learned a lot from Alfred.”

Leslie’s mouth crooked upwards. “That explains some things.” She straightened. “Tell me, Jason, have you ever considered going into medicine?”

Jason’s jaw dropped. He stared at Leslie. After a long moment, he managed, “Uh, no. No, I hadn’t, hadn’t...thought about that.”

“There are paths to helping people that don’t require violence, Jason.” Leslie put a hand on his shoulder. “I just wanted to put the idea into your head.”

***

Steph wasn’t wrong. Not long after the Doc had arrived and looked over Robin, first Nightwing, and then Batman had come roaring into the cave, on a bike and then in the Batmobile, respectively.

And they hadn’t been pleased to see her there.

She’d sprung up out of the chair where she was sitting by Robin’s bed as Batman strode over towards her, Nightwing on his heels. She straightened her back, and put the words “good job, both of you” into the forefront of her mind, just as a buffer.

“What are you doing here?” Batman growled at her.

“You told me to follow Oracle’s instructions exactly. That’s what I did,” Steph told him, keeping her spine straight, and her arms loose and relaxed. “Oracle gave me these coordinates, and then she gave me the code to the gate.”

Batman glanced back at Nightwing, who nodded, and then peeled off in the direction of equipment Steph hadn’t been brave enough to investigate. Not when she was unsure of her ground.

Batman opened his mouth, but Steph was already pointing over at the medbay, and Robin and the Doc. “The doc says he’s fine, by the way. Just needs some rest.”

Batman looked over at them, and at the nameless boy who’d treated Robin with her.

“Did…that boy say anything to you?”

“Not really. He just asked me questions about what happened. And then he asked me to get some ice packs.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“No.”

“Did he ask yours?”

“No,” Steph said, vowing to introduce herself to him as soon as humanly possible. Batman knew who she was, where she lived, who her father was. She didn’t know who he was, but at the very least, she got to decide who knew all those things about her and who didn’t.

“Go,” he told her, pointing towards an edge of the cavern. “Wait.”

“Are you,” she started to say, and then she caught herself, and she went, muttering, “are you literally sending me over to sit in the corner when I’m only here because you told me to…”

She went, she sat, she seethed.

She’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor for maybe fifteen minutes, more resentful by the second, when the boy sat down next to her. He’d approached so quietly she hadn’t noticed him.

“I don’t think I’m supposed to be talking to you,” Steph told him, just to get it off her conscience.

The boy made a face at her.

“Is Robin still okay?”

“Yep. Doing fine.”

“So you just came over to chat, huh?”

The boy took a deep breath, and then said, “the Doc...she thinks maybe I should think about being a doctor.”

Well, then. Bonding in the face of a medical crisis, okay. “Do you want to be a doctor?”

“I never thought about it,” the boy said. He laughed, and then his face went blank, as if his laughter had taken himself by surprise. “It’s wasn’t something...it wasn’t on the table, I guess. Before.”

“My mother is a nurse,” Steph offered, casually. She didn’t ask before what?

“My mom was a grocery store clerk,” he said. After a moment, he added, “She died a few years ago. Cancer.”

“Oh my god,” Steph said. “I’m sorry. My mom’s done some oncology stuff. I know—I know that it’s hard.”

“Thanks,” he said. Then, hesitantly, “What’s that like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being a nurse.”

Steph took a couple of minutes to think about that.

“I don’t have the best take on it, these days,” she said, finally. “When I was a kid, I was so proud of her. I knew that being a nurse meant she helped people. And...I hope that she’s going to help people again someday. But she’s been sick for a long time, and I’m don’t know when she’s going to get better. If she ever will.”

“What do you mean by ‘sick’?” he asked.

Steph’s mouth twisted. “Drugs. She steals drugs from the hospital. Uses them. She has prescriptions, too. Uses them, too. She still works, but sometimes I wonder why she’s doing it. If she still wants to help people, or if...it’s just about the access.”

The kid was quiet for a little bit. Steph thought she might have scared him off.

“Well, my mom did heroin,” he said, eventually. He looked over at her, fist against his mouth, and there was something in his eyes that made her claw her mask off her face and push her hood back so she could meet them properly. What the hell, Batman knew everything about her, and so did Robin. Probably everyone who Batman knew already knew everything about Stephanie and her sordid family history. What did she have to hide?

“I’m Stephanie,” she said, and put out her hand.

The boy took her hand in a firm grip, and a tentative smile crossed his face. “Batman’s gonna kill me, but—my name is Jason.”

***

It was stupid. They’d been joking about Stephanie dating Tim—(“c’mon, he’s barely three feet tall” / “Shut up, don’t be so rude. He’s at least four feet,”) and Stephanie asked him if he was seeing anyone.

He’d said no, obviously. He wasn’t. There wasn’t anyone like that. The closest Jason had ever come to dating was probably Rena, and well, if they were ever more than friends, it was news to him.

Rena.

He hadn’t thought about Rena.

He hadn’t thought about school.

Two years. That’s what Talia had said, and Bruce. And Alfred. And the internet, and cable, and the wall calendars. Two years. Two whole years.

Jason had been out of school for two whole years.

Jason had never quite made it to really confiding in other kids. Rena was the closest thing he had to a real school friend. She was—that was to say, had been—just a year older than him; sixteen to his fifteen. And two years had passed since Jason could remember.

She would be turning eighteen soon. He couldn’t remember her birthday; maybe she was already.

Rena was an adult. And Jason...Jason was still fifteen.

As far as Rena was concerned, Jason was dead. As far as all of his classmates were concerned, he was dead. And his teachers, they all thought—knew—that he was dead. They were right, too, he was dead. Had been. For two years—no, that wasn’t right, it was just....six months, maybe? But then he’d still been as good as dead, the whole rest of the time, until Talia fixed him.

Time wasn’t normal.

Jason huddled in the cave alcove, one he’d stumbled across a few years ago, resting his head on his knees. The advantage of this particular alcove was that no one could see you in it; the downside was that you couldn’t see out.

Jason was lost in a memory of when time wasn’t normal.

When the day was bent around the best times to shove open the dumpster behind a diner and search for the scraps of half-eaten hamburgers or cold lo mein noodles, to dart in and smash a window and grab a gym bag out of a car, to jack up a car and lift the tires. When he’d kept time by knowing which dealers desperately needed to be avoided, and which beat officers, too, while they walked the streets.

Batman had exploded all that. Jason had learned a new kind of time with him, and it had still involved a lot of paying attention to dealers and crooked cops. But Batman and Robin had come attached to another kind of time, a new routine: breakfast. School. Home again, and dinner. And then the night-time. Jason had learned to love the nighttime anew. He hadn’t been afraid of it, not then, not when he was with Batman.

And school...school had its own time. There were classes, the same classes every week, and they all ran the same set periods. It was so easy: Jason went to school, and when he was there, all he thought about was school. He went to class, and in each class, he could just think about class, and lose himself in it, lose himself in geometry, or German, or The Good Earth. He’d gotten so comfortable with school that he’d almost dared to sign up for drama club—oh, he’d wanted to—but that would just have taken up too much time, time he needed for Robin. Time he couldn’t take away from helping Bruce.

Time. He’d lost so much time. He was never going to get it back.

***

Babs’ computer chimed. Incoming call from the Cave. Half an hour ago, it had been Dick; she had a strong feeling she knew what this call was going to be.

And there was Batman’s scowling face on the screen. It was nice in the moment to know he couldn’t see hers.

Bruce was fuming. “What’s in God’s name were you thinking, bringing Spoiler into the Cave without my knowledge or my permission?”

“I was thinking that Robin needed medical attention, Leslie Thompkins already had her hands full with civilian casualties, and that sending Robin to a hospital was a bigger security risk than having Spoiler escort him to the Cave for treatment by Agent A.”

“Did you know that A was unavailable? That the only person here would be Jason?”

“Not when I told you I would handle it, no. Not until I called ahead to warn A, and he wasn’t there.”

To be honest, Babs hadn’t been and still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Jason’s calm offer of help, given that the most successful interaction she’d heard of between those two to date was Jason being in the same room as Tim while completely ignoring his existence. But from what Dick had said, when he’d contacted her to confirm that she had indeed deliberately sent Spoiler to the Cave, Tim was doing fine. As far as Babs was concerned, she’d made the right call.

“She’s seen Jason’s face, Oracle. He wasn’t wearing a mask or costume when Robin and Spoiler arrived here. Right now, he’s protected by anonymity—she doesn’t know who he is, and he doesn’t have a public presence yet—but that’s gone the moment we reveal his existence to the world. It’s going to be a media spectacle, you know that. His face—and his name—are going to be in the news. She’s going to find out. And that puts Jason in danger. It puts all of us in danger.”

Whoops. It hadn’t occurred to her to tell Jason to make sure he was covered up—the thought of even suggesting he pop on a spare domino seemed vaguely cruel to her, given that he was benched indefinitely, and not by choice—when she’d said Robin was coming with someone else. He must have assumed that anybody she sent to the Cave could was trustworthy.

But really—wasn’t she? Granted, Babs had made the decision more by gut than reason, but she did think Stephanie Brown was trustworthy.

“I don’t think that’s true, B,” she said, slowly, giving herself time to think about what she was saying. “Yes, ideally it would have been your decision when and how to bring Spoiler into the inner circle, but that’s where she’s been headed, and it’s time for you to acknowledge that.”

“She’s reckless, and she’s in over her head.”

“Everybody is reckless compared to you, Bruce. I’ll allow that she doesn’t always show the best judgment, and I’m concerned about the degree to which she’s motivated by anger towards her father. But what she’s done—is it really so different from what I did, when I became Batgirl? I didn’t ask your permission when I decided to put on a costume and go out and help my dad. The only difference is that she’s trying to stop a bad person, instead of helping a good one.”

“You had training. You were prepared.”

Babs huffed in amusement. “Ballet training, B. Spoiler already has more martial arts training than I had, back when I started. No matter how confident I felt back then...I know now that I was in over my head, too. Working with you and Robin was good for me. Working with you and Robin would be good for Spoiler.”

“You’re actually suggesting that I encourage her?”

“I think it’s clear at this point that she has no intention of quitting. You are not going to dissuade her from going out at night to fight crime, and if you try, or if you forbid Robin from working with her, all you’ll be doing is cutting her off from the resources and support that could save her life someday. I’ve been working with her, Bruce. She’s smart. She has a lot of potential. But there’s only so much I can do for her—I can’t offer her the training and the equipment that you can.”

Bruce was silent for a long stretch. “I’ll think about it,” he said, and abruptly closed the channel.

Well, this day was going all kinds of interesting places.

***

Jason had wandered off a while ago, with a disconcerted look on his face that she couldn’t really account for based on their conversation, which had been light and chatty, until she asked him if he was seeing anyone. Maybe he was going through a breakup. Maybe he was pining for some girl (or some boy, she reminded herself) who didn’t like him back.

Maybe he’d had a bad burrito for lunch, and it was only just now catching up with him.

She wished he’d come back, though. She was bored out of her mind, just sitting here alone in the corner, waiting for Batman to decide what he was going to do with her. She wondered how much shit she’d be in if she just took her bike and left. Would that gate open automatically from the inside? Did she need another code for that? She hadn’t even had a chance to memorize the one Oracle had given her to open it from the outside. Also, she wasn’t really sure where she was. She had a good enough sense of direction that she was pretty sure she could reverse the series of turns that had brought her here, though, assuming she was ever allowed to leave.

A shadow fell over her, and she realized Batman had come over without her even noticing. How could somebody that big move that quietly?

Having him looming over her made her feel anxious, so she scrambled to her feet. It didn’t help as much as she’d like. He had nearly a foot on her, and he was probably three times her weight.

Also, duh, he was Batman.

It annoyed her to feel so nervous. Coming here hadn’t been her idea. She’d been following Batman’s order to follow Oracle’s orders. And it wasn’t like she knew anything more about Batman and Robin than she had before, except that they had a giant cave with weird furniture, and a kid hanging around named Jason who knew how to do an x-ray and clean out a puncture wound. Like every teenager did.

“Your equipment is substandard and your martial arts training is inadequate,” Batman declared, harshly. “You’re not prepared for this life.”

Steph’s face burned. She cursed herself for not having put her mask back on, never mind that everyone here already knew who she was. It was bad enough having to listen to Batman stand there and tear her down, when all she’d done today, all she’d done, was help. (Even the Doc had praised her). It was worse not to be able to hide the fact that it was getting to her. She vowed to kept her posture stiff and her features as stony as possible.

“But you have potential.”

What the ever-living—

Stephanie gaped at Batman like a fish. That was not where she was expecting this to go.

“Oracle thinks so, and she’s convinced me that you could go a long way with a good teacher. I would like for you to start coming here and training with me and Robin. We can give you better-quality equipment and body armor, and teach you how to use it properly.”

She tried to say something, anything, but no sound came out of her mouth.

“In return, I’d like you to agree not to operate solo at the moment. I’m aware you’re used to working without oversight, but this is non-negotiable. You’re not experienced enough. If you work with me, you’ll follow my orders, or Oracle’s, or Nightwing’s. In that order of precedence.”

“What about Robin?” she managed. Her voice sounded embarrassingly squeaky to her. “Do I have to answer to Robin, too, if I agree to this?”

She was fairly sure that the answer would be yes, and she wasn’t sure she could do it. Not that she didn’t like the guy a lot—she was dating him for a reason—but he could be really overbearing sometimes. And she didn’t like the idea of taking orders from her boyfriend.

There was a pause, as Batman considered it.

“Even with the experience gap between the two of you, given your respective ages and your romantic entanglement, that would be inappropriate,” he finally said. “But when you’re working together, keep it in mind that he’s been doing this longer than you. I would…suggest that you defer to his judgment.”

Suggest. Okay. She could live with that.

Steph nodded, shakily. “Okay, then. I agree. Yes.” She put out her gloved hand, and after a beat, Batman took it in his gauntleted one, and shook it firmly.

Chapter Text

“You seem agitated this evening,” Dr. Sheridan said. “Would you like to talk about what’s bothering you?”

Jason’s hands were clenched on his knees, and he was trying not to twitch his toes inside their shoes.

“Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I’d like to talk about it.”

He tried to find the words, but it was so...parts of ideas kept reshuffling themselves, faster than he could track. He was supposed to be a detective! He wanted to cry.

He didn’t want to cry. He had a headache already.

Dr. Sheridan was still sitting there, patiently.

“I think I had an epiphany,” Jason finally said.

(A memory of Babs, explaining the word epiphany, and then the song to him—she felt guilty for letting him listen to the musical. “You might be too young for this.” But Jason had loved the pitch-black humor, and all the wordplay that he could follow, and he’d become a Sondheim fan.)

“What kind of an epiphany?”

Where were his words? Why was this so hard? He’d been talking to Dr. Sheridan for weeks. He wanted to say things, but with every moment he felt like he was sinking further into an ice bath.

He bent himself over his knees. “I’m stuck here,” he finally managed. “I can’t, I can’t,” he said. “I’m stuck here.”

“Was that your epiphany?” Dr. Sheridan’s voice was gentle, and just a bit curious.

“Everyone I know—everyone I knew—is older and I’m not,” Jason said, wretchedly. “My classmates. Dick. Babs—she’s better, and I’m so glad, but—” Jason’s face twisted, and he bit his lip hard, and he could taste pennies on his tongue. “I’ve lost all this time.”

“Lost time—in what sense?” asked Dr. Sheridan.

“Everyone is too old,” Jason said, and he was pretty sure he was going to cry again, and godhe was tired always feeling seconds away from losing it; he wished he was still Robin, fearless and full of strength. He also kind of wanted to kick the Scarecrow in the face. That guy was such an asshole. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he finally managed. “I’m not in school, and I can’t go back, because I’m supposed to be dead. Everyone I know—they’re older than me now. When I quit school the last time, it felt like the end of the world, but it was the only thing I could do, you know? I had to. I had to take care of my mom. But she’s dead now. And I don’t—I don’t know how to come back from this. I don’t know if I can.” Jason tried to breathe, but it turned into a shuddering sob.

He thought he might have lost a few seconds, which scared him. Please, no more missing time. He could feel Dr. Sheridan’s gentle touch on his elbow. “Jason,” she said, and again, “Jason.”

“I’m here,” he finally managed.

It took a few minutes for Jason to collect himself.

“It worries you, that you’re not in school, that you’ve fallen behind your classmates?”

“Yeah,” Jason said. God, he couldn’t even remember his locker combination—but that was stupid, they would have changed it.

They would have cleaned out his locker.

They would have brought home everything in his locker and given it to Bruce and Alfie. Oh god, they would have brought home his notebooks with all the doodles in them. What if they’d looked at them, and realized how many times Jason had let his mind drift, when he was supposed to be paying attention? All the notes he’d written to himself, that had nothing to do with either school or Robin?

You need to understand that you’re so much more than Robin to me, Jason.

Bruce’s voice, soft and suffering, wound its way around Jason, and somehow, he managed to relax a little.

“Yeah,” Jason said again. “I think I should be thinking about my future. Besides Robin. I think I forgot how to do that.”

He swallowed, hard. This session had come late in the evening, and the sun was setting. The greenhouse was built to take full advantage of both morning and afternoon sun—that was its function, of course—and the sky was a beautiful pink-and-orange sherbet mix.

“That sounds like a good idea,” Dr. Sheridan said. Jason looked back at her, met her steady gaze. Dr. Sheridan’s eyes were brown. Thank god.

“I don’t know how, though,” he said, in a tiny voice. “I’m dead. I’m supposed to be dead.”

***

He knocked on the doorframe of the library before he went in. He wasn’t sure why he bothered; the door itself was open. Bruce was in dark sweats, leaning back in an armchair, lazily holding up a sheaf of papers to read. Talia, wearing slacks and a green blouse, bent over the coffee table, peering at an open book on the table, pausing to make notes in a spiral-bound notebook on her lap.

They both looked up at the knock, and Jason felt a sudden and unexpected surge of want, so strong that for a moment, he forgot why he was there. Wouldn’t it be nice? he thought. Just for once, to have everything in one place, the way you were supposed to.

“Hey, Bruce,” he managed, slinking in and settling himself in the couch opposite them both.

“Jason?” Bruce said. “What do you need?” He set down his papers. Talia had already set her notebook aside.

Jason swallowed, hard. “My last session,” he said. “We decided—I decided, and Dr. Sheridan agrees—that I should be thinking about my future. Not just about Robin. About everything. School and...what comes next.”

He realised that he was shivering, violently. The air conditioning must have been set too low. God, his teeth were chattering. Talia, eyeing him with concern, rose from her seat, and brushed his head as she passed him. “I’ll bring you something warm, habibi,” she said.

Jason crossed his arms, digging his nails into his upper arms, willing himself to stop shivering, and swung his head up, and looked Bruce straight in the eye. “I want to go back to school, Bruce. Whatever you have to do for that to happen, I want you to do it.”

He hadn’t quite landed it—his teeth were still clacking against each other—but at least he’d said it.

Bruce’s face did that thing it only did very rarely, where he got all soft and gentle, like blue cheese on piece of toasted, garlic-rubbed crostini. That was his happy face. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Jason,” he rumbled. “This is...what I was planning for.”

“What do you mean?” Jason clutched at his elbows, and tried to shake less.

“Barbara and I have been discussing this. Nothing would happen without your agreement, of course.”

“Discussing...school? Do you mean her tutoring me again?” Jason thought about that, rubbing his arms. He hadn’t minded the first time. He’d been a literal middle-school dropout. He was so grateful to be given another chance that he’d thrown himself into the home-school tutoring, never let himself blink once during a session, read every book, every assignment as closely as he knew how, peppered Babs and Alfred and Bruce and the other tutors with every question he could think of. He’d been desperate to prove himself. Desperate not to waste the chance.

He’d known it was the only one he’d ever get.

The soft face got less soft, more firm and thoughtful. “Whatever else happens, I do think you may more tutoring to catch up. Since you didn’t finish out the semester.”

“I know,” Jason said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “Tutoring is fine. It’s great.”

“But that wasn’t what I meant,” Bruce said. “We’ve been discussing the best way to re-establish your legal identity. So that you can go back to school—public school, or something else—when you’re ready for it.”

“Oh,” Jason said, completely floored. It was idiotic, but he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Of course he would need a name.

“What name?” he asked, distantly.

Bruce looked at him in concern. “Your name, son. Jason Todd. Or,” and Bruce suddenly looked hopeful, “if you wanted—only if you wanted—this would be another opportunity to change your surname.”

Oh.

Oh.

“How?” he said. “How do we explain,” and he found himself waving both forearms wildly, “you know, everything?”

And at that, Bruce launched into mission mode, outlining the plan he and Babs had apparently come up with (The Martian Manhunter was going to do what?). It was oddly reassuring, and Jason could feel the tremors start to ease. Bruce was all the way up to the media outreach strategy (Lois Lane would have the exclusive, but it was up to Jason to let her interview him or not), when Talia came back into the library with a mug in one hand a blanket in the other.

“No,” Talia snapped. The mug went down on the end table next to Jason, and the blanket was awkwardly slung around his shoulders. “Absolutely not.”

“What do you mean?” Bruce asked ominously.

“Jason cannot leave the Manor. Not now.”

Bruce drew himself up to his full height, and towered over Talia. “Why not?”

The shivering was back, even worse, as he watched them square off. He wanted to shrink into the couch cushions. He really wanted that hot drink. He blindly reached over and grabbed it, pulling it to his chest without tasting it.

“Because he is in danger if he does, you fool! Are you blind to that?”

“Danger…how?”

Jason sat up, still cradling the mug. He was pretty curious about that himself.

Talia stared at Bruce, and then looked over at Jason, her eyes almost wild, and then back at Jason. She took a deep breath. “You took him to Gotham Cemetery,” she said. “Without consulting me. I would have said to wait.”

“I asked,” Jason said at the same time that Bruce said, “Jason asked me to take him.”

The sound Talia made was somewhere between frustration and rage. “Did you even know that you were followed, on that venture, by both my operatives and my father’s?”

From the chagrined look on Bruce’s face just then, the answer to that was “no”. “And when were you planning on sharing that piece of information?” he asked, between gritted teeth.

“I only learned it recently,” Talia said, coldly. Jason was starting to learn that that kind of cold from Talia meant that she was scared. “My communications network is hindered while I am here. Information comes to me much more slowly.”

“Are you telling me that both you and Ra’s have operatives in Gotham at this moment?”

“Are you telling me that you weren’t aware of that?” Talia stared hard at Bruce. “And are you telling me, beloved, that you truly have not thought of what will happen to me the moment I set foot outside your walls?”

Jason hadn’t. And he thought, looking at Bruce, that Bruce hadn’t given it much thought, either.

“We are currently in a ceasefire,” Talia said. Still cold. “My father respects you too much to encroach on your sanctuary. He merely waits for me to depart of my own will.”

“I’m sorry, Talia,” Bruce said, “but that has nothing to do with Jason.”

“It has everything to do with Jason!” Jason could almost hear Talia’s teeth grinding. He drew his knees to his chest, still clutching the mug. It smelled like roses and milk. “I have made a colossal error in judgement. Had I merely delivered Jason back to you and left, my father would have lost interest in him. By lingering this long, by allowing myself to become besieged here by his men, I have tipped my hand. He knows now the depth of my regard for Jason. Here, in this house, Jason is protected. But once he re-enters the world, he will become a target. My father will not hesitate to use him as bait to draw me out.” He’d never seen Talia this agitated, not even in back in Greece, sneaking away from the Lazarus Pit.

I can take care of myself, Jason wanted to say, but he knew it wasn’t true, not about this. He felt confident he could hold his own against two or three League assassins (assuming Ra’s didn’t hire, say, Deathstroke). He’d apparently stayed in training while he was in Talia’s care, and he hadn’t lost any of his skills (although recently, he’d been finding himself tripping over his suddenly-much-longer arms and legs, and bumping into some of the Manor’s lower doorframes; this growth spurt thing was throwing him for a loop), but if Ra’s went full death-by-ninja to grab him, he’d definitely be in trouble.

And apparently, so would Talia. “So what, then?” he asked, feeling numb. “Am I just supposed to stay inside the Manor for the rest of my life?”

“Of course not,” Talia said, still vibrating with tension. “I brought you back to Gotham so that you could reclaim your life, not to leave you in the shadows.”

“Then how do you propose to fix this, Talia?” Bruce asked, in a hard, angry voice.

Talia closed her eyes, and her mouth went flat and thin. “I must leave. I must put as much distance between myself and Jason as possible. And soon.”

“No,” Jason said, immediately. “No. You can’t go.”

“That seems wise,” Bruce said.

“No,” Jason said. “You have to find another way.”

“There is no other way,” Talia said.

“Bruce,” Jason said, frantically. “Come on. We can’t just—Bruce, she helped me. We owe her. It’s not fair for her to put herself in danger for my sake.”

He thought Bruce maybe might have started to soften at this plea, but Talia turned and said to him, “This was always going to have to happen, habibi. I could never have stayed, no matter what. There are matters I have been neglecting for far too long.”

“I can’t do this again,” Jason said, his voice hitching. “Please don’t make me do this again.” He swallowed, hard. “أمي,” he said, desperately.

Talia’s eyes widened in surprise, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth, while Bruce visibly jerked. Talia was speechless, but Bruce stood up and came over to put his hand on Jason’s shoulder. There was none of the anger he’d directed towards Talia in his voice when he said, firmly but kindly, “Jason, go to your room. Talia and I need to talk. Alone.”

“If this is about me, I have a right to be here,” Jason said, stubbornly.

“I don’t think you want to be here for this,” Bruce told him, but he was looking at Talia, who still seemed shocked, and his face was grim.

“I see,” Jason said, evenly. “Shouting. Like I haven’t seen that before.”

“Jason…”

“Fine,” Jason spat.

He left the blanket and the mug behind him, and slammed the door shut on the way out.

***

Talia was leaning forward, elbows on her thighs, resting her head in her hands, her long, dark hair falling forward like a curtain to shield her face. But the tremor in her voice concealed nothing, as she almost-whispered, “He has never called me that before.”

“Maybe a byproduct of those Arabic lessons,” Bruce said. Some of the irrational resentment he still felt over that must have come out in his tone, because Talia looked up, faintly confused.

“He has never called me that in English, either,” she said, carefully. “He is like my own child, but...I never laid claim to him, not like that.”

“Do you really think you know what it’s like to have a son, Talia?”

Talia stared at him, and there was something distant and unfathomable in her face. “Do you?”

Bruce was speechless for a moment, before rage rushed in. “How dare you—”

“You did not sire the children you raised as your own, in this house. But you call them family anyway. You claim Jason as your son, and here, in the eyes of the law, it is so. I have watched over Jason, protected him, cared for him—I gave him life, beloved. I could make a claim of my own.”

He really and truly could not tell whether Talia was trying to antagonize him, or if she was too angry herself to care about the consequences of what she said. “If you think,” he said, in an ice-cold voice, “for one fucking second that you can take Jason away from me again, I will end you, Talia. No matter what we once were to each other.”

“If I intended to keep Jason with me, I would never have brought him back to Gotham in the first place,” Talia said, her voice just as wintry. “I would have kept him by my side. I would have trained him myself. He would have been mine, forever. And you would never have even known.”

His fist was swinging towards her faster then he even knew. He froze, appalled with himself, with his fist halfway to her face.

Until Talia round-house kicked him in the chest.

He staggered back against the desk, then straightened up, and backhanded her across the face.

He expected words, taunts, but nothing came beside blows. Talia was under his arm in an instant and bending it backwards and shit there went the shoulder.

But she had gotten too close, and left an easy opening, so he hooked his ankle under her knee and yanked her off her feet. She landed hard on her side, curling up defensively, and then rolling back up onto her feet. She was panting. So was he, more from emotion than exertion. She twisted just a little to the left, and then the Ḥamāsah was hurtling at his face, and oh dammit.

He sat up slowly, trying not to bleed on the book. Talia was sitting on the floor several feet away, her head buried in her hands again, and she was shaking.

The library door burst open.

“Master Bruce—oh dear God,” Alfred said.

“If you would just bring us some ice packs, Alfred,” Bruce managed. “Thank you.”

Alfred shut the door behind him.

It wasn’t enough, not for either of them, but maybe it had taken the edge off.

Talia stumbled onto her feet over to Bruce, who let her take his arm and pop his shoulder back into place. He stayed on the floor, as she collapsed back into a chair opposite from him.

“You kept him from me,” he said, bitterness, bitterness, ashes in his mouth; he could still smell the lingering traces of smoke. It took a long time for that much smoke to dissipate; longer than it took for the body of a dead teenager to lose heat. “I could have had him back a whole year ago, but you kept him from me.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted him a year ago.”

Bruce was on his feet before he even knew it, looming over Talia in the chair, snarling words at her that even he couldn’t hear. He knew she bounced up from the chair, and shoved his hands away from her.

They were glaring at each other, face to face, and Talia was pale, but scathing. “He was broken,” she kept repeating. “No matter what you say, you would not have wanted him as he was, then. Yes, you would have taken him back; you would have grieved over what had become of him. And then you would have set him aside, because he would never again be the son that you had loved, and he would just have been grief, and grief always, just a distraction, a reminder of your failure as a father, but he never would have again been truly Jason—”

This time, he didn’t wait for her to hit him first.

She staggered back, clutching at her nose.

“You could have—” the words curdled in his throat. “You could have done all this a year ago.”

“I told you,” she said. “This was a last resort. I didn’t want to subject Jason to the Pit.”

“You’re lying.”

Talia glared at him, still holding her nose. He thought he might have broken it. “You have no idea what I have risked,” she said. “You have no idea what’s at stake.”

“Talia,” Bruce said, wearily, “I don’t give a damn.”

Chapter Text

Jason was stalking up the stairs to his room when Dick jogged up behind him. Jason was clearly trying to ignore him.

“Hey, Jase,” Dick said, in what he hoped was an inviting tone. “I just got in. Alfred said you looking kind of down.” Okay, the exact words were, “Master Richard, Master Jason seems most distraught, perhaps you could speak to him.”

“Just fuck off,” Jason snarled. “Go patrol and die.”

You’re never going to unwind, are you? Dick thought, clenching his fist. It was so much easier with Tim. Tim liked Dick. Jason was a spiteful little armadillo who hated Dick and threw things at people’s faces. He was Dick’s brother, but he was also a hateful little shit.

But then, Jason turned abruptly around on the stairs, and for once, he was looking down at Dick, and not the other way around. He stared at Dick, and Dick stared back, not sure what was going on.

“Kitchen roof, five minutes?” Jason said, and it didn’t sound like a request.

Dick slowly nodded.

***

Dick showed up with a flask of coffee; Jason with a single cigarette and a lighter.

“Oh my god, where the hell’d you get that?” Dick asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Taped underneath my bed,” Jason said. He was fiddling with the cigarette, but made no move to light it.

“It’s probably all stale and gross.”

“Probably.”

Dick sipped from the flask, then offered it to Jason, who made a face. “I’m fifteen, what’s wrong with you?”

“It’s just coffee, Jason.”

Jason’s whole face brightened. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Dick passed Jason the flask. Jason took a swig. “Ahh, that’s the stuff.”

Jason sounded blissful, Dick thought. Although he didn’t really know what Jason was like when he was happy. “Do you like coffee?” he asked.

“Who doesn’t like coffee?”

“You’re fifteen, remember? Most fifteen year-olds don’t like coffee.”

“Pfft,” Jason said. “I drank coffee before I met Bruce.” He waggled his still-unlit cigarette at Dick. “He made me quit smoking, and he only let me have two cups of coffee a month.”

Dick decided not to discuss his own childhood coffee habit with Jason, especially since there was a good chance it was the reason for Bruce’s caffeine crackdown on Jason.

They didn’t say much after that, just sat there, passing the flask of coffee back and forth between them for half an hour. Dick had assumed Jason wanted to talk about something, but he didn’t seem inclined at the moment, and Dick didn’t want to press.

It wasn’t until Dick drained the last out of the flask, and started to stand up, that Jason looked up at him with puppy eyes, and Dick realized that Jason wasn’t angry, he was sad. Dick sighed, and decided he needed to take the lead here after all. “All right,” he said, sitting back down. “What’s going on?”

“Talia is going to leave,” Jason said quietly.

“What?” Dick said. “Already?” Fucking finally! “I...was expecting her to stay longer.”

“I didn’t—” Jason broke off. “I didn’t think about her ever leaving.” He sounded so lost and hurt that Dick risked curling an arm around Jason, and wonder of wonders, Jason slumped over against Dick’s shoulder. They were almost the same height now, which, wow. Jason was a lot taller at 15-mumble-something than Dick had been at his age. Had to be the Pit. (Dick had sneaked a look at Jason’s updated file last week, so he knew that was the current theory.)

“Yeah, neither did I,” Dick said.

“Oh shut up, you hate her,” Jason said, crossly. “You’ll be glad when she’s gone.”

Jason was...not wrong. But still. “When she first brought you back—especially before I knew that you were really you—” tread carefully “I assumed that this was...all about getting into Bruce’s good graces. Her hoping he’d be so grateful to have you back that he’d throw himself into her arms, or something like that.”

She dragged you back to Bruce’s doorstep like a cat with a dead bird in its mouth, begging for love in return.

Probably best not to put it that way to Jason.

“It’s not like that,” Jason said. “She’s not like that.”

How would you know? You’re just a kid who’s never been in love. You didn’t see what they were like together. You don’t know Talia like I know her.

But maybe—maybe Jason knew Talia in a way that Dick didn’t. Maybe the Talia that Jason…loved...actually existed. Maybe that version of Talia wasn’t just a show she was putting on for Bruce.

“If you say so, kiddo,” Dick said, eventually. “Seemed like things were getting awfully domestic around here. But if she’s getting ready to leave, either that was never the plan, or she’s gotten tired of playing house and hoping.”

And, shit. He could tell from the fierce look on Jason’s face, and the way that Jason jerked away from him, that that had not been the right thing to say. Jason was squeezing the cigarette and lighter so hard in his hands Dick didn’t think that thing was going to be smokable.

He tried to reclaim some ground. “Look. Jason. I know that you care about Talia a lot, and I can tell that she cares about you. So it doesn’t matter how I feel about her. All that matters is that this is going to be hard on you. And you can talk to me about this any time, I promise. I’ll try not to be a jerk about it, okay?”

Jason shook his head. “I hate this,” he said, and he sounded so miserable, Dick’s heart lurched. “Why does this keep happening? Why does everyone leave?” His hands were pressed up against his eyes.

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” said Dick, gently. “I promise, I’m sticking around this time.” He reached out a hesitant hand, and cupped the side of Jason’s head.

Jason’s hands fell away from his face, and he was looking at Dick, raw and terrified and so very young. It hurt to look at him. Even Tim wasn’t this young.

“Jason,” Dick said. “You’re always going to have Bruce. And you’re always going to have Alfred. And you’re always going to have me. You can always call me. I want you to call me, okay? Not just when you’re having a hard time. Call me when you had a really great night. I want to hear about it. Call me when you tripped and sprained your ankle, and Bruce has you benched over it. Call me when you ace a test, and I know that you keep pulling in high grades, because Bruce and Alf never shut up about how proud of you they were.”

Jason flushed slightly, smiling, but trying not to show it.

“And Bruce isn’t going anywhere. I can absolutely, one hundred percent guarantee you that. You’ll be lucky if he ever lets you leave the house again.”

“See,” Jason said, ruefully, “That’s part of the problem.”

***

Jason said he wanted to be alone to think, and watch the sunset, so Dick left him there, still fingering the cigarette and lighter. He thought about taking them off Jason—Bruce wouldn’t be happy if he saw Jason with a cigarette—but since Jason had made no move to light up so far, Dick figured he’d grabbed them because just holding them was a stress-comfort thing.

Besides, it’d just piss Jason off. They were still building a foundation of trust; going heavy-handed authority figure on Jason was not going to help with that. Jason already had a Bruce. Dick wanted to be the person Jason came to when Bruce’s Oh My GOD Bruce levels rose intolerably high.

He ran into Alfred downstairs. “Hey Alf, have you seen Bruce? I need to talk to him.”

“Master Bruce is currently in the library with Ms. al Ghul,” Alfred said, in the exact tone of I am done that still made the hairs on Dick’s arms stand up.

“Alfred?”

“Master Bruce and Ms. al Ghul have had—shall we say, a spat,” Alfred said. “I believe I’ve managed to get most of the blood out of the carpet.”

Dick started to chuckle, then he stopped. Three guesses what Talia and Bruce were fighting about, and the first two didn’t count. Sounded like it had gotten ugly, too.

He didn’t bother knocking on the library door, just opened it, and cripes, Alfred actually hadn’t been kidding about the blood; there was a damp patch on the Persian carpet, where someone had clearly been scrubbing. Talia was sitting on the couch, pressing an ice pack to her nose; Bruce was in a chair, with ice packs draped over one shoulder, holding another with his good arm to his temple. “Alfred said you had a spat. What the hell happened here?”

“Custody dispute,” Bruce rumbled. “Tempers flared. Blows were exchanged.”

Talia made a vaguely affirmative sound from the couch.

Dick strode over to Bruce, and pulled his hand away from his temple. There was an uneven laceration there—small enough that it wouldn’t need stitches, though—and Dick couldn’t tell what had caused it. Bruce indicated the desk, and there, Dick could see a large, heavy green-bound book with a smear of blood along one corner. Despite himself, he felt his lip twitching. Like...guardian, like son, apparently.

He went over to Talia, gesturing for her to let him examine her nose. Not that Alfred wouldn’t have done this already, and decided whether anything merited more than an ice pack, but he wanted to see for himself the extent of the damage they’d inflicted on one another.

Talia rolled her eyes, but acquiesced. “It’s not broken,” she said.

“You’re going to have a black eye anyway,” he said. “Maybe two, if you’re lucky.” He could see another bruise blooming across her cheek. Bruce had hit her in the face, at least twice, then.

“I’m aware, Richard.”

“So.” Dick put his hands on his hips, and glared at the both of them. “Did either of you geniuses ever think about the fact that Willis Todd was arrested on charges of spousal battery? Twice?”

Catherine had declined to press charges, both times—a depressingly common phenomenon when it came to domestic violence—but Dick would eat his motorcycle helmet if Willis had only ever hit her twice. It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out why violence towards women was Jason’s most reliable trigger, so well documented that Bruce had put it in Jason’s file. It didn’t matter that Talia was a world class fighter in her own right, or even that she’d almost certainly thrown the first punch; if Jason saw Talia come out of an argument with Bruce with a black eye and a bloody nose, Dick knew he was going to go right to Dad hit Mom!, and the fallout was going to be spectacularly bad.

“If you absolutely had to brawl to express your feelings, you could have at least avoided hitting each other in the face, where Jason can’t possibly miss the evidence that his father and his pseudo-mom have been beating each other up.” Dick knew he knew he was being a hypocrite—he was a little too quick with his fists himself, when his temper was up—but right now, he didn’t care. “If you both care about Jason as much as you say you do, you would know better than to do something guaranteed to badly upset him.”

Bruce’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he was pinching the bridge of his nose. Talia actually looked guilty, or at least Dick thought so. It was hard to be sure, since guilt was an emotion Dick had never observed in Talia before.

“Dammit,” Bruce said. “You’re right.”

“Both of you—you’re going to keep your distance until I’ve talked to him. Am I clear?”

Bruce had slumped over. “Tell him that Talia dislocated my shoulder. It might help.”

“Oh my god,” Dick said. “You’re both useless. Just...stay here.”

***

Finding Jason wasn’t hard, since he hadn’t moved from the roof where Dick had left him. It was a pretty nice sunset, Dick thought, and peaceful enough that Dick hated to break Jason out of his contemplative state.

“So,” he said, settling himself back on the roof next to Jason, “I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“About what?” Jason asked, not sounding terribly curious.

“After you left, the argument Bruce and Talia were having kind of...escalated.”

Jason twitched. “What do you mean, escalated?”

“Escalated in the sense that it got physical.” Dick sighed. “What I mean, is, they both lost their tempers in a big way, and they started throwing punches at each other. I feel the need to stress that it was mutual. It wasn’t just Bruce, and it wasn’t just Talia.”

There was a slight hitch in Jason’s breathing, but so far, he seemed calm. Calmer than Dick had anticipated. “Are they okay? Is anyone hurt bad?”

“Nah. Talia’s gonna have a black eye and some bruises for awhile. Bruce said she dislocated his shoulder, but she put it back, so he’s just gonna be stiff for a bit. And she also threw an antique book of Arabic poetry at Bruce’s face which left a bit of a scratch, so I guess I can see where you got it from. But they’re both okay, and I already yelled at them, and they know how stupid they’ve been, and they’re sorry.”

Jason didn’t respond to the joke at all, but that was fine; Dick hadn’t really expected him to. But the overall non-reaction was weird and a little bit concerning.

Then Jason picked up the cigarette, put it to his lips, and lit it. He took a deep drag, and blew out a lungful of smoke into the quiet evening air.

Dick bit his tongue.

Then Jason gagged, and made a comically exaggerated face of disgust. “Gah, that’s disgusting. There’s nothing worse than a stale cigarette.” He stubbed it out on the roof, and stood up, pocketing the lighter. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What?”

“I want to leave.”

“What—wait, where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere that isn’t here. Can we go to your place? Your place is fine,” Jason said. “I can’t go anywhere public right now, and they’ll be pissy if I take off on my own. So you’re on babysitting duty, I guess.”

“Hold on a sec,” Dick said, trying to catch up. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Jason, you haven’t even left the Manor since you got back.”

“It’s fine, Dick,” Jason said. “Bruce took me out a few weeks ago. I’m not saying I want to go to Starbucks. I would just like to not be here.”

“Jason, come on.”

Jason looked Dick dead in the eye, and said, intensely, “Dick? I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to have to look at them and see what they did to each other when they were fighting about me. I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want to have to think about it.”

“Okay, Jase,” Dick said softly. “Whatever you need.”

Chapter Text

Perhaps I'll see you.

Talia had taken back the Ḥamāsah, cradling it on her lap, and she was reading from it, silently, her lips moving along with the text. Her long, dark hair had fallen again in curtains on both sides of her face, but he could see her clearly.

Her face was wet.

Bruce read her lips as she mouthed the words, and he translated the poem from Arabic into English in his head. So shall I see you with rapture—while living is tender—

Then he started to mouth along in Arabic, as best he could remember. “And time is still a boy—”

Bruce abruptly realized he was reciting aloud.

Talia looked up at him, with her blooming bruises, a face defiant; a face full of pain and regret. “They were years of love,” she said, out loud, and in English. “Their length made to be forgotten.”

“Days of separation set out, following passion with grief,” Bruce replied, softly.

“Days,” Talia said. “As if they were years. Then those years passed…”

“As if they both were dreams.”

“As if they both were dreams,” Talia repeated, in a voice barely above a whisper. “You have to do it, my…” her face crumpled. “Bruce.” Talia put her hands out towards him, still sitting on the couch, her head bowed. “I give him back you to you. You cannot fail him.”

“I know, Talia,” Bruce rumbled. He watched her outstretched hands clutch, and then retreat.

“No. You don’t. You cannot fail him,” Talia said. Her face was twisted towards the side, but he could see something fierce and frightening in it. She closed her eyes. “I should not have stayed. I should not have let him love me. I should not have…” She shuddered. “This was a mistake. I’ve made so many. There isn’t room for you to make any more of them.”

There’s never been room enough for my mistakes, he thought. Don’t burden me with yours.

“I’m going to find the boys,” was all he said, as he stood, and left her.

He wasn’t leaving Talia. He was only leaving the room.

***

Finding the boys proved more difficult than Bruce initially anticipated. Jason had not, in fact, gone to his room. Or if he had, he hadn’t stayed there.

Dick’s room was similarly empty.

Bruce’s pulse picked up. Too soon; you’re getting ahead of the facts. He debated scouring the Manor himself against going straight to Alfred, potentially embarrassing himself, only to hear that they were—anything, anywhere safe—sparring in the Cave, or hiking on the grounds at night.

He went to the kitchen.

Alfred was stress-polishing silver. Not a good sign; Alfred was still angry with him.

“Do you know where the boys have gone off to?”

Alfred didn’t bother to look up. “Master Dick has decided to take Master Jason off your hands for a week or so,” he said, in a chilly voice.

“What?”

“It was at Master Jason’s behest, I gather,” Alfred said. “He expressed a desire not to have to witness evidence of the damage you and Ms. al Ghul inflicted upon each other during your recent disagreement.”

Guilt washed over Bruce, but it was quickly displaced by fear. “They’ve left the grounds?”

“Indeed, sir.” Alfred was starting to pick up on Bruce’s worry; he’d set aside the bowl he’d been working on, and he was stripping off his gloves. “Master Richard indicated that they would be staying at his apartment in the Upper East Side. Is something the matter?”

“The League, Alfred,” Bruce said. “They’ve been in the city, waiting, this whole time. They’ve been waiting for Talia to leave the Manor. And if they can’t get her, they’ll take Jason, and use him as bait for her.”

Alfred’s face went white. “Oh my Lord,” he muttered, as he was already on his feet, and dialing the landline.

Bruce’s thumb hovered over #2 speed dial, and he held his breath.

He could hear the tinny sound of phone dialing. On, and on it rang. Nothing, then voicemail. Alfred hung up, and dialed again.

Bruce was already calling Dick’s cell. It went straight to voicemail, and Bruce hung up before Alfred finally gave up on the landline for the second time.

“Should have gotten him a new phone,” Bruce muttered. “I’m going out, Alfred.”

“Understood, sir.” Alfred hesitated. “If she asks…”

“Lie to her,” Bruce said, firmly. “If the League does have them, and she comes out after us looking for Jason, it could trigger a war. Talia following me is exactly what Ra’s is hoping for. Keep her here. Tell her anything you need to, if it comes to it. But don’t let her leave.”

Alfred nodded briskly.

***

Dick’s apartment was empty. The place was something of a wreck, but that was normal enough when Dick was in residence there, in between Alfred’s occasional visits. More to the point, the apartment’s security was intact, and there were no signs of forced entry. It wasn’t clear to Bruce whether Jason and Dick had ever made it here in the first place. He hadn’t seen any League operatives on the way over here...but if the League had successfully snatched Jason and Dick, they might have withdrawn, waiting for Talia to show her hand.

Time to bring in Oracle.

***

Two hours ago:

While Jason was throwing socks and underwear into a knapsack—Dick estimated it was going to take a few days before makeup would be sufficient to cover up the evidence of the fight—Dick dropped a word to Alfred, to let him know where they were going, and Jason’s reasons for wanting some distance from the Manor for a little while. Alfred didn’t try to dissuade him, which reassured Dick that it was the right move. Or that at least, Alfred didn’t think it was a wrong one.

He’d come on his bike, but it wasn’t hard to scrounge up a spare helmet out of the garage for Jason. “All set?” He said to Jason.

“Yep,” Jason said, with a determined look, as he slung the strap of the knapsack over his chest. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” He said it with a completely straight face, and it was so cute that it was all Dick could do not to throw his arms around him and squeeze the stuffing out of him.

The engine was too noisy for conversation on the way to Dick’s apartment (this was the day-cycle; the Nightwing one had a top-notch muffler, because, y’know, stealth), but Jason didn’t seem talkative, and Dick honestly wasn’t sure what to say anyway, so it didn’t matter.

In any case, Jason’s silence lasted exactly as long as it took them to reach Dick’s place.

“This place is a dump,” Jason announced, surveying the wasteland of Dick’s apartment. “How can you make this much mess when you don’t even live here most of the time?”

“I’ve been busy,” Dick said. Which was true. It wasn’t like Dick didn’t know how to clean or do laundry, but he was busy—he was always busy—and when he was busy (always) maintaining his living spaces tended to fall by the wayside. As long as he could eat, sleep, and not breathe toxic mold, they were serving their intended purposes.

“This is gross,” Jason informed him, kicking over a pile of laundry that, okay, Dick didn’t think was that old, but it had released a strange smell when Jason unearthed it. “I’d ask if you’ve ever heard of a vacuum cleaner, but what’s the point, when you’ve obviously never picked up anything off the floor in your life.”

“Jason…”

Jason opened Dick’s fridge, then recoiled. He didn’t even say anything, just pointedly looked at Dick.

Dick winced. “We can order Chinese.”

Jason found Dick’s landline, and he was punching in a number.

“Get whatever you like, but make sure you get some pork fried rice and sesame chicken, okay?”

“I’m not calling for take-out, I’m calling Babs,” Jason said. “I take it back about your place being fine. If I stay here, I’m probably going to contract some horrible disease from whatever’s living in the grout in your bathroom.”

“You haven’t even seen the bathroom,” Dick said, almost amused. “And Babs doesn’t live with her dad anymore.”

“Got her number from Alfred.”

Of course he had. Just as he heard the ringing kick in, Dick snatched the phone out of Jason’s hand. Babs picked up, and Dick shoved his hand into Jason’s face to keep him away. Jason batted at it half-heartedly, and then just glared. “Hey, gorgeous.”

“What’s going on, Dick?”

“It’s a little messy. Jason needs a break from the Manor, but now he’s decided he’s too good for el casa del Grayson, and he wants to know if he can sleep on your couch.”

There was a long pause.

“Dick, seriously. What the hell is going on?” Babs asked.

Dick took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’ll fill you in later. Just...Jason needs someplace he feels safe right now. And Jason thinks you’re safe.”

“Okay,” Babs said. Dick could hear her anxiously drumming her fingers on her desk, along with some typing. “You’re both in the system. Come on over.” She paused. “Just so you know, Spoiler is here.”

Dick put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Just so you know, Spoiler is there,” he informed Jason.

Jason perked up. “Spoiler? You mean Stephanie is there?”

“I think we’re good,” Dick told Babs.

***

It was fun, watching Jason’s eyes pop, when he took in the main room, particularly at the inside of the clockface, and Babs’ elaborate workstation right underneath it. There was actually more IT equipment packed into Babs’s floors here than there was in the entire Batcave, and Dick could see Jason trying to take it all in, his eyes falling on unexpected pieces of equipment, clearly wondering what they were meant for.

They’d really upped their tech game in the past couple of years, and Jason seemed floored by it all.

“Jason!” Babs turned around and wheeled over towards them. “Welcome to the Clocktower.” She put up her arms, and Jason sank down into them for a fierce hug.

It lasted longer than hugs normally did, and Dick wandered over into a corner, and inspected some discarded equipment for a few minutes. What an interesting dead modem. And over there, two, maybe three badly frayed USB cables. Wild.

“Where’s Stephanie?” Jason said, when he and Babs were finally done with the hug-fest, not that Dick was in any way jealous.

“She’s getting changed,” Babs said. “She said if everyone else was in civvies, she wanted to be in them too.” Babs reached out and grabbed Jason’s hand. “This is the first time for her, okay? We’ve only ever—” Babs waved her free hand around. “We’ve never been social before.”

Jason’s mouth crooked, and he glanced down, indicating his slightly too-short jeans and slightly too-big sweatshirt. (Alfred had admitted to Dick that until Jason’s unexpected and rapid growth spurt finally tapered off, he’d resorted to raiding Dick and Bruce’s respective wardrobes to provide Jason with clothes.) “She already knows me,” he said.

Babs smiled. “I guess so.”

“Hey, Oracle—I mean, Barbara—I mean, Babs—oh shit, they’re here, I just have to—” that was Stephanie, presumably, but she immediately vanished. Dick had the faint impression of blonde hair whipping around a door.

Stephanie reappeared a few minutes later barefoot in pale blue women’s sweats, her long blonde hair damp and loose around her shoulders. She looked nervous.

Dick put out a hand for her to shake. “Nice to meet you out of uniform for once, Stephanie. I’m Dick Grayson, aka Nightwing.”

Stephanie’s jaw dropped. “Dick Grayson? Nightwing is Dick Grayson? You have got to be kidding me. Wait, hold on—you were an aerialist when you were a kid, right? Didn’t your family have a circus act?”

Dick grinned at her. “Yeah, I was. Still am; I just wear a different uniform these days.”

Jason waved at her. “Jason,” was all he said.

“Yeah, I remember you from that time when you deep-cleaned my boyfriend’s puncture wounds,” Stephanie said, brightly. “So, are you aka someone else, too?”

Jason’s smile grew a little forced. “Nah,” he said, casually. “I’m just Jason.”

***

Babs rested her head in her hand and gritted her teeth. “If I have to listen to one more second of this, I am throwing everyone out. Including you, Dick.”

“Empire has a better underlying story structure.”

“Yeah, but there’s nothing in Empire as cool as Luke signalling Artoo for his lightsaber, and then, I mean, just destroying the whole picnic.”

“Luke’s backflip was pretty sweet,” Jason conceded. “But you’re still wrong. Empire is objectively better than Jedi.”

“Guess what, kids!,” Dick announced, sprinkling popcorn over both of their heads, and watching them try to dodge it. “All things Star Wars are now banned from this house forever, according to our landlady, and thanks a lot, both of you. Now it’s either Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or Pride and Prejudice. Chose wisely.”

“Roger Rabbit,” Stephanie said, instantly.

“Which version of Pride and Prejudice?” Jason asked. “Is it the one with the chickens? That one is better.”

Dick hadn’t even realized that there was more than one Pride and Prejudice, so he just said, “Roger Rabbit it is. Stephanie, can you put in the DVD? I’ll make hot chocolate for everybody.”

Jason was mumbling something about wet t-shirt contests when he left, and hell if Dick even wanted to know.

***

They were barely an hour into Roger Rabbit when one of Oracle’s alarms started screaming. She waved at them to continue, while she wheeled herself over to her console, but of course they all ignored her in favor of eavesdropping. Which would have been easier if she hadn’t picked up a headset.

“...are you talking about, B?” Oracle said. “They’re here.” If there was any doubt what she meant, it vanished when she looked directly over at them. “We’re having pizza and watching a movie, Bruce.” A pause, as the person on the other end of the line responded. “One pepperoni, one sausage and mushroom, and one small veggie, if you must know.”

Steph snickered, while at the same time wondering who Bruce was.

Babs was making mm-hmming noises now. “No, neither of them mentioned that.” There was a little pause, while Babs was tapping on her keyboard. “Nothing on the tower’s perimeter,” she said briskly. I’m giving the Black Canary a heads-up just in case, but right now, we’re good, B.”

Shit, was there incoming hazard? Steph suddenly regretted changing into sweats. She could fight in sweats just as well as she could in her costume, but...well, it helped. She had a belt. It had pouches.

Babs disconnected the call and removed her headset. Her face as she wheeled her way back over to them was yikes. “Would either of you two idiots care to tell me why you didn’t tell me Jason’s potentially being targeted by the League and he’s not supposed to leave the Manor right now?”

Yikes indeed. The good news was that this was clearly directed at the boys, not at her; the bad news was, well, the League. Stephanie was under strict orders to keep her distance from anyone affiliated with the League. Oracle and Batman had been very clear that they were above her pay grade.

“What?” Dick’s head snapped around to stare at Jason. “Jason, what?”

The boy in question mumbled, “Well, you didn’t ask.”

“For god’s sake, Jason,” Babs snapped. “Don’t play games. This is serious.”

Jason’s face took on a sullen cast. “It’s not really about me, it’s about Talia. She thinks if I go out without protection, they might try to grab me to use me as bait, to get to her. And I didn’t go out without protection, okay? That’s why I asked Dick to bring me here. Bruce took me out of the Manor a few weeks ago, and they didn’t make a move then. If they stayed away then, they’re going to stay away now. Everybody knows Nightwing is the best.”

Talia? Talia al Ghul? Steph had heard of her. And once again, Steph wondered who Bruce was.

Dick looked sort of torn; displeased with Jason, but at the same time, appreciating the apparent faith Jason had in his skills. “Dammit, Jase, you should have told me. At least given me a heads-up about what might be coming.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason muttered. “I guess. I’m sorry. I was afraid you’d say no. And I just had to get out of there.”

“Why on earth did Bruce take you out?” Babs asked. “There’s a whole list of things we need to take care of first. You shouldn’t be seen in public right now.”

Jason looked away. “I asked him to take me to Gotham Cemetery.”

Babs mouth opened in a silent oh.

He shrugged, and now he was staring at his hands. “I just...I needed to see it. To make it real. Did y’know,” he looked up at Babs, and his lips twisted in a wry smile. “Bruce buried me next to Sheila? You should have seen his face when we got there, and he realized.”

What the fuck. What the actual fuck. Buried? Who was this kid?

“I know,” Babs said, her voice hollow, while Dick made a horrified noise. “I was at your funeral, Jason.”

What. The. Fuck.

Buried. Funeral. But he was clearly alive and sitting right next to her, so either someone had faked his death—and if so, it sounded like the all-knowing Oracle hadn’t been in on it—or…

The possibility defied comprehension. She knew she was staring, but it didn’t matter; Nightwing and Oracle were entirely focused on Jason.

“I wasn’t,” Nightwing said, bitterly. “But I came to see it after we got back from space. I didn’t think about it—nobody thought about it—even once we knew what she’d done. God, Jason, I’m so sorry.”

“S’not your fault. Or Bruce’s. Nobody could have known. Except me, and it’s not exactly like you could have asked me.” Jason’s face still had that twisted smile on it, as if there was some amusing irony here she wasn’t aware of. Steph was itching to ask questions, but she was afraid if she opened her mouth, they would remember that there was a relative outsider in their midst, and this fascinating flow of information would dry up.

Something had been nagging at her ever since Babs had answered that call from the mysterious Bruce. At first, Oracle—Babs—had called him B. Which could be a nickname for Bruce, sure.

But it was also how Robin and Nightwing addressed Batman, sometimes.

Nightwing had turned out to be Dick Grayson, under that mask, and Dick Grayson was famously the former ward of one Bruce Wayne, Gotham billionaire and celebrity. Businessman, socialite, philanthropist. Sometimes rumored to be the source of Batman’s funding.

But.

What if.

What if Bruce Wayne was more than just the funding?

This is ridiculous,, she told herself. The man is a well-documented airhead.

But...couldn’t the airhead thing be an act? Pretty good way to divert suspicion, if it ever fell on him.

No. It was probably just a coincidence. Bruce Wayne wasn’t the only Bruce in the world. Nightwing and Batman worked together, but that didn’t mean they had any kind of connection out of the costumes.

Still...the Manor, Babs had said. Didn’t Wayne have one of those? She was pretty sure she’d seen pictures of it in the Gazette. The Manor, where Dick—Nightwing—had presumably just been, picking up Jason to bring him over here.

“No way,” Steph breathed. “No fucking way; Bruce Wayne is Batman?”

She probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.

Chapter Text

“Bruce Wayne is Batman?”

Steph regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth; every eye in the room was now on her. Nightwing’s eyes widened comically, Babs facepalmed, and Jason just blinked and said, “Well...that’s a tangent.”

“Oh, what the hell,” Babs said, sighing. “We were going to tell you soon, anyway.”

“I’d...like to know how you came to that conclusion,” Nightwing—Dick—said, eyebrows raised. He didn’t seem angry. Just defensive, curious. And she knew she was right.

“Knowing that Dick Grayson is Nightwing is a pretty big clue, you know,” Jason told him, sounding amused. “Isn’t that how Tim figured it out?”

“Tim?” she said.

“Your boyfriend,” Jason said, scrunching his nose. “Robin. Of course, Dickie over here was Robin before he was Nightwing. The original Robin.”

“And Jason,” Dick said, gently, “was my successor.”

“Wait, you were Robin, too?” Steph demanded, turning to Jason, feeling betrayed. “You said you weren’t aka anybody!”

“I’m not,” Jason said, and there was a bitter undertone there, just as there had been back when she first met him, when he talked about Robin. Tim. “Not anymore.”

And Steph would eat her favorite beanie hat if that had been his idea. She knew she was overstepping here, especially with a kid she’d only met twice, no matter how much she liked him, but hell, she didn’t think she could top the inappropriateness of blurting out her sudden realization about Batman’s identity. “What happened?” she asked.

The aura of the room turned distinctly awkward.

Well, maybe she could after all.

“So, that thing Babs said about being at my funeral,” Jason started. He looked down, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. “They had a funeral because I died.”

Both of Steph’s hands clamped over her mouth, as she squeaked “Really?”

Oracle and Nightwing both looked sort of blank, but also like Steph was shortly going to regret being born.

“Yeah. I guess you could say it was in the line of duty; I came out on the wrong end of a fight with the Joker. So I was dead. For awhile. And then...I wasn’t dead anymore.”

“...how?”

He shrugged. “Heck if I know. All we know is that whatever it was did really a half-assed job of it, and I wasn’t really…all there. Until a few months ago, when Talia decided to put me in a Lazarus Pit, and I came out me again. Mostly.”

“Holy shit,” she said. “Holy shit. Wow. That’s awful.” Something else occurred to her. He’d died in the line of duty. Fighting the Joker. Safe to assume he’d died as Robin .

And when he’d come back...there’d been a new Robin.

No wonder Jason hadn’t been keen on Robin. Her Robin, that was. Who was named Tim, apparently. She tried to imagine what it would feel like if she had to go away somewhere for awhile, and then, when she came back, found someone else wearing her costume. Using her name. Working side-by-side with Robin—with Tim—as if she’d never existed.

She’d probably want to punch that person in the face. And Tim too, for good measure.

Another stray thought surfaced. Bruce Wayne was, good golly, Batman. Dick Grayson, his former ward, was Nightwing, and had once been Robin. They’d kept it in the family.

But hadn’t there had been another kid in that family, once upon a time? Steph was never big on the tabloids, but her mom was obsessed with Gotham high society, and she followed stories about Bruce Wayne the same way some people followed the Kardashians. Steph had a memory from when she was younger—maybe ten or eleven years old—of her mother going on and on about Bruce Wayne having adopted some kid from Crime Alley, of all places. She wasn’t sure if her mom had been scandalized, or just jealous at the kid’s sudden ascension into high society, without even having the grace to pass through the middle class along the way.

Tod something, wasn’t it? She wracked her brain. No. Todd. Jason Todd. He’d died a few years later, under weird circumstances. There had been unsavory rumors, and an investigation. Nothing had come of it, in the end, and the rumors had died down. The last she’d ever heard of that had been her mother remarking that no one was ever going to let Bruce Wayne adopt another kid, not after that. As if someone else’s tragedy was any of her business.

A kid named Jason, who used to be Robin, who had died. A kid named Jason, Bruce Wayne’s son, who’d died somewhat mysteriously. The odds that these two Jasons were not the same person struck her as staggeringly low.

She was, she realized, sitting on the same couch as Batman’s actual kid. Not his sidekick, not his partner, but his kid.

No wonder Batman had seemed so agitated about her meeting Jason in the Cave. He was a protective guy in general (overprotective, in her opinion, not that anyone was ever interested in that), and there she’d been, in his home base, blithely chatting away with his son who’d died, then inexplicably come back to life, and whose renewed existence was, apparently, still supposed to be a secret from the world. She felt a powerful and slightly irrational urge to scoot away from Jason, just in case Batdad popped out of the shadows and decided she was looking at his kid funny.

“What was it like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being dead.” Steph was smart. So smart. She was so smart that she said that, that, to Batman’s dead-but-not-anymore son. Her next move was going to be to practice the cha-cha on the roof of the GCPD wearing nothing but the hood of her uniform, and see who showed up first, Batman, or the cops. Money said the cops, but Batman had an impressive response time.

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” Nightwing—Dick, damn it—said firmly. “I don’t think Jason wants to talk about that.”

“You mean you don’t want to hear it,” Jason said, sharply. “Thinking about it makes you feel guilty.”

“All right, hold on, let’s table this for now,” Babs finally intervened. “We’ve gotten way, way off the most important subject at the moment, which is the League. We’re safe enough inside the Tower, and the Black Canary and Batman are both heading over here just in case the League tries something. But Jason, even with Dick as a bodyguard, coming over here—especially without telling him you might be a target—was irresponsible. And I’d like to know why you did it.”

Jason went from prickly to sullen in an instant, and it was as if his whole body deflated. “Talia is leaving,” he mumbled.

“I see,” Babs said, her voice becoming gentler, more sympathetic. “That must be hard for you, Jason.”

“She says it’s for me, that if she puts enough distance between us, Ra’s won’t try to grab me and use me as bait. And Bruce is just going along with this. He won’t even try to stop her.” Jason’s voice took on a pleading quality, and it made Steph uncomfortable, to see hear such raw emotion in the voice of someone who was still mostly a stranger to her.

“Yeah, it’s...that’s happening, Babs,” Dick said, touching his forehead. “Also, Bruce and Talia kind of...got into it. Physically. There were some black eyes.”

“I see,” Babs said again, her face hardening. “Dick, so help me...”

“Yeah,” Dick said, shrugging. “So, when Jason said he wanted to get out of the Manor for a little while—”

“Right,” Babs sighed. “God, what a mess.” Her console pinged. “Well, he’s here. Someone’s going to have to go downstairs and let him in; the security protocol I initiated includes a code that needs to be entered manually, from the inside, before any of the entrances will open.”

“I’ll do it,” Steph volunteered, climbing off the couch. She needed a breather from all the heavy emotions in the room. And heck, what was more relaxing than one-on-one time with the Batman?

Bruce Wayne. What the freaking hell.

In the elevator, she leaned against the glass wall and closed her eyes. Should she tell him? If she didn’t, Oracle or Nightwing or Jason probably would. Would he be annoyed to find out from them, instead of her? She should probably tell him. Besides, it wasn’t very often that she got to be the one to land a bombshell on someone. She’d kick herself later for passing up the chance.

Once she was at the underground level, she punched in the code Oracle—Babs—had given her earlier, and swung open the door, to reveal Batman, in all his looming Kevlar glory. He did not look happy. But for once, that probably had nothing to do with her.

“Stephanie.” She thought maybe he was just a little surprised to see her there.

“Mr. Wayne,” she replied.

His face got grimmer. Now that was on her.

“Yeah. I figured it out.”

He said nothing, just stood there being ridiculously, intimidatingly, ominously tall at her.

“Oracle and Nightwing didn’t even try to deny it,” she said, after it was clear he wasn’t going to be the first person to talk.

“Who told you?” he finally rumbled.

“I just told you, I figured it out.” Steph couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face, until it was a full-on grin. Even with Batman standing there in front of her like an angry, goth brick wall. “They were throwing the name ‘Bruce’ around like it was confetti when you called, and, uh, Nightwing had just introduced himself to me as Dick Grayson, so it was a pretty short game of connect-the-dots.”

“Hhnf,” was all he said. “I trust you’ll be discreet.”

“You’ll have to,” she said, lightly.

Batman twitched minutely, and the reached a hand towards her. It wasn’t just a hand, it was a hand in a black leather gauntlet, the ends of the fingers sharp, the knuckles creaking.

It wasn’t an angry hand, Stephanie thought. It was the only hand he had to reach with.

“Batman,” Steph said, and the gauntlet stopped. “When I was little, I used to climb up on to the roof of my house at night and dream I’d see you.” Which had been pretty dumb of her; Batman didn’t hang around her neighborhood. But try telling that to a desperately unhappy ten-year-old who found comfort in imagining Batman swooping over her house. “You were everything I ever…I believed in you. Still do.” She bit her lip hard, to make herself stop. She breathed deeply. But her voice still shook as she said, “Please, Bruce. Can you believe in me?”

The gauntlet settled onto her shoulder, gentle, but firm, and squeezed.

***

They didn’t speak on the way back up; he was here for Jason, and she didn’t feel comfortable following her previous admission with the news that she’d figured out that identity, too.

As they rounded the corner from the elevator, Steph saw that Jason was still on the couch, now with his knees up against his chest, and his arms wrapped around them. Babs was in her chair next to the couch, and one hand was lightly resting on Jason’s socked foot, her head first bent close towards his, then swiveling towards them as they approached. Dick was leaning on the couch behind Jason, arms crossed, looking at the wall. Jason looked up them and saw Batman, and then sunk his chin into his chest, refusing to look at him.

If Steph had had any doubts she was looking at father and son, that sulky posture alone would have set them to rest.

“Jason,” Batman said, sternly, coming to a stop near the couch. “This was incredibly irresponsible of you.”

Jason still didn’t look up.

“You were just told why it was unsafe for you to leave the Manor,” Batman said, his voice dark and heavy. “Not only did you put yourself in danger, if you’d been kidnapped, you would have put Talia in danger, too.”

“That’s why I asked Nightwing!” Jason blurted out, his head snapping up. “It’s not like I just took off on my own!”

“Not this time,” Batman said, ominously.

The wounded sound Jason made at that moment was something Steph hoped she’d forget, and Jason’s head dropped back down, only it wasn’t sullen, anymore, it was just pure hurt. She bit back the impulse to leap to her feet and put herself between them. She wasn’t even really supposed to be here, much less see any of this.

Dick said, “Bruce, whoa,” at the same time that Babs said, sharply, “Bruce, this isn’t the time.”

“I wouldn’t do that again,” Jason mumbled into his knees. “That’s why I asked him.”

“That’s not good enough, Jason. Alfred and I had no idea where you two were, we couldn’t get in contact with you—“

“I did tell Alfred where we were going,” Dick interjected.

“You changed your plans without telling him and you didn’t answer your phone,” Batman said to Dick, with undisguised censure in his tone.

Dick looked somewhat apologetic. “I turned it off for the movie. Sorry.”

Batman turned his attention back to Jason. “We’re going. Now.”

“No,” Jason said, defiantly, lifting his head up again. “I want to stay here. With Babs.” He glanced sideways at her, pleading in his eyes.

Babs looked torn. “If you can get Bruce’s permission,” she said, looking back and forth between them.

“He can’t.”

“I’m not going!” Jason’s voice rose.

“This is not up for discussion, Jason. You’re coming back to the Manor, and you’re doing it now.”

“If you wanted me to stay at the Manor, maybe you shouldn’t be getting into fistfights with Talia, Dad!”

To Steph’s surprise, Batman actually reeled, as if some mook had landed a really solid hit on the jaw.

Jason scrambled off the couch and to his feet, unfolding himself to stand in front of Batman, all his defensiveness suddenly transmuted to challenge. He could meet Batman’s eyes just by tilting his head back a bit, the freak. (Was he taller than she remembered from when they’d met in the Cave? Teenage boys, sheesh.)

“Take it off,” he said.

“Jason…”

“Take it off, Bruce,” Jason said. “If you’re taking me back to the Manor, you’re going to make me look at it. You might as well start now.”

Batman hesitated for a long moment, then reached up with both hands and slowly slid the cowl off his head.

And there he finally was, underneath all that armor and cape: Bruce the gosh-darn Wayne.

Just a man. A tired-looking man, older, with worry lines creasing his mouth; sweat-soaked dark hair going just a little grey and sticking out in all directions. Tired and worried, stripping off those mighty gauntlets to reveal ordinary human hands, dropping them on Babs’s coffee table as casually and thoughtlessly as Steph’s mom tossed her keys on the kitchen table at the end of a long shift.

There was a prominent laceration on his temple, starting to bruise badly—couldn’t be more than a couple hours old—and Jason took Bruce’s face into his hands, the fingers of one lightly brushing over the wound, the other tilting Bruce’s head to get better light. The way he examined Bruce’s face almost, but not quite, reminded her of the way Jason had handled Robin—Tim—when he was looking for signs of injury. Bruce (the Batman!) was unresisting in Jason’s hands, yielding to his guiding touch, as if he hadn’t been lecturing and ordering Jason just a minute ago.

It was the most unreal thing Steph had ever seen in her life.

“The Ḥamāsah?” Jason said, roughly. Steph could almost see the belligerence draining out of him in real time; his hand over Bruce’s wound was like a warm compress pressed over an abscess—but it was the compress and not the wound that wept.

Bruce nodded, Jason’s hands still cupping his face. The sight would have been funny if it wasn’t so— “I’m afraid she had better luck than you did, chum.”

Now it was Jason who flinched. He abruptly drew back his hands, and looked away. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.

Bruce clasped Jason’s shoulder. Steph’s shoulder burned in sense-memory, and she touched it without thinking. “It’s all right, Jay-lad.”

“No, it’s not,” Jason said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You were upset,” Bruce said, tenderly.

“And she wasn’t?” Jason looked back up again. “And you weren’t?”

“It’s not the same.” Bruce’s voice went very, very gentle and very quiet, but the room wasn’t that big, and no else one was making any noise. “Jason, you’ve been so...hurt.” He touched two fingers to Jason’s arm. “Here,” he said. He touched them to Jason’s forehead. “And here.” He laid his bare palm on Jason’s chest, over his heart. “Here.”

Jason closed his eyes.

“You need time and space to heal. That’s all I want for you.” Bruce started to let his arm drop, but Jason suddenly seized it and held it, eyes still closed. Bruce didn’t resist the hold. “That was why I asked you not to be Robin, for now. Think of what Alfred would say. ‘Sometimes, the spirit needs more time even than the body to heal.’”

A tear slipped out of the corner of one of Jason’s eyes, and slowly traced its way down his cheek, as Bruce pulled Jason gently against him so Jason’s chin rested on his shoulder. He stroked Jason’s hair.

This was…

Steph bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and she wished she was anywhere, anywhere else in the world but here, watching this. Her whole face felt hot, and her throat had gone tight. She finally had to turn her face away, when her own eyes started to water; she didn’t want anyone to see her cry. She didn’t want to have to explain.

She didn’t want to have to say the words out loud.

I will never have this.

Never.

Chapter Text

“Do you realize,” Jason said, on the drive home from the Clocktower, “this is the first time I’ve been in the Batmobile since...before?”

“Hmm,” Bruce said. “You’re right.”

“It almost feels like coming back from patrol,” Jason said wistfully. “Like we’re going to swing by Jimmy’s on the way home.”

“Hmm,” Bruce said again.

It was tempting.

He shouldn’t.

The whole point of this was that it wasn’t safe for Jason to be out in public. Even if the League didn’t pose a threat, there was still the issue of not potentially exposing Jason to the public before they were ready to reestablish his identity.

But...the League hadn’t made a move on them when Bruce had taken Jason out in their day clothes, when they would have presented a softer target than Batman did now, armed and armored, riding in his own personal tank. If they wouldn’t strike at the Manor, out of Ra’s’s respect for him, they were unlikely to strike directly at him. Doubtless, they’d prefer an easier, cleaner target, and the ability to maintain plausible deniability.

It almost felt worth the risk. He spared a glance at Jason, leaning against the door, chin propped on his hand.

Bruce turned left, when he should have turned right. “Are you hungry?”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Jason’s head swing around, the speculative look on his face, as he noticed the deviation from the normal route. “I could eat,” he said in an overly casual tone.

“Let’s see if Jimmy’s is still open past midnight in the summer, chum.”

Jason grinned.

***

Jimmy’s Ice Cream Shop was indeed still open, although not too busy. It had been a while since Bruce was here—over two years, in fact—and apparently that was enough time for the shop to acquire some new staff who didn’t remember them from before. The girl behind the counter—she couldn’t have been more than seventeen—blatantly stared, mouth hanging open, as they approached her.

“Uhhhhh,” she said. “Welcome...to...Jimmy’s?” Lydia, her name tag read. One of her braids was lying forward over her shoulder, and she furtively flicked it back, mouth still agape.

“Can I please get a banana split with Neopolitan ice cream, hot fudge, and ground pistachios,” Jason said.

“I don’t think we have a Neopolitan flavor.” Lydia’s eyes flickered from the domino mask that covered Jason’s eyes down to the logo of his worn, slightly oversized Princeton sweatshirt.

“Neopolitan is just strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate ice cream all served together. You...still have those, right?”

“Oh! Yeah, we do,” Lydia said, brightening. “Sorry. It’s only my second day here, I barely know my way around. And you, uh, sir?” she said to Bruce.

“Pistachio milkshake,” he rumbled. “With whipped cream. And ground pistachios.”

“Don’t forget…” Jason started to say.

“And a cherry on top.”

“And a...yes, sir. Uh, is it just Batman? Or do you prefer Mr. Batman…?”

“Just Batman is fine,” Jason assured her.

“And what should I call you?” she asked. He could see her uncoiling ever so slowly, even though she’d been confronted with Batman! “Princeton-Boy?”

One of her braids had made it back around and she was fingering it.

Jason snickered. “Why not.”

Bruce pulled a twenty out of his belt, and dropped it on the counter. “Keep the change for the tip jar,” he told her. “We’ll be in the corner.”

The shop hadn’t done any remodeling in the years since they’d last been here, so their usual spot—a booth near the back with a clear view of the door and all the windows—was still there. The other patrons in the store were whispering and shooting them glances, but didn’t approach them. Good. Dick had loved chatting with all comers, but Jason was a little more cautious with strangers unless they looked like they needed help, and Bruce himself wasn’t much for small talk.

“Are you ever gonna get something different?”

“Are you?”

“Last time, I got caramel instead of hot fudge, remember? Wasn’t as good, though.” Then Jason’s nose wrinkled. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting how long it’s been for you. Why would you remember that?”

“I do,” Bruce told him, softly. “I remember everything.”

Jason went quiet. “What about…him? What kind of ice cream does he like?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce admitted. “I haven’t gone out for ice cream for awhile.”

Not for two years and four months.

Never with Tim.

“Oh,” Jason said, and fiddled with a napkin.

Lydia broke the awkwardness by bringing over their ice cream. “Here you go,” she said, brightly, her shock apparently having worn off somewhere in the vicinity of the mixing machine. She paused just a little, as she went past Jason, and she winked at him.

“Um, B,” Jason said, digging his spoon into his banana split.

“What?” Bruce sipped his milkshake.

“Are you completely—this Martian Manhunter thing.”

“It’s efficient,” he said. “It will solve a lot of problems.”

Jason scrunched his face at Bruce in a way that Bruce was pretty sure wasn’t due to brain freeze. “If you say so.”

Bruce sipped his milkshake.

A couple of minutes later:

“B,” Jason said again, around a mouthful of bananas and chocolate.

“Yes?”

Jason swallowed his ice cream. “I...I think I get it. I do. About you wanting me to just...be able to get better. The doc and I, we’ve talking about that.”

“Oh?”

“And I believe you, B, that you’re trying to give me space to...where it’s okay to…” Jason dropped his spoon on the table and put his head in his hands. “You keep telling me I’m more than Robin to you, and I believe you. I’m trying to imagine not being Robin again. I’m trying to see a world where I’m not Robin, but I’m other things. Things that I...things that I could have been. Could still be.” Jason was shuddering. Oh God, this had been a mistake, Bruce thought. Maybe this was always coming, but he’d let it come here, in public, where it wasn’t safe. “But B, I just need to know: could I still be Robin if I wanted to?”

“Jay…”

Jason looked up at him fiercely. “If I asked you to choose. Would you?”

Bruce’s tongue shriveled up inside his mouth. “That’s—it’s a very difficult question.”

Jason’s banana split was slowly melting into a muddy puddle. “I know. But you’re a smart guy. Haven’t you thought about this?”

Yes. A day after he’d put his arms back around Jason’s shoulders, when his mind was still sticky with the sweetness of the joyful, impossible reunion, he kept unsticking, remembering the state of things. There was still a world outside of this; still a city that needed him. There were people besides Bruce and Jason. Dick and Alfred and Babs and Tim all still needed Bruce, and he could not afford to stay lost inside that bubble of joy. Not forever. Not for long.

And Bruce wanted to touch Jason’s face again, to remind himself once more that Jason was still there.

(Bruce wanted to be able to leave in the evening and come back in the morning; to walk across the threshold, and to know everyone he loved was still breathing.)

He swallowed a mouthful of milkshake, instead. “Yes.”

“And. If I asked you. Who would you choose?”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he said, quietly. Please don’t ask me to choose.

“Hypothetically,” Jason said. “If I asked you to choose between us, to say who was Robin—”

“Hypothetically,” Bruce said, the milkshake turning into lead in his gut. “Hypothetically, I would...consider asking him to relinquish Robin to you. When you were ready, and not before you were.”

“Okay,” Jason breathed.

“I would ask him,” Bruce said. “It would be his choice. It would have to be his choice, Jay.”

Jason nodded tightly.

“He has a place here, Jay. I know that’s hard for you to hear, but it’s true. He’s earned it, and I’m not going to just—”

“I know,” Jason said. Bruce thought if he could see Jason's eyes right now, they'd be bright. “If you were the kind of person who threw people away, I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did.”

“Jason.”

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Jason said, in a small voice.

“I would never have sent you away.”

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t send him away either. What he and I have isn’t what you and I have, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

“Do you think,” Jason said, haltingly. “Does he...need you?”

“I...I think so, yes,” Bruce said. “With or without Robin.”

Jason’s chin sunk into his hand, and he poked at his melting ice cream.

“Okay,” he said again.

***

“Talia said that you’d never called her ‘Mother’ before,” Bruce said, when they were back in the car, and he had an excuse not to make eye contact.

Jason took a minute to think about it. “I don’t think I did, no.”

“Is that how you think of her, Jay?”

Jason laughed, nervously. “I don’t know, I mean. I guess being around her is kind of like being around Mom was—Catherine, I mean—before she got sick. When I was little and she was always there to take care of me.”

Before you had to take care of her.

“She just...makes me feel safe. Even when things are crazy—even when I’m crazy—she’s making sure I’m okay.”

Don’t I make you feel that way?

“I see,” was all he said.

“Bruce…”

“Yes?”

“If Sheila hadn’t turned out to be like that. And if I hadn’t died. What were you planning to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you just going to...let me go?”

“What?!” Bruce was so startled, his hands twisted on the wheel and the car skidded across the thankfully-empty road. “No, of course not, Jay-lad, why would you ever think that?”

“I don’t know, I…” Jason turned and stared out the passenger side-window. “I wanted it so much, and you were going along with it, and we’d been fighting before that. Because I was being reckless and aggressive, and Alfie thought you should fire me.”

“Alfred suggested that I bench you,” Bruce corrected him, sharply. “He was worried about your emotional state, Jason. That was all. He thought you needed some space to deal with your feelings.”

“The kind of space I’m having now.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” Jason said, sounding slightly relieved. Had that been weighing on him this whole time?

“Jason, if what you’re asking is—would I have just handed you off to your mother, once we found her, and cut ties with you—the answer is emphatically no.” They were getting close to the Manor, close enough for the roads to be dark and mostly empty. Bruce pulled the car over to the side of the road, and put it in park, although he left the engine running. You didn’t always know when you were going to need speed in a hurry.

“Jason, when I adopted you, that was me telling the courts that I was going to be your father from then on. Forever. That’s the difference between adoption and the foster system. Fostering can be short-term or long-term, and you don’t always know what’s going to happen. But adoption means that everybody—you, me, the law—agreed that from then on, you and I were father and son.” He’d thought Jason understood that, when the papers were signed; the sudden possibility that Jason had somehow misunderstood that terrified him.

“I know,” Jason said, sounding annoyed. Bruce’s heart returned to its normal rhythm. “Of course I know that. But when you agreed to help me find her after we’d fighting so much, after you thought I might even be a murderer, Bruce—and after that, I ran away.” Jason‘s throat worked. “I thought maybe I’d messed everything up so much that you’d changed your mind. I thought...and she was alive, and she never signed away her rights.” Jason shook his head. “She could have contested the adoption.”

Bruce almost laughed, in spite of himself. “Jason, I’m a billionaire. I could have crushed her in court, if it came to that.”

“That’s messed up, Bruce,” Jason said, in a scandalized tone.

Bruce was aware; it had simply been a statement of fact. He could have.

He would have.

“It would have been an out, though,” Jason said, quietly. “If you’d wanted it.”

“I didn’t want that. I will never want that.” Bruce sighed. “When I agreed to help you look for your mother, it was because you seemed to need it so badly. I thought it might help you, if you could have a relationship with her. Many children given up for adoption when they’re young have a desire to reconnect with a birth parent when they grow older. But even if things had worked out better with her, it wouldn’t have made me any less your father.”

Jason kept staring out into the inky darkness of the passenger side window.

“Jason…”

“Mm?”

“You’ve never called me ‘Dad’ before.” He tried to keep the hurt out of his voice, that the first time Jason had ever done so, it was to invoke the memory of Willis Todd, wife-beater.

“No, guess I never did.” Jason looked over at Bruce, and said, almost tentatively, “Was I supposed to?”

“Only if you wanted to.”

“Did you want me to?”

Yes, of course I did!

“Only if you wanted to.”

Sometimes he’d wondered if Jason had never called him that because Bruce leaned too much on Jason, on Robin; if it was because Jason felt the need to take care of him, just as he’d taken care of Catherine when she became ill, and Bruce had therefore forfeited the right to be thought of that way. He’d never been able to nerve himself up enough to ask, just tried to reassure Jason through action that Bruce would always be there for him, would always protect him.

And then there had been the time that he wasn’t. That he hadn’t. After that, Bruce wondered if he’d ever had the right to think of himself as Jason’s father at all.

“Huh,” Jason said, fiddling his thumbs. “Guess I never really thought about it. Back when you first took me in, I thought Willis was still out there, somewhere. And he was my dad, even if he wasn’t much of one. By the time I found out he was dead—and even later on, when the adoption came through—I was just in the habit of thinking of you as Bruce. That was the part that really mattered, anyway. That you were Bruce. It didn’t matter what I called you, as long as you were there.”

Bruce’s chest ached at those words. “It’s all right, Jay-lad.”

“Did Dick ever—”

“No,” Bruce said, roughly, still trying not to mind. “It was different with Dick. I was a lot younger, and to be frank, I didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t exactly thought things through.” He closed his eyes, remembering that night, remembering Dick’s face. “I just saw a shocked, grieving child who’d experienced the same shattering loss I had, and all I wanted to do was to just...be there for him, to save him from going through what I’d gone through after my parents died. I certainly hadn’t planned on Robin; that was all his idea. As soon as he found out I was Batman, he wanted to join me, and help me find his parents’ killers and bring them to justice. In the beginning, we were partners as much as everything else.” He sighed. “As foolish as this may sound, it took me awhile to really understand the ramifications of agreeing to raise a child. And Dick was still very attached to the memory of his parents, of his father—as far as he was concerned, John Grayson was his father; I was his guardian. It’s not that he didn’t love me, but things have not always straightforward between us.”

“Did you always plan to adopt me?”

“I hoped to. If things worked out between us. If you were happy, at the Manor, if you were thriving there, then yes, I hoped to make it permanent. I like to think I went into things with clearer eyes this time around.” Bruce smiled at Jason, and reached over to ruffle his hair. “I learned a lot, from Dick. I didn’t realize how much I still had to learn from you.”

“Bruce...do you want me to call you ‘Dad’?”

“Only if you—”

“Bruce.” Jason gaze was challenging. “Tell me how you feel.”

“I...yes. I do want that,” he said. “If I’m being honest, Jason, nothing would make me happier.”

“Because I wouldn’t mind. I think I’d like to.”

“Well, then.” The earlier ache was transmuted to a warm glow inside his heart.

“And what you said before about changing my last name—”

“Yes?”

“I want to do that, too. It’s not like people didn’t know I was your kid, before, but...I wouldn’t mind reminding ‘em again.”

“All right, then, Jason Wayne.” Bruce squeezed Jason’s shoulder. “When the time comes, I’ll let the lawyers know.”

Jason’s tone was almost experimental, as he said, “Thanks…Dad.”

Chapter Text

Talia and Alfred were both in the Cave when they arrived back; Talia with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at the both of them, Alfred looking apologetic, presumably over his apparent failure to keep Talia in the dark. Well, she’d stayed in the Manor, that was the important part.

“Was it entirely necessary to stop for ice cream on the way back?”

“No, but it was fun,” Bruce told her, swinging himself out of the car. He wasn’t surprised she’d gotten into more immediate contact with her operatives upon realizing what had happened.

Jason peeled the domino off his face and casually tossed it into the back of the car. “He got the green milkshake again, Alfie.”

“He’s been that way ever since he was a boy, Master Jason.” Alfred leaned over into the car to retrieve the mask. “I’m not even sure if he actually cared for the taste, as a child. I have long wondered if he was perhaps so taken with its striking appearance that he determined that he would learn to like it.”

“That sure sounds like him.”

“Must you?” Bruce said, mock-glaring at the both of them.

“No, but it’s fun,” Jason said, wrinkling his nose at him.

Talia threw her hands up in frustration. “Will none of you take this seriously?”

“It’s been a long, difficult night, Talia,” Bruce said wearily. “We could stand to blow off a little steam without resorting to punches. Again.”

Talia winced, and then straightened her back, and turned to Jason. “Habibi, I must apologize to you. Your father and I behaved poorly this evening. We never intended to distress you.”

Jason sighed, his cheerful aura dissolving like a sand castle as the tide rolled in. “Honestly, can we just talk about this tomorrow? I feel like I’ve been on a rollercoaster all night, and I think...I just want to go to bed.”

“If you wish,” Talia said gently. She caressed his cheek. “Sleep well.”

“Good night, Jay,” Bruce told him.

“Night, Dad.” It was tossed over his shoulder, Jason already having turned to leave the Cave. A little too casual to actually be casual, but it already sounded more natural than it had in the car.

“That’s a new development,” Alfred observed, when Jason was out of earshot. His demeanor was stoic, but Bruce thought he sounded pleased.

“We had a good talk in the car,” Bruce said. “Speaking of which,” he said to Talia, “you and I ought to have a talk ourselves.”

Talia assessed him thoughtfully, then nodded. “Very well.”

***

By the time he got to his bedroom, stumbling through the nighttime routine of changing his clothes and brushing his teeth, Jason could feel fatigue dragging him down, far more than could possibly be justified by the day’s minimal amount of physical exertion. But intense feelings could drain you that way, couldn’t they? That’s what Dr. Sheridan had told him.

Jason flopped down face-first onto the bed, and tried not to think. He was really frickin’ tired of thinking, of feeling all these fucking feelings.

He pressed his face against a pillow, and he remembered, years ago, stumbling upon his own father’s file in Bruce’s system, reading it from the burning glare of a computer screen. (Jason had still been getting used to using computers for everything. Catherine had never even been able to afford so much as a smartphone; she used pay-as-you-go cell phones after the phone company had cut off the landline for non-payment. The Cave’s computer had been a heck of an upgrade from the old, slow desktop machine at the library.)

From the file, Jason had learned that Willis really was dead. That Two-Face had casually murdered him. That Bruce had known all this, when he took Jason in. He’d known for months, and not told him.

Jason had been more full of feelings than he’d known how to handle.

There was fury over the lie-of-omission. Confusion. The unsettling sense that a door had closed forever, a door he hadn’t even realized might still be open. It hadn’t been at all the same as it was with Mom (his real Mom), when she died. He’d known without a doubt that she was dead, he’d held her body in his arms, and even as he’d wept for her, his thoughts were turning to what happens now?

He’d always known there was a chance that when Willis had finally stopped coming back, it might be because he’d crossed the wrong person and ended up at the bottom of Gotham Bay. Or maybe he was in jail again. Or maybe he’d just walked out for good, finally done with the burden of a fragile wife and a little kid who did nothing but need things from him. Jason hadn’t missed him very much; in some ways, Willis’s disappearance from their lives had been a tremendous relief to them both, the dark shadow of the bad nights finally withdrawn. Even when Mom died, and Jason was all alone, it never occurred to him to go looking for Willis, as if he’d had the first clue where to find him. Jason chose to stay in Gotham, in Crime Alley, where he knew the territory and the players. If any part of him had wondered if Willis would hear about his dead wife, come back to Gotham, looking for his son...Jason had managed to ignore it for a solid year.

And yet, knowing for sure that Willis was dead had jarred Jason badly. Not just dead. Murdered. Murdered by Harvey Dent. Willis hadn’t been much of a father, much of a husband, much of anything at all, but Jason thought he still deserved better than that.

And Bruce had known. And Bruce hadn’t told him.

The first night of actually going out as Robin had been glorious. He’d felt untouchable. He’d taken out crooks (and looked good doing it), he’d saved a hostage from Two-Face, he’d outsmarted the guy. Bruce had lectured him over the whole hostage switch—but then he’d praised him, and said the first Robin would have done just what Jason had done. He’d felt that glow inside, the warmth of knowing that he really belonged here, that he really was Robin, and there was a future unfolding in front of him for sure, that he would find himself in it, one step at a time.

The day after—after he’d stayed in the Cave a little later to throw himself into the files, the way Bruce had suggested—he’d lain in bed all day long, unable to drag himself out of it. He’d cried. He’d found himself staring at the wall, unable to account for minutes lost. Every time Alfred had come to check on him, he’d feigned sleep—except the hours when he was actually asleep—unable and unwilling to even try to explain. Every time he moved, it felt like he was dragging weights on his whole body.

Not until Bruce had come to his bedroom door and haltingly said that he understood how exhausting patrol could be had Jason finally forced himself out of bed, forced himself to be Robin again. Robin, for the second night. But the fire had been gone, the energy had dissipated, and Jason was just stumbling through the motions, letting six months of muscle memory carry him alongside Batman again. He’d been a silent and sullen Robin, not at all what a Robin was supposed to be—until he’d seen Two-Face again, and then the fire came roaring back, but far too intense: not the warm fire that moved the engine, but the white hot fire that obliterated, and for the first time in his young life, Jason Todd had well and truly lost his shit.

(Bruce had had to drag Jason off of Harvey, and Jason had been so angry about that then, and was so grateful for that, now. The man was a lunatic with a body-count. He’d killed Willis. He’d killed a lot of better people than Willis. But Jason had been thinking about what it meant to kill, lately, and early one morning, he’d woken up and he’d actually thought, I’ve never killed anyone. The thing about the Joker—Jason still felt a little messed up about that. I should talk to Dr. Sheridan about that. He’d woken up at five am, and couldn’t go back to sleep, thinking about it, imagining what it would feel like to wake up and remember, every single morning, what it felt like to kill a person.

He’d imagined what it would feel like to wake up every morning, and not think about it at all, and that was so much worse.)

Despite his exhaustion, his thoughts went round and round and round. Finally, Jason gave in, staggered up off the bed, into the bathroom, and took a sleeping pill.

***

“I love you, Mom,” Jason said.

He wished he could say that to her, again, and that it wouldn’t be a thing, again. He wanted to just say it, and for no one to think it was strange. He wanted to just have Talia near him.

Talia was real.

(Catherine was kneeling in front of him, whispering, holding his his hand. Jason remembered nodding intently. He had no idea what they’d been talking about, but there was the phantom brush of Mom’s hand tightening on his.)

Jason wanted to cry again.

Being there and really caring, wasn’t that what mattered? He just wanted to feel Mom’s hand on his neck, pressing him against her leg, while she chatted with their neighbors. He wanted to lean against her and feel her hand running over his shoulders, and he wanted that treasured moment—he could just barely remember it—of total contentment. Talia’s gentle hand, running through his hair. Her care. All he’d ever wanted was just his mother, pressing her hand on his back, before he wandered off to explore the playground—

Jason woke up.

The alarm kept going, though, no many how times he slapped snooze. Oh god, what a nightmare. Dick would be here at any moment to yell at him because he hadn’t set it right, and Bruce was going to miss his train.

“Get up,” the boy said. “Turn off your alarm. This is very inconsiderate of you.”

Jason hit snooze again, and the sound stopped.

Jason woke up.

Talia was shaking him. “Habibi…?” she said. “There are things I must tell you.”

“Umi, can’t we talk tomorrow?” Jason yawned. “I’m so tired,” he said, head already hitting the pillow as he fell back asleep.

***

Jason slept the morning away, finally rousing himself at nearly noon, dragging himself out of bed with a full bladder and a head still bleary, despite the full night’s sleep. He couldn’t even be bothered to change into day clothes, padding out of his room in pajamas and bare feet across the hall to Talia’s guest room, wondering whether she herself was awake.

The first thing that clued him in that something was wrong that the door was ajar. Talia never left it open. It was always closed whether she was in it or not, and usually locked when she was out of it. Jason knew Alfred still sometimes went in to change the bedclothes, but that only ever happened when Talia was in the sitting room. Everyone—well, most everyone—maintained the polite fiction that Talia had nothing to hide, and Jason didn’t think Alfred planned to go through her things, but apparently life in the League left you just a little too paranoid to let someone else have unsupervised access to your personal space. (Not that Alfred didn’t have a key to every room in the house, and a full set of lockpicks to boot.)

Jason pushed the door open a little further, and stepped into the room, as blazingly awake as he’d been sleepy just moments before.

Neat as a pin, and completely empty. Gone were the slacks and blouses from the closet, both the ones Talia had brought with them from Greece, and the ones she’d used Bruce’s credit cards to purchase here. (He’d helped her pick them out, while she shopped online. He thought of her slouching ever so slightly over the screen of a laptop Bruce had given her, while Jason leaned his hip against her shoulder, mostly just voicing his opinion on the colors.) Gone was the stationary that lived on the desk, and the little stamp she either carried with her or had kept locked in the desk drawer, when she wasn’t working. The last time Jason had been in here, there had been an English translation of Radwa Ashour’s Granada sitting on the bedside table; it too was gone.

It was almost as if nobody had been living here at all, for the past few months. Only the lingering scent of sandalwood and roses suggested that Talia had ever been in this room.

“So it wasn’t a dream after all,” he said out loud, or he thought he did. There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach, expanding through his ribcage, and he felt like he didn’t have enough air to actually create words. He tried to take a deep breath, but the perfume lingering in the room suddenly gave way to the smell of smoke, and Jason sank into a crouch, arms wrapped around himself, as his lungs rebelled, refusing to draw in the air they knew was poisonous, the air that had finally killed him, after everything his body had managed to endure until that point. The soft carpet underneath him was timber and ash, and Jason was utterly lost.

Then there was a gentle hand rubbing his back, and the smell of smoke was replaced by the heavenly scent of coffee.

Jason blinked, and saw carpet beneath him, realized he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, bent over so far his hair was brushing the floor. Bruce was sitting beside him; his was the hand stroking Jason’s back. Bruce wordlessly offered Jason the steaming mug he was holding.

He didn’t know if it was supposed to be a bribe or a consolation prize or what, but he took it anyway, and took a hearty gulp.

“I thought I just dreamed it,” Jason said quietly. “I couldn’t sleep, so I took some meds, and when she woke me up to say goodbye, I guess I thought that was just another dream.”

Bruce slung his arm around Jason’s shoulder, and pulled Jason over so that he slumped against Bruce. “I’m afraid not, chum.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

“A little. Things got a bit busy, after you went to bed.”

Jason hmmed.

“Why don’t you come downstairs,” Bruce said. “Alfred left french toast in the oven, if you can eat.”

Jason’s traitorous stomach rumbled. Apparently, he could. “Can I have more coffee?”

“No,” Bruce said. “You don’t have the caffeine resistance for two cups in a row, Jay. It will make you jittery.”

Jason rolled his eyes, but pushed himself to his feet, finding his legs still worked after all. As they descended the stairs, he asked, “Bruce—is she going to be all right?”

“She’ll be fine.”

Bruce sounded confident, which was comforting to Jason, but still... “It’s Ra’s, Bruce. Couldn’t we at least have helped her, somehow? If just to say thank you for everything she did for me?”

Bruce looked down at Jason, his lips curved into just the hint of a smirk. “Who says I didn’t?”

Chapter Text

She hadn’t expected it to end up being so easy.

Diethelm had been kicking around this goddamn city for months, waiting for Talia al Ghul to show her pretty little face. She was not, by nature, an impatient person, but left to her own devices, she would have taken a strike team and grabbed the bitch directly, Batman or no Batman. But Ra’s, confident that Talia would eventually emerge on her own, declared that they were not to start a war with the Batman. He’d even declined to share intel on the Wayne Manor’s defenses with them.

She’d gotten hopeful when the kid had taken his first trip outside—after all, Talia had gone to the trouble of bringing him all the way here, and then decided to stick around; where he went, maybe she’d follow. They’d debated making at go at him, as possible bait, but eventually decided that probably qualified as starting a war with Batman.

The longer things stretched out, though, the more time Talia’s own people had to assess the situation and plan. They were clearly still in contact with her, which meant they had little chance of blindsiding her. Diethelm wished they’d said the fuck with it, and taken the kid anyway.

But just when she was starting to think Talia had put down roots, Illyan, of all people, had contacted her out of the blue.

“What the fuck do you want?” Illyan was one of hers, one of her higher-ups, in fact; what reason could he possibly have for talking to her? Ra’s had made it clear that this was not a negotiating situation. Talia was to be brought back to him, in chains, if necessary. Hopefully, Diethelm would be able to wrap all this up here, in Gotham, but even if Talia slipped through their fingers here, they’d get her eventually. Talia had resources and loyal people, but not nearly enough of either to successfully challenge her father—not yet—or even to escape his wrath. One way or the other, Talia was going to have to answer to Ra’s.

“It’s happening tonight,” Illyan said, matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“She’s leaving tonight. In the next two hours.”

“Why the fuck are you telling me this?” She didn’t trust him. Obviously. She wouldn’t have trusted him if he was one of her own, coming to her with this. Trust was the the first thing you learned to shed, in this life.

“Because we both know she’s going to lose,” Illyan said, coolly. “And when she does, and when the Demon’s Head is done with her, and starts looking to tie up loose ends, I’d like to not be one of them.”

“You’re saying you want to switch sides?” Diethelm said, skeptically. “Am I just supposed to believe you?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Hannah. I am my mistress’s devoted servant, but there’s a limit.”

“You’re a slippery little weasel, Illyan,” Diethelm said. It was too good to be true, but...to be honest, if there was anybody in Talia’s tiny, personal empire that she could imagine actually selling out his boss, it was Illyan. He was born to sit in the shadows, whispering in the ear of the king...waiting for just the right moment to sink the knife in his back.

Illyan was a good knife man. Not as good as Diethelm, but good.

“Maybe I am,” he said, sounding almost bored, “but I’m going to be the slippery little weasel who lives to see another day. I can back this up, Hannah. I can give you the destination and the numbers. I can give you everything. You can have people waiting for her.”

Her brain whirred. The most likely possibility was that this was a feint, an attempt to get her to commit too many of her resources towards the wrong target. But that was so likely that it looped around and become unlikely again.

This…could be real. She couldn’t afford to pass up the chance.

“All right,” she said. “Deliver her to me, Illyan, and I’ll swear to Ra’s that you were just coming in from the cold.”

Illyan actually laughed at that. “Don’t get all Cold War about this.”

“If you’re Russian, I’ll lick my own asshole.”

She had no idea whether he was or wasn’t. He didn’t look Russian to her, but nobody really knew anything about Illyan, and most people who met him didn’t look twice at him, much less speculate about his past.

Illyan liked to blend into the wallpaper. Diethelm liked to make people piss their pants at the sight of her.

He said potato, she said tomato, and until tonight, she’d have cheerfully cut his heart out. But if there was even a chance, just a chance that he could give her what she needed...

“Just be ready, Hannah,” Illyan said. “If I go to the trouble of switching sides just to have yours fuck this up because you didn’t take me seriously, we’re all going to be very unhappy. Including Ra’s.”

Every time he said her name, she visualized carving out his vocal cords.

“If you’re fucking with me, I’ll make you eat your own fingers,” Diethelm said. “Give me the details.”

***

The destination ended up being a nondescript brownstone in Gotham’s upper east side, a building which her hacker, Zara, was able to confirm as one of Talia’s indirect holdings—one they hadn’t known about before, and hadn’t previously had staked out. It evidently hadn’t been used for awhile, judging by the dusty stillness of the air, and the outdated security measures that Zara and Dynix breezed through. They must have been counting on the secrecy of the location. Which Illyan had so thoughtfully blown for Diethelm and her crew.

Well, it remained to be seen whether Illyan’s heel turn was genuine or not. He said it was just going to be the three of them—Talia, Illyan, and a supremely skilled hand-to-hand fighter Diethelm knew only as the White Crow, who Illyan said was utterly devoted to Talia. Diethelm had brought six, besides herself. She could have brought more, but this might yet turn out to be a trick, so she left the rest of her squad scattered throughout the city.

Sure enough, though, just as the sun was about to rise, the inner security screen lit up, indicating that someone was outside, inputting codes. The door slowly creaked open, and Illyan stepped in, shutting the door behind him. He glanced around the room, eyes landing on Diethelm and Dynix; she jerked her head towards to the stairs to indicate there were more upstairs. He disappeared briefly up the stairs, long enough to have ostensibly looked for intruders, and then returned, crossing the room once more and opening the door. “It’s clear,” he said to his companions.

Talia entered first, followed by the Crow. Both women were in tactical suits, Talia’s long hair bound up in a bun, her sword sheathed at her back. The Crow, a lightskinned Indian woman with a pixie cut, was not visibly armed, although Diethelm knew better than to take that at face value.

Diethelm was on Talia in a flash, jamming a taser into the side of her throat, as Dynix and Illyan double-teamed the Crow. The Crow still managed to throw Dynix into a wall—impressive, considering he probably outweighed her by a good fifty pounds—but then Illyan’s arm snaked around her chest, and with his free hand, he pressed his KA-BAR against her carotid artery so tightly it just pierced the skin, and a blood welled across the edge of the blade. The Crow instantly froze. “Traitor, she muttered viciously.

“I’m a practical man, Sharmistha. I’d like to be alive at the end of all this, and we both know our beloved mistress is not going to come out on top of a squabble with the Demon’s Head. If you had any sense, you’d join me.”

“Never,” she spat. “I will never betray my mistress. والله, I will hunt you down like a dog for this.”

“Did you not hear what I just said about wanting to come out of this alive?” Illyan sighed, and pulled the blade away from the Crow’s throat, only to slide it between the fourth and fifth ribs on the left side of her chest. The Crow made a choked cry, and tried to struggle, but within a few moments, she went limp in Illyan’s arms. He pulled the knife out calmly, and let her drop to the tiled floor, blood slowly pooling underneath her.

Not very flashy—Illyan never was—but still. It was good knife work. Precise. No wasted effort. It was the only thing she’d ever liked about him.

Diethelm knelt, first injecting Talia with a sedative—she’d be up from the taser in a minute or two—then securing Talia’s limp arms and legs with zip-ties. She unbuckled the sheathed sword from Talia’s tac suit and patted her down for hidden blades and lockpicks, which Diethelm casually tossed over her shoulder. “All right, we’re ready to go. Dynix, get everybody upstairs.” She looked at Illyan. “You coming?”

“I’ll follow,” he said. “I need to clean this up first.” He gestured at the corpse on the floor.

“Don’t take too long,” she warned. “We won’t wait on you.”

***

Illyan had a reputation for meticulous fussiness, and Diethelm was not surprised, or concerned, when he didn’t make it to the docks in time to meet their ship. Commercial air travel was tricky, when you were on business, even when you didn’t have an uncooperative prisoner in tow, so they were taking a boat out to a barrier island where they’d stashed a fully fueled private jet.

They would file no flight plan.

By the time Talia’s remaining operatives realized what had happened, they’d be halfway to Macedonia. It could be even longer, if Illyan chose to obfuscate. Diethelm didn’t particularly care. He’d held up his end of the bargain; she would do the same—all she’d promised was to put in a good word for him with Ra’s; beyond that, she was unconcerned with what Illyan did or didn’t do.

Much of the squad would remain in Gotham, so as not to immediately tip their hand to Talia’s people, but she’d send for them once they were safely in Macedonia. Finally, this mess was close to being over.

***

They were in the air, before Talia finally started to stir, recovering from the effects of the sedative. Her head lolled back, and she slowly opened her eyes. She blinked, owlishly, at Diethelm.

Diethelm, running a soft cloth over her ZT 0160, glanced up at her. “Awake?”

Talia opened her mouth, but she barely managed a soft noise, before her eyes fluttered shut again. Her wrists pulled, where they were bound tightly to the armrests of her seat.

Diethelm got up, and settled herself into the seat next to Talia, stretching out her legs, crossing one boot over the other. She tucked away the cleaning cloth, and toyed with the knife. She rested the dull side of the blade against Talia’s cheek.

“Tell, me, you fucking bitch traitor,” she murmured, “how does it feel?”

There was the slightest vibration against the edge of the knife. It was Diethelm’s favorite sensation. Better than anything, that subtle movement of fear. Oh, how she lived for that.

She flipped the blade over, and gently, methodically scraped the sharp side all over Talia’s jaw in a weird parody of a barber’s shave. “Tell me,” Diethelm whispered, “tell me, Lady Talia, was it worth it? Was it worth throwing everything away? Your family, your position, maybe even your life, just for some dumb little thing?”

Talia gazed at her, even as the knife drifted down and the sharp tip prodded against her throat, eyes were full of silent fury.

“It was, she breathed, and that was all she said for the entirety of the journey.

***

Talia remained silent as Diethelm and Dynix dragged her, lagged and stumbling, into the main compound outside of Radoviš. Her legs were free, but they’d bound her arms behind her again, and she’d had no food or water since they’d taken her.

It wasn’t quite chains, but Diethelm hoped it would suffice.

She also would have preferred grander surroundings, for this moment. This compound was built up around an abandoned school, and Ra’s throne room was located in the old gymnasium. It had the appropriately vaulted ceilings, but the light wood and the vast windows lacked, in Diethelm’s opinion, real gravity.

Still, Ra’s seemed to accept it, and who was Diethelm to question the Demon’s Head?

He’d at least set up a proper throne, so she at least had the satisfaction of dragging Talia, in tandem with Dynix, those last few precious yards, and dropping her hard on her knees in front of him. “My Lord,” she declared. “We’ve retrieved your traitorous daughter.”

Talia’s hair had come out of its bun, in slow stages, on their journey from Gotham to Macedonia, and most of it dangled now in front of her face, as she slowly lifted it to gaze up at her father.

“Daughter,” Ra’s said, and then he rose from his throne, and stepped down, until he stood level with her. “Did you truly think you could defy me? Did you truly think you could steal from me, and that there would be no consequence—”

Ra’s voice faltered, as Talia rose up from her knees, and continued to rise, and rise, while the shackles fell from her wrists and clattered on the floor, and the green of her eyes slowly spread throughout her whole form. Her long, dark hair melted into her skin, leaving behind a smooth, green, inhuman scalp. Her tactical suit slowly shifted hue and form, until there was a only a flowing blue cape behind her, and red straps over her—no, his, no, its—chest.

The unearthly form in front of them observed them gravely for a long, awe-struck moment. And then it opened its mouth, and intoned:

“Made you look.”

As the alien abruptly vanished, and Ra’s’ incredulous gaze swung towards her, Diethelm felt the blade of betrayal sinking into her own back, and she realized that Illyan was a far better knife man than she’d ever known.

***

Talia was bent over a printout when there came a knock at her door. “Enter,” she said.

“Mistress Talia,” the White Crow said. “We remain on schedule.”

Talia stood. “Good.” Her eyes raked up and down Sharmistha’s form, lingering on the massive bloodstains on her tac suit. “I trust that’s only…”

“Yes, my lady. Merely blood packs. Everything went exactly to plan.”

Illyan stole up behind the Crow. “Mistress, we did retrieve the package you asked for, on our way back. It’s in the basement.”

“Thank you,” Talia murmured.

She wouldn’t have spared the time for this, if not for Bruce’s rather inspired diversion with the Martian Manhunter, which would give them a head start of half a day or so. Call it the repayment of a favor. He might not see it that way, but that was what this was.

She descended the stairs slowly, Illyan shadowing her. She was neither reluctant nor eager for this, but it was the last action she intended to take, here in Gotham, and even though part of her had resented the self-imposed confinement, her thoughts straying daily to that compound in Palma de Majorca, and what she had left behind, there, she still thought of what she was leaving behind, here.

She could never have stayed. She always knew that. But for a few precious months, she had lived a kind of life she never really imagined. She’d always wanted to pull her beloved into her own world, for him to accept her on her own terms; somehow it had never occurred to her that perhaps she could have left her world behind, and shared his, instead. It was a strange experience, living under his roof, for the first time, and not an unpleasant one, even if at times, her beloved’s choices still baffled her.

This one, for instance. The continuing existence of this monster, a creature who served no purpose, who only brought misery and destruction at every turn.

They’d gagged him, which Talia appreciated; she had no interest in conversation with him. He made a muffled noise, which might have been a groan, might have been a laugh. She didn’t care. His eyes, bright with madness and rage, met hers, and his chest heaved. They’d tied him to a chair, arms bound behind his back, but left his legs free; he kicked out at her, and she avoided it easily.

She put one finger underneath that long, white chin, and the other hand in the shocking green hair, and tilted his head back, so he was forced to look up at her. He blinked furiously at her. “You’re a blight upon the world,” she told him. “Not worth a name; not worth the blood on my blade.”

She shifted her grip so that she was cradling his head in both hands, and then she twisted, until his neck snapped. She drew her hands back, and let his head fall limply against his chest, the bright eyes already dulling.

“Should I…”

“Leave him,” she said. “Someone will find him. Or not, and he’ll rot here; I don’t care. We won’t be using this safehouse again.”

Bruce would probably be furious with her, for killing within the boundaries of the city he claimed for his own. She didn’t care about that, either. Their possibilities had ended long ago, no matter how reluctant she had been to admit to that, no matter if some part of had her secretly hoped that the gift of a lost son would win her renewed favor with her beloved, back in the beginning, when all of this had been about Bruce, and not Jason himself. Bruce might someday forgive her for the time lost with Jason, if he ever admitted to himself that she was right that bringing him a child hopelessly broken would have only brought him more heartache.

But...Damian.

She understood now that he would never forgive her the choices she’d made for Damian.

Talia wasn’t sure if she could even forgive herself.

For now, they needed to leave this city, make for Palma without alerting her father of her destination—that compound was a secret from the League at large—and plot a new course, for this new world she’d created for herself. She didn’t have the resources to take the League for herself.

In that cottage in Greece, Jason had clutched desperately at her hand. “Will we have to run and hide forever?” He had still been hers, then. She could have taken him anywhere, and he would have followed her.

She’d brought Jason here, knowing she would be forced to surrender him. To the man who claimed fatherhood over him. To the life he’d had before.

She had made choices, and Jason was safe, now. Jason no longer needed to run and hide.

For him, no. For her…

She had to find a better way. For Damian.

“It’s time,” Talia said. “Now, we go to Palma.”

Chapter Text

She couldn’t get the wording right. Lois absently picked up a Bic pen, and clicked it on. The death of...no. She clicked it off. His death was the result of...no. On. Forces resulted in… no. Off, and then she viciously bit the pen, for good measure.

There was a gentle knock on her cubicle wall. Lois looked over her shoulder.

Him.

Not a surprise. Not...unwelcome. But Lois was still trying to just make sense of things, and every time she spoke to him, even looked at him, the room felt so full of possibilities, and every one-on-one interaction felt too heavy. She put down the pen, gave up the hope of making progress on this article tonight, and looked over her shoulder at him. “Clark?”

“Lois,” he said, with a small smile. Damn him. Nothing had really changed for him, had it? Lois was carrying the biggest story in the world in her pocket, and he was trusting her not to tell a soul. She was so annoyed. She felt honored. She felt...mixed things, as Clark darkened the door of her cubicle.

“Make yourself at home,” was all Lois actually said, with an expansive wave of her hand.

He did, leaning against the desk on the opposite wall. “Do you recall that…possible lead I gave you, a few months ago?” Clark asked.

Lois froze for a moment, and then she swiveled around in her chair. “That would be the one I didn’t follow up on?”

“Yes. That. I was wondering if you might be interested in a similar lead,” Clark said. “Might be an actual story there, this time.”

“All right, Smallville,” she breathed, dropping the pen, and standing up. “Make this worth my while.”

***

Clark had been cagey the whole drive from Metropolis, which irritated and intrigued her in equal measure. But if she was correct in her suspicions—that this story involved someone with a secret identity of their own—that caginess was perhaps understandable. So it wasn’t until Clark turned the car off-road that she asked, “Kent, where the hell are we going?”

He winked at her, actually winked. “You’ll see in a minute.” And then they were driving down a stone tunnel, and into…a giant cave? Clark stopped the car, and unbuckled his seat belt. Why on earth he ever bothered with seatbelts, she had no idea; there was no one on the planet Earth who needed them less. And yet his pretense of being human was as flawless as always. (Was it fair to call it a pretense, though, if he’d actually been raised human, if he hadn’t always had these superhuman abilities?)

Lois climbed out herself. “So...it’s a cave.” She glanced around. “With some unusual decorating,” she said, spotting the giant dinosaur. “What are we doing here?”

“Hmm, I thought he’d be here,” Clark said, frowning. “Must be upstairs.”

“He? Who’s he?”

“Batman.”

Aha. “This is his headquarters?”

“Yep. Welcome to...the Batcave,” Clark said, waving one arm expansively.

Lois rolled her eyes. For god’s sake, it was just a cave. She’d toddled through airport hangers this big when she was still in diapers.

Clark looked mildly disappointed, as if he was expecting more of a reaction. She just raised her eyebrows at him. He sighed. “We might as well head upstairs, then.”

And then there were stairs. Several flights worth of stairs. Didn’t the Batman have the technology to install an elevator? She fought the temptation to ask Clark, who was also Superman, to fly her up.

Then they finally arrived at a door.

Clark punched in a code, and it swung open to reveal…

...a study?

Lois blinked.

A study she recognized. Dark wooden paneling, bookcases built into the walls, that half-oval mahogany desk, sunlight from the French windows spilling over the the subdued, tasteful, white-and-gold patterned carpet...she knew this room. She’d been here before, she was sure of it. If she was right—she stepped through the open door and turned around, and sure enough, there was the grandfather clock that should have been on this wall, there, but swung open like a door, not a fixture.

“I’ll be damned,” she said, in a daze. “A secret passageway. Could you be any more of a cliche, Bruce Wayne?”

“If I’d put it in the library, maybe,” Bruce said, from the doorway. “It’s good to see you, Lois.”

Clark was starting to shut the clock-door-thing, and Lois darted back to catch it. She waved Clark off. “It’s been awhile, Bruce,” she said, over her shoulder.

She became aware Bruce was looming over her. “Stop doing that,” he said, bluntly.

“If this thing shuts, I will have no proof whatsoever,” she said, pleasantly, leaning her shoulder into it.

“Lois, this isn’t strictly speaking why we’re here,” Clark said.

“Why are we here?” Lois withdrew her arm and let the clock/door silently slip shut. The result was seamless. She eyed it, fairly sure she wouldn’t be able to open the door again on her own.

“I owe you a favor,” Bruce said. “And I have a story for you.”

“What is this? What kind of story is this, dammit? Bruce, Clark says that’s the Batman’s base downstairs.” Lois looked Bruce dead in the eye. “Tell me exactly what kind of story both of you expected me to walk away with today.”

“Lois…”

“Am I maybe breaking the news confirming the longstanding rumors that Bruce Wayne is funding the Batman, or is this...something else?”

“It’s something else,” Bruce said.

“Hell,” she said. “Is this the story?” She glanced over at Clark. “This is what you brought me here for? Because it is a hell of a story, Kent, and I will report it, unless you convince me not to.”

“It’s not,” Clark said. “This part needs to stay a secret. But the actual story requires the context.”

“And what’s that?”

“Me,” came a voice from the door of the study. “I’m the actual story.”

Lois looked over to see a tall, lanky teenage boy lurking in the doorway. Dark hair, blue eyes. He could be...Bruce was old enough, this kid was young enough. But that wasn’t enough for Clark to have brought her here. Rich people’s bastard children hadn’t been newsworthy in decades, Lois wasn’t a gossip columnist, and they certainly wouldn’t have needed to reveal a secret of the magnitude just to explain the existence of a love-child. There was something else going on here.

The kid looked nervous, his hands twitching, biting his lip. Lois studied him. He almost looked familiar, but she couldn’t put a name to the face.

“Have we met?” she asked.

“Yes. Three and a half years ago,” Bruce said, before the boy could answer. “At the Metropolis Fine Arts Museum’s special exhibit on Korean Textiles.”

Lois remembered that exhibit. That had only been the second or third time they’d met in person since Lois had ended things, aware that on some level, Bruce was never really present on their dates, and probably never would be (and dammit, now she thought she had an inkling of why). They’d been trying to slide back into their earlier friendship, knowing romance was definitively off the table, but the conversation had still been a little awkward until Bruce’s adopted son came over to drag Bruce away, wanting to show him some display or other.

(Bruce’s son. His son, who’d died about a year later, mysteriously caught in an explosion in a warehouse in Amba Mariam, Ethiopia. Instigators unknown; motivations unknown. It hadn’t even initially been clear why the Waynes had been in Ethiopia in the first place. There had been an official investigation, there had been an eventual explanation, and every part of the story was sheer and utter heartbreak.

Lois had sent flowers and a card.)

Bruce had introduced them, when Jason had popped up, tugging at his sleeve; she remembered thinking that it was nice to finally put a face to a name Bruce had mentioned so often. And that he’d had had pretty good manners for a teen with such a hard background. She hadn’t really had a chance to speak with him; Jason had been too eager to show Bruce whatever it was that had caught his enthusiastic adolescent eye. He’d seemed like a nice kid. Lois had been truly sorry to hear of his death, and not just for the sake of a grieving friend.

Lois tilted her head, looking at the teenage boy in front of her—she’d have pegged him at about eighteen or so—and considered all the possibilities.

He sure was a lot taller, now.

She made her deliberate way over to an armchair, and dropped into it, crossing one leg over the next. She gestured at the couch, and she said, as she pulled pen and pad out of her purse, “So, Jason...feel up for a chat?”

***

Two hours later, Lois’s head was spinning, full of the insane details of the real story, and the equally insane details of the cover story Bruce had concocted, the one he wanted her to actually write. (The Martian Manhunter was going to do what?)

“Jesus,” she said, blankly. “H. Christ.”

Clark settled himself next to her on the couch in the library. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know, Smallville. You brought me here, you gave me two amazing stories, neither of which I’m supposed to actually report on—”

“The cover story is still a pretty good story.”

“It’s bullshit. By which I mean it’s ridiculous, and it’s also a lie. You’re asking me to knowingly report a lie.”

“It’s a little soap-opera-esque, I’ll grant you,” Clark conceded. “But it’s hard to account for someone suddenly being alive when they did an autopsy on a corpse with a positive ID from the next of kin. And Lois, this isn’t helping to cover up government corruption or a corporate scandal. It’s about protecting a teenage boy who’s been through more hell in sixteen years than anybody should in their entire life. Can you imagine what kind of scrutiny he’d get if the truth was public knowledge?”

If they knew who I was, my life would blow up, she remembered Clark saying on the drive over. That was the reason he kept it secret that Superman had landed in a Kansas wheatfield as a baby, been raised human, given an ordinary human name, had a favorite recipe for apple pie, even though surely those details could only have helped convince the world that Superman was one of them. That no matter where he came from, that what he wanted was not to rule, but to help.

But the price of revealing all that was unacceptable to Clark. Only when he was sure she would respect that had Clark been willing to share his secret with her.

“Why me?” she asked him bluntly. “Why didn’t he just ask you? Why bring me into the fold?”

Clark shrugged. “He says he owes you a favor. He thought you’d appreciate the story.”

“Mmm.” Lois wrinkled her nose. “If I tell the story he wants told, he’s going to owe me another favor.”

“I’ll pass that along,” he said dryly. “Are you going to do it?”

“I can tell him myself, thanks.” She considered it. She didn’t have to. She already knew she wasn’t going to reveal that the Batman was Bruce Wayne, or even that he’d set up shop in Bruce Wayne’s basement, using Bruce Wayne’s family fortune. And Clark was right that it would be unconscionable to make public the fact that Jason Todd, a child brutally murdered two and a half years ago, had literally and inexplicably risen from his grave. The notoriety aside, there were far too many parties who would be interested in trying to determine the cause of his resurrection, and a lot of them were untroubled by law or ethics. From what Bruce and Jason had said, one group had already held Jason for a whole year, with that precise aim. It was easy for her to imagine, oh, say, Lex Luthor arranging to have him kidnapped, whisked off to some secret lab to be probed and tested and experimented on, and Lex, the cold fucking bastard, as untroubled as ever by the anguish and suffering he left in his wake.

No, Lois wasn’t going to be the person who put that target on Jason’s back. But that didn’t mean she had to actively participate in the lie.

On the other hand…the cover was such a crazy story that it rightfully beggared belief. There was some little part of her that wondered if she was a good enough writer to make people believe it. Soap-opera-esque, Clark called it—could she create a narrative that would convince people, draw them into the story, no matter how improbable?

Don’t think of it as journalism, Lois thought, giddily. Think of it as creative writing.

“You know,” she said, “I think I will.”

Chapter Text

Alfred busied himself with the sauce. The meatballs were holding warm in the oven; the Parmesan was grated, the salad was tossed, only waiting to be dressed. But the sauce wasn’t seasoned quite as it should be. A little more oregano, a shake of salt, a twist of pepper...another shake of salt.

Hail the conquering heroes. Alfred could hear them coming up from the garage. He put the water on to boil, for the pasta.

Jason was the first through the door, so giddy he was practically vibrating.

“How did it go?” Alfred asked, as if Jason’s whole countenance didn’t scream success!

“It’s done,” Bruce said, following Jason, along with Dick. “The judge reviewed the DNA test and the sworn depositions affirming Jason’s identity, and she amended the death certificate. Jason is now legally alive again.”

“This is the best birthday present ever,” Jason said, beaming. He burst out singing, “I’m aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.”

“Isn’t that from The Last Unicorn?” Dick asked, sneaking past Alfred and snagging an entire slice of tomato out of the salad. He munched on it like a potato chip.

“Yeah!” Jason said, while signaling him. Dick flipped him a cucumber slice. Jason snagged it out of the air and shoved it into his mouth. “I feel like a whole new person.”

“You should,” Bruce said. He rested a hand on Jason’s shoulder, and Jason had only to look to his left to see Bruce’s broad smile, and answer it with his own delighted grin. “He had his name changed,” Bruce told Alfred.

“Jason Peter Wayne, nice to meet you.” Jason offered Alfred a hand to shake.

Alfred shook it solidly. “Congratulations, sir.”

“Hey Alf, what’s for—oh, is that spaghetti sauce?” Dick asked, peering in the pot on the stove.

“Indeed, sir. I thought no matter today’s outcome, we could all stand a little comfort food. Spaghetti and meatballs.”

“Solid plan, Alf.”

“Has anyone contacted Ms. Lane to let her know now is the time to run her feature on Master Jason’s...incredible journey?”

“Yeah, Dad called her in the car,” Jason said. It sounded completely natural, this time, as if Jason had always addressed his father so. (Although from the look on Bruce’s face, the impact had yet to wear off.) “The story is going up online in about an hour, and it’s running in the morning edition of tomorrow’s Planet.”

“Someone at the courthouse has probably already leaked the news to the Gazette,” Bruce said. “We should turn off the non-emergency phones for a day or two, I think.”

As if on cue, the landline rang. Bruce and Alfred exchanged a glance, and Bruce picked up the phone. He listened for a minute, said, “No comment,” and promptly hung up. He then took the receiver off the hook and let it dangle by the cord.

“That was fast,” Dick said, ruefully, already putting his cell onto silent. “Come on, Jase, let’s go set the table. I’m starving.”

***

The celebratory spaghetti dinner was followed, at Bruce’s suggestion, of a celebratory screening of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which was apparently one of Jason’s favorite movies. Bruce, Jason, and Dick trundled into the home theater, Alfred promising to follow as soon as the dishes were taken care of.

Dick quickly discovered Bruce and Jason had a whole swath of in-jokes based on the film, which made for a baffling, if amusing, color commentary. There was Jason’s extended riff comparing various characters to the Fellowship of the Rings, Bruce’s deadpan assurance that every character in every scene was wearing a fake nose, and both of them trading back and forth a steady stream of bowlderized literary quotations through the entire film. Alfred took it all completely in stride, so apparently this was normal.

Normal, Dick thought with a pang. He’d never seen Jason so purely happy. Because he hadn’t been around, not before, not during the good years Bruce and Jason had had together. He thought he’d been getting to actually know Jason, the past few months, but Jason had been having a tough time of it for most of it. Dick couldn’t remember if he’d ever even heard him laugh until that night at the Clocktower, watching a movie with Babs and Stephanie.

There was going to be more hardship ahead, but they’d all come a long way, to be sitting here, all four of them for once; an actual family.

Maybe someday they could be five. Or six. Or seven.

Dick hadn’t been lonely when it was just the three of them, in this ridiculously oversized house. Three had seemed like a perfectly good size for a family. (He’d missed the circus at first, of course, but Batman and Robin had filled up the world and brought him a whole new set of colorful friends.) But the family had gotten bigger since then, and Dick found that he liked it that way. It was more people to worry about, but it was more shoulders to lean on, more partners to work with, more voices filling his ears.

Speaking of those colorful friends...there was a chance at least one person in the League or the Titans had come across the story by now, and if so, they’d want the skinny. Dick snuck his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through the texts and missed calls. Three from Vicki Vale, a few more from other reporters he’d spoken to through the years; a number of unknown numbers—probably more reporters, ones who’d gotten his private number by hook or by crook—and yup, there was a missed call and a series of texts from Donna with a lot of question marks in them.

Dick slipped out of the room, mouthing gotta make a call at Alfred.

“Hey, Donna.”

“Dick! What on earth is going on? I just saw an article on the Daily Planet that says Jason is alive? The author claims to have interviewed Jason and Bruce Wayne—”

“It’s real,” Dick said, bluntly. “Well, actually, most of it is bullshit because the actual story is too weird. But Jason being alive—that part is real. He’s literally in the next room, Donna. We’re watching a movie.” Dick grinned without meaning to.

He’d had five months to get used to the idea, to accept that Jason was real, to adjust to this new and complicated-if-happier reality, but there was something about finally discussing this with a friend, someone not cloistered in the secretive world of Gotham’s night life that made the whole thing seem like a miracle afresh.

“How?” she breathed. “Was it really just a mix up after all?”

“No,” Dick said, sobering. “No. Jason really died. We’re still not sure how he came back to life. We only know that he did. As in, he woke up in his coffin about six months after Bruce buried him. Only nobody knew, and he was...he was lost, Donna. We only got him back a few months ago.”

“Merciful Zeus,” Donna whispered. “That’s terrible. Is he all right?”

“It’s been rough,” Dick admitted. “He’s been through some pretty heavy shit, and there were a few, uh, humps when he first got back, but he’s been seeing a therapist, and he’s doing a lot better. It’s amazing. If you could see him now, you’d think the last three years never happened at all, except that he just cleared six feet and I think he’s going to be taller than me in a week or two.”

“Can I? See him, I mean?”

Dick thought about it. Bruce had been clear that he did not want to overwhelm Jason with visitors all agog, whether they were capes or civilians. But not only was Donna in the subset of heroes who’d known Jason personally, Dick had gathered, from something Donna said to him when she’d come to offer her condolences, that she and Jason had actually formed an emotional connection on Jason’s single Titans mission.

“Hold a sec.” Dick covered the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand, and ducked back into the room. “Hey Jase, how would you feel about—”

“Shh!” Jason said putting a hand up in Dick’s general direction, eyes glued to the screen. “It’s the duel!”

Dick looked at Bruce. Bruce shrugged. “It’s the duel.”

Rolling his eyes slightly, Dick put the phone back to his ear. “I’ll have to get back to you, Donna, Jason’s having screen time right now.”

“No, it’s all right,” she said, her voice laced with wonder. “I heard him. This is...this is amazing, Dick. I’m so happy for you. All of you.”

“Yeah,” he said. Dick meant to hang up after that and call her back later, but for some reason, he didn’t, and and for some reason, Donna didn’t hang up either. He just stood there with the phone pressed up against his ear, silently watching his family watch the Scarlet Pimpernel humiliate Ian McKellen with witty bon mots and superior swordplay, while Dick listened to the quiet breathing of his best friend in all the world on the other end of the line.

Chapter Text

“Oh now he picks up,” Oliver said. “It only took seventeen calls.”

“Some people would have stopped fifteen calls ago and, and thought, ‘Maybe Batman isn’t answering his phone for a reason,’” Arthur said.

“This is a work call,” Diana reminded them all. “Bruce?”

“Still here,” Bruce rumbled, although he would have terminated the call already if it wasn’t a necessity.

“Yeah, can someone tell me why we’re having this call?” Hal said.

“Donna called me,” Wally said. “She said...Jason Todd is...alive?”

“Who?” Hal said.

“For God’s sake, Hal—”

Green Lantern and Green Arrow both briefly dropped the chat. They popped back in a few moments later.

“What the hell, Bruce?” Hal said.

“This is a work call!” Diana snapped. “We have all seen the article!”

“What article?” asked Hal.

“I haven’t,” said Wally. “Okay, now I have. Wow, that was a wild ride.”

“Enough,” Clark said sharply, which was uncharacteristic enough of him to silence the line. “Bruce?”

“The actual purpose of this call,” Bruce said, wearily, “aside from confirming that the basic premise of Lois Lane’s article is true, was to say that I will be back on active duty next month.”

There was a brief pause before the call exploded into chaos. Bruce ignored it.

Finally, it settled down. “How long has this been going on?” Oliver asked. “Since you started that sabbatical you never explained the reason for?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, bluntly. “My son needed me.”

“Excuse me, and I don’t want to be insensitive,” Wally said, “but are you absolutely sure.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Bruce and Clark said, simultaneously. At the said time, Diana said “I know that child is Jason; he said so with his hand on the lasso.”

“What?” Bruce said.

“It was his idea,” Diana said, with the slightest hint of defensiveness.

“It was just supposed to be damn coffee,” Bruce snarled. “Consider yourself uninvited from Sunday dinner.”

Diana huffed, but didn’t argue.

“How the heck—and I’m happy for you, Bruce—but how the heck did this happen?” Wally asked. There was just a hint of…

Jealousy. Need. Want.

Bruce understood. Most of them had lost someone at some point. If he’d learned anything from this entire experience...it was that gratitude for one perfect miracle did not quell the greedy desire for more.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’ve been looking for an explanation for months, and we haven’t found anything. But it is him.”

“I guess I’ll take your word for it,” Oliver said. “All three of your words for it. Geez, this is pretty incredible.”

“I assume...congratulations are in order?” Arthur said, in a voice of not-quite-bewilderment, apparently unsure about the etiquette of a dead family member coming back to life. The rest of the group chimed in with equally awkward-sounding sentiments, minus Clark and Diana.

“I have to go,” Bruce said, finally. “I have an exhumation to supervise. If you have any other questions, Clark can field them.”

Bruce disconnected the call before anybody could point out that it was actually 2am on the east coast—a little late (or a little early) for a court-ordered official exhumation.

The judge had accepted the DNA evidence and personal testimonies of people who’d known him that Jason was indeed Jason, that he had not died, and there had been a case of mistaken identity.

Naturally, however, this left her curious about the other person supposedly involved in this identity swap, and ordered the grave exhumed so the coroner could attempt to identify the body. And, given that said grave currently contained only an empty, severely damaged coffin…well, Bruce had some serious prep work to do.

***

“You didn’t need to be here for this, you know,” Jim told him.

“I know,” Bruce said bleakly, watching the gravediggers take shovels to the plot incorrectly attributed to one Jason Todd. “But I feel responsible for whoever’s down there, Jim. I was the one who buried him.”

Technically, Jim didn’t need to be here, either—although this might yet become a police matter, in the unlikely event that they were able to determine the identity of the remains—but he understood what Bruce meant. He’d been at that funeral too (closed casket; the body had been so badly damaged in the explosion that only Bruce Wayne’s next-of-kin positive identification prevented the need for a DNA test or dental records) and felt strangely proprietary about whoever was actually in that coffin.

He couldn’t imagine how Bruce was feeling right now. Overjoyed, surely, that his son was alive after all—but all that time lost—those years of grieving that could have been prevented if the man had only realized that there was another dark-haired, Caucasian teenager in that refugee camp, that mistaken identity was even a possibility? It must have been a bitter pill indeed. If Jim had ever made a mistake like that, if had lost years with his own daughter while she was still out there somewhere, needing him, he knew the guilt would have eaten him alive.

It was a clear and sunny day, the same as the day of the funeral—it was a little warm to be standing around in the August sun wearing suits, actually. But they stood, anyway, in their suits, sweating, as they the watched the dirt pile, shovel by shovel, up around Jason Todd’s grave.

It took the gravediggers nearly an hour to reach the coffin, and lift it out of the hole. Jim realized he was actually holding his breath, as they levered the top of the coffin off.

The smell was...not good, but the corpse was in fairly good condition, considering it had been in the ground for over two years. Jim wasn’t surprised. He had a pretty good handle on the timeline of decay when a body was left above ground, but this was not, in fact, his first exhumation, and he’d learned that the condition of a corpse in the ground for any length of time was heavily dependent on things like weather conditions. (And Bruce Wayne certainly hadn’t stinted on the coffin, which was solid cherry wood, stained red, with a plush, velvet lining—not that Jim had seen the inside before.)

Bruce’s face as he gazed down into the coffin was a study in mixed emotions. “I know it’s not him,” he said roughly, “I know it can’t be him, I know right now Jason is sitting safe and sound at home with his brother—but Jim, when I buried this kid, I thought it was him, and it still...he still looks a little like him.”

Jim squeezed his shoulder. “But it’s not, man. This isn’t your tragedy after all—it’s some other poor bastard’s.”

“God,” Bruce said. “Whoever they are—they might still be holding out hope that their son will come home. That maybe he just ran away, that he’ll change his mind and come back to them…”

And if that was true, and they were able to ID this body, they’d be putting an end to that hope. The father in Jim ached in sympathy for those mystery parents, wanted to tell the gravediggers to put the kid back in the ground, leave them their ability to believe in the possibility...but no. If it was him, if it was Barbara—Jim knew he would want to know.

“It’s closure, Bruce,” he said gently. “They deserve that, if there’s any chance we can give it to them.”

“You’re right,” Bruce said with a huge sigh, as the funeral director directed the men to load the coffin into a hearse, from there to be taken to the city morgue. “This is all so...damned morbid, though.”

***

Jim’s phone rang later that day. “Any update?” Bruce asked, without preamble.

“Yes and no. That’s the fastest turnaround I’ve ever gotten on a DNA test, by the way, so thank you for that—”

“That’s what I’m paying for,” Bruce said grimly.

“Yes, and I assure you, the city appreciates you footing the bill on this whole process, even though you’re not actually legally responsible for our John Doe here.”

“Nothing, then, I take it?”

“Afraid not,” Jim said. “The few prints we managed to get didn’t turn up any matches, nor did the preliminary DNA. Whoever he was, he wasn’t in any databases—not a huge surprise, given that he does appear to have been quite young.”

“Huh,” Bruce said. “I suppose it was always a long shot.”

“It was,” Jim sighed. “I don’t disagree with Judge Simons for ordering this, but the odds of making a successful ID were always pretty low. I expect we’ll be getting permission to re-inter the body soon.”

“About that,” Bruce said, unusually diffident. “The city is welcome to, hmm, reuse the plot.”

“You’re sure?” Jim said, a little surprised.

“It’s not actually his, you see,” Bruce said. “And he doesn’t…” his voice faltered.

He doesn’t want it, Jim mentally finished.

Jim had been there at Jason Todd’s funeral. He was one of four people to actually hear the funeral service; the minister had referred to Sheila Haywood as Jason Todd’s mother, several times.

Bruce had had them buried together.

Everything about it had felt like such a terrible tragedy. Jim had stood and watched them throw dirt on top of that boy’s coffin, his hands resting on Barbara’s shoulders as she watched herself, sitting in her chair. She hadn’t adjusted to it yet, and her grief for the boy she’d once tutored was still mixed up with bitterness and rage.

(”At least it’s over for him!” she’d screamed at him once, and then retreated to her room, refusing to speak to him for a whole day. She’d come out later, red-faced, but unapologetic.

Jim didn’t care. She was alive. She was strong. She was there.)

And now, miracle of miracles, Bruce’s son was somehow alive after all—Babs knew the kid, she’d met with him after he turned up, she’d called Jim after, sobbing about it—and Bruce wasn’t too worried about what they did with his son’s plot. The one that sat next to Jason’s dead biological mother.

There was something there, if Jim wanted to follow it.

He didn’t.

***

Nothing could beat a graveyard at 3am for atmosphere. There was no artificial lighting here—the cemetery officially closed at 8pm in the summer, and there was no reason for a person to be here after sunset.

No normal person, anyway.

He’d been here before so many times, but never in the cape and cowl before. He gazed at the loose soil atop the grave, so freshly filled, again, although this time there was no headstone. No Jason Todd, Rest In Peace staring back at him.

“All right,” he said out loud. “There’s nobody here. You can come up now.”

I’m aware, a voice said in his mind, just a little dry to his thinking, as the form began to rise up out of the grave.

Bruce didn’t dignify that with a response, but he did put a hand out to clasp the Martian Manhunter’s firmly once he was above ground and solid enough to touch. “Thank you for all your help, J’onn. You’ve been invaluable.”

“No thanks needed,” J’onn said, placidly. “I’ve enjoyed myself.”

“Most people don’t enjoy being buried alive.”

“It was peaceful.”

(It undoubtedly took some of the stress out of the experience, Bruce thought, if you you could walk through walls, including coffin walls, and you didn’t need oxygen to live. In fact, if your only fear in the entire world was fire, being in a low-oxygen environment was probably comforting.)

“Or being kidnapped by assassins.”

J’onn smirked. “You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realized.”

(Bruce would, in fact, have dearly loved to see Ra’s al Ghul’s face at that moment.)

“Why don’t you come back with me to the Cave, and tell us about it?” Bruce asked. “Alfred’s stocked up on Oreos just for you.”

***

J’onn didn’t even try to hide his fascination as Bruce took the bowl Alfred had brought down with the tray, filled it with Oreos, poured milk them, and began eating them with a spoon, as if they were some form of breakfast cereal.

“Is this normal?” he asked the room at large. “Have I been eating Oreos wrong all this time?”

“Nah, Dad’s just a big weirdo,” Jason said, twisting the cap off the jar of Smucker’s peanut butter (creamy style) that Alfred had inexplicably included on the tray, and dipping an Oreo directly into it.

“Master Jason! I included a knife for a reason.”

Jason pouted, but he did use the table knife to smear peanut butter on his next cookie.

“You’re one to talk,” Dick said, wrinkling his nose at Jason. “That’s just gross.” Evidently, he was inured to his father’s strange method of eating sandwich cookies, but not his brother’s.

“‘hat?” Jason said indistinctly around a mouthful of cookie and peanut butter. He swallowed, with some effort, and washed it down with a large drink of milk. “Chocolate and peanut butter go great together.”

“If you say so, Jase,” Dick said, for some reason dunking his own Oreo into his coffee, instead of milk.

“You have a fascinating family,” J’onn told Bruce.

“I’m blessed,” Bruce said, completely deadpan, between bites of milk-soaked Oreo cookie.

Chapter Text

It was time. He’d been putting this off as long as possible, but Jason having been declared legally alive again felt like a clear sign that he was finally going to have to confront this head on.

Tim knocked on Jason’s bedroom door.

He heard a muffled, “Who is it?”

“It’s me. Uh, Tim,” he said. After a moment, the handle turned, and the door creaked open. (Which was weird, because Alfred normally kept all the hinges well-oiled. The Manor doors always opened silently.)

“Huh,” Jason said, staring at him. Then he stood back, and indicated with a jerk of his head that Tim should enter, which he did, hesitantly.

He’d been in Jason’s room before, a fact he’d prefer Jason didn’t know and which Tim had no intention of disclosing, but it was bizarre to see it so…lived in. Jason was a tidy person, apparently, but now there were papers and books spread across his desk, a stray sock on the floor. And the bed with the covers made, but not neat as a pin the way Alfred always did them. Jason’s room used to feel like another shrine to him, like the case in the Cave, or his gravestone. But one by one, those shrines had vanished, rendered unnecessary by the renewed fact of Jason’s existence.

“What do you want?” Jason’s tone wasn’t particularly friendly, but it wasn’t hostile, either.

“Look,” Tim said, trying to think of the best way to start. “I get why you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Jason said. Then he made a face. “Okay, I hate you a little. But I know that’s not your fault.”

Tim considered this. It still didn’t feel very good to hear Jason say that out loud, but under the same circumstances, he’d probably feel the same way. And this sure was better than Jason trying to break his nose.

“What I’m trying to say is...I never set out to replace you as Robin. It was just that it was obvious that Batman was falling apart without you, and I couldn’t stand back and watch that happen. But you’re back now, and whenever you’re ready—when you and Bruce and Dr. Sheridan all agree that you’re ready—say the word, and Robin is yours again.”

“You’re actually okay with that?” Jason sounded incredulous.

No, he actually wasn’t. He wasn’t at all okay with the thought of giving up Robin; it made him feel hollow and sick. But he just shrugged, and lied. “Sure. This was never supposed to be a forever gig, you know.”

Jason had been Robin first. He hadn’t walked away from it voluntarily, and he hadn’t been fired. Robin had been violently stripped away from Jason when he wasn’t ready for that, along with a lot of other important things. If he wanted it back, he should have it back. Tim had started to feel guilty for not having offered Robin back right away, but in the first confusing rush of things, it hadn’t seemed like anyone expected him to. He hadn’t even been allowed near Jason for ages, after that first night (or maybe it was vice-versa?), so he’d hardly had the chance, anyway.

“If you did this...maybe you could be Robin again when I go to college.” Jason was eyeing him thoughtfully, and Tim wasn’t sure Jason was buying the nonchalant act. “Although I guess we’re the same age now, kind of, so I guess we’ll probably graduate at the same time.”

“Well,” Tim said, awkwardly. “I’m not sure I’m going to college?” This was a subject he was still wary of broaching with either his dad or with Bruce; he thought both of them were going to take it badly.

Jason stared at Tim like he had two heads. “What? Everybody says how smart you are. And you’re rich. Why wouldn’t you go to college?”

“I was rich,” Tim corrected him. “My parents lost most of their money around the time I became Robin.”

“You know Dad would pay for your college in a heartbeat, right? He’s not exactly stingy.”

“I know. But it’s not the money. School’s just not really my thing, you know?”

“Unbelievable,” Jason muttered, rolling his eyes. “You and Dick...you just take this stuff for granted.”

“What does that mean?” Tim said, defensively.

“That you can skip school and you’ll still have options. You should talk to Stephanie, she’d think you were crazy, talking this way, same as me. She plans to go to college. What kind of a future do you think she’ll have if she blows off school? She doesn’t have connections. She can’t count on her shitty family for anything. School’s the only way out for her, and she’s smart enough and determined enough that she’s going to make it happen. And if Bruce doesn’t offer to pay for her college, I will. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a trust fund sitting around somewhere.” He made a face. “Unless having been dead screwed that up, too.”

Tim considered pointing out that if Jason had a trust fund large enough to pay for four years of tuition, it wasn’t like he didn’t have options, and having a wealthy friend who’d plunder his own trust fund to help her out meant Stephanie was not, in fact, without connections. But Jason would probably just roll his eyes at him again.

“Anyway,” Jason said, some of his indignation now bleeding away, “If you quit being Robin, what would you do?”

“I dunno,” Tim said, grateful to get off the awkward subject of school, and back to the awkward subject of Robin. “I could...spend more time with my dad. We weren’t really—my parents weren’t around much when I was a kid. But then Mom died, and Dad was in a coma for a while, and when he got better, he decided he wanted to try to be a better father. So maybe it would be a good time to work on that.”

Jason stared at him for a second, and then turned his face away, arms folded protectively over his chest. “Tim,” he said, and his voice sounded slightly choked, “take it from me, okay? Whether you’re Robin or not—don’t take time with your dad for granted. Even if he’s maybe not the greatest. If he’s trying to make time for you now, and you blow him off, you’re gonna regret it later.”

Tim bristled. What the hell did Jason know about Tim’s life or Tim’s parents, to say something like that? He almost opened his mouth to say so, even though antagonizing Jason was the last thing he wanted to do, when they were having an honest-to-god civil conversation. But the nerve...

Then again, if Jason didn’t know a damn thing about Tim, Tim knew an awful lot about Jason. He’d read Jason’s entire file. He knew about Willis Todd, and about Catherine. He’d read the updated version, too; he knew now about Sheila Haywood. And Dick had told Tim (well, complained to him, really) how Jason felt about Talia, how he’d begged her to stay, and how she’d left anyway.

And it occurred to Tim that maybe Jason wasn’t so much passing judgment on him as he was trying to help.

“I’m just saying—don’t wait until you’re not Robin anymore to work on things with your dad,” Jason said. “Because...it might not happen anyway.”

“What?”

“Look,” Jason said, in a slightly wrecked voice. “I know being Robin isn’t the right thing for me, right now. Part of me is starting to think it might never be the right thing for me again. I don’t know yet. I’m working on it.”

“Have you, uh, have you talked to Bruce about this?” Tim asked, feeling a tremendous wave of relief crashing down over him. Robin is still mine!

“A little bit, yeah,” Jason said. “It seems like you being Robin is the right thing for you right now, so I guess that’s a good thing all around. But you need to be Tim, too. Tim’s got a dad. Don’t let Robin get in the way of that.”

Tim considered this, and the oversized kid who was basically his same age, standing in front of him, solemnly saying this.

“Okay,” Tim said, surprised to realize he actually meant he what was about to say. “I’ll think about that.”

***

Once Tim was on his merry way, Jason flopped down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. No point in going back to the textbook sitting on the desk; his concentration was too shot for human anatomy.

He could tell Tim hadn’t liked what he’d said. Jason understood that; it was a pretty personal thing to say to someone he barely knew. He’d known it when he said it, and he said it anyway, because Tim didn’t seem to understand how important it was. How fragile a life was, how easily people disappeared from yours. Tim’s mother had died, he’d almost lost his father—how could he not get it? You had to hold on to your important people as hard as you could, as long as you could. You had to never take your time with them for granted.

Jason rolled over and buried his face in the blankets, trying not to think about it.

“Will I ever see you again?”

For once, by some miracle, maybe just because he was so sleep-addled, there hadn’t been tears, not then. Just a dreamlike acceptance that the axe had fallen yet again, an awareness that there was nothing he could say or do to make her stay. That in the end, you could never make people stay.

“Perhaps, if fate is kind.”

One hand cupping his cheek, the other, carding through his hair. He’d already been taller than she was, at that point, but when her arms went around him, pulling him into a warm embrace, he felt like a little kid again, safe in Catherine’s arms. “I love you,” he’d told her.

“I know,” she’d said. “And I love you, habibi. I wish I could promise you that we two shall meet again. I wish I could have promised to stay with you always. I cannot.”

“Talia,” he’d blurted, as she was rising to leave. “I’m scared. What am I supposed to do without you?”

She’d smiled down at him, and touched his face one last time. “You’ll stay here, Jason, with the one who did promise to stay with you always. And you will flourish, just as you were always meant to do. You will flourish.”

Chapter Text

The wind ruffled Dick’s hair. They were fifty-three floors up over Dillon Ave, and the air felt good, in the August heat.

“You need a haircut,” Bruce told him.

“I was thinking of growing it out, actually,” Dick said. “How do you think I’d look with a ponytail?”

Bruce reached out, grabbed a handful of Dick’s hair, and jerked his head back towards his spine, only letting go when Dick finally yelped. “You need a haircut.”

Dick smacked Bruce’s arm as it retracted, hard. “How long do you think they’ll take?”

Bruce grunted. “Three hours minimum, maybe more. There’s six major operatives in there.”

“That’s a lot of smack deals at stake.”

“Hnh.”

They were quiet for awhile. Eventually, Dick said, “Did it ever worry you, taking Jason—”

“—field names—”

“—taking Robin along on heroin busts like this. Didn’t you ever worry how much it might affect him, knowing what it did to his mother?” Dick finished, in what he felt was a reasonably moderate tone.

Bruce didn’t say anything for long enough that Dick thought he wouldn’t, and then he said, “It did. But not as much as it should have.”

Dick raised his binoculars and peered across the street. “Did you ever regret making him Robin?”

The silent treatment extended for close to six minutes, this time.

“Yes. Of course I did,” Bruce finally said. “How could I not? He died.”

Batman turned away from Dick, a dark and lonely shadow.

“Every single day afterwards, I wondered if I hadn’t made a terrible mistake,” Bruce said. “I put him on that path. Deliberately. I thought it was better for him.” Bruce tilted his head towards the sky, and Dick read pain in all the lines of his body, and what little Dick could see of his face. “He was so full of life, just like you. And he gave me hope, just like you. But he was hurt in ways that I didn’t fully understand—I still don’t. I’m still trying. I don’t know if it was the right decision or not.”

“Oracle…” Dick said, swallowing the lump in his throat. “She says he loved it. She says that he absolutely loved being Robin.”

“He did,” Bruce said, his voice cracking. “He was amazing. For three years, I never second-guessed it. I thought he was happy. I thought it was helping him.”

Maybe it had helped him. Dick wasn’t a psychiatrist. Maybe it had helped, back then. Maybe it still could—he couldn’t be Robin now, of course, not now that Tim was Robin, but if Dick could create Nightwing, Jason could create...Flamebird. Or Bluejay. Something like that. If he wanted to. It wasn’t Dick’s place to say.

Speaking of which….

“I never did apologize to you, for taking him out of the Manor without talking to you,” Dick said, raising his own binoculars. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that without letting you know.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” But Bruce’s voice was even, and not chastising.

“I was angry with you, okay, because I don’t expect any better from Talia, but you damn well should have known better, and I shouldn’t have to have been the person pointing it out to you. But I admit, it wasn’t just that,” Dick said. “It was…I was...Bruce, I’ve felt like shit for the last two and a half years, because I felt I failed him. When T—the new Robin came along, that helped so much. It was almost like a do-over. Another chance to be a brother, and I like to think I’ve been a good one to him. But then he came back, and I managed to make a huge mess of things with him right away—it made me realize all over again just how much I didn’t know him and how I’d never been there for him.”

“You’re here now,” Bruce said, softly.

“I’m trying,” Dick said, flipping an escrima stick. Not a nervous habit. Just a habit. “To be here for him. To be here for all of you. What I’m trying to say is—I know that I overstepped, and I’m sorry. But that night—you were not on top of things, and Jason was not okay. I was just trying to help.”

“I know,” Bruce said. “You’re right that you still shouldn’t have done it, but I...appreciate what you were trying to do.”

“Anyway,” Dick said, ploughing on. “I also wanted to let you know I’m moving home.”

“To Gotham?” Bruce asked, hopefully.

“To the Manor,” Dick said. “If that’s okay. I might sell the place on the Upper East Side. Or not. Never hurts to have another place to crash, I guess.”

Bruce made an inquisitive noise.

“I don’t regret what I’ve done with my life the past few years,” Dick said. “It’s been good for me to figure out who I am when I’m not standing next to you. It’s been great to be able to spend this much time with the Titans. But right now, my family needs me more than my friends do. I was thinking about how much time I used to spend off-world, before he—how even if I had made a point of spending time with him, even if I had been the person he called when you two were in a rough patch, what good would it do if I wasn’t picking up my phone because I was in space?” He shook his head. “If I’m saying I want to be there for my brothers, it would help to actually be here.”

“You know Agent A would be thrilled to have you back in the Manor,” Bruce said, softly.

“And you? We were butting heads pretty often, the last couple of years before I moved out.” Which I did mainly because you fired me. “It is your house. You can say no.”

“It’s your house too, Dick,” Bruce said. “It will always be your house.”

“Field names…” Dick sing-songed, but he felt warm, hearing Bruce say that again.

Bruce snorted. “I can’t promise you we’re never going to fight. We’re both too stubborn not to. But we’re not in the same place we were back when you moved out. You’re an adult, and you can make your own choices. I’ve had time to get used to that.”

“Can’t hurt that you’ve got a new crop who mostly still listen to what you say, to take the heat off me,” Dick said, straight-faced.

This got him a very small smile from Bruce. “I suppose not.”

***

“Okay, Sunday at three. Nah, I can get Alfred to—okay, sure, sure. It’s a date.”

“Was that Miss Brown on the phone just now?” Alfred inquired, passing through the kitchen towards the laundry room, carrying a basket in his arms.

“Yeah,” Jason said, slipping his brand new silver smartphone into his pocket. Alred made a mental note to nudge him to select a cover for it, while it was still intact. “The cultural center downtown has an animation exhibit, and they’re doing a repertory screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? She wanted to know if I would go see it with her.”

“I don’t believe I’m familiar with that one.”

“It’s this old noir comedy that’s a blend of live action and animation. We were watching it with Babs and Dick at the Clocktower, and it’s really, really funny, except Dad showed up halfway through and we didn’t get to finish it.” Jason followed Alfred into the laundry room.

“That sounds like a pleasant outing,” Alfred said, pleased to see that Jason seemed to be cultivating a new friend. The boy had never been as social as Dick had, to a point that occasionally worried Alfred and Bruce, although Leslie said it was to be expected, and would probably sort itself out over time. Perhaps she’d been right about that after all.

“Yeah,” said Jason, who was opening the dryer and pulling out the contents unprompted. He paused. “Tim’s going to be there.”

Oh dear. Even still. “He’s a good lad, Master Jason,” Alfred said gently.

“I know,” Jason said. “You know, he came to talk to me the other day?”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. He said when I was ready for it, I could have Robin again. He tried to make like it was no big deal, but I could tell it hurt. So, uh, I think that was pretty big of him.”

“Hmm,” Alfred said, keeping his voice neutral. “Do you know if you’ll be taking him up on the offer?”

Jason was studiously folding towels. “I don’t think so.”

Alfred closed his eyes for a quick second. Hallelujah. At least one person in this family...

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing, Alfred?” Jason’s voice held a note of uncertainty. “It feels kind of…selfish. There are so many people out there who need help.”

“I think, Master Jason, that you were a splendid Robin,” Alfred said. “And I think that you would make a splendid any number of things that you might choose to be. Robin is not the only thing you can be in order to do good in the world.”

“Doc Thompkins said something like that,” Jason said, still folding towels, but a little more absently, now. The creases were still perfect. (Of course they were, Alfred had been the one to teach him.) “After Stephanie and I patched up Tim, she said maybe I should think about being a doctor. She said she was impressed with our work. I guess my stitches were straight.”

(Alfred had taught Jason that, too.)

“My heavens, wouldn’t that please your father,” Alfred said, pouring detergent into the washing machine, and following with soiled sheets from the basket. “When he was a small boy, Master Bruce expressed a desire to become a physician himself, to follow in his father’s footsteps. I can’t think of anything that would make him prouder than to see one of his own children following the path of medicine.”

“Oh yeah?” Jason said thoughtfully. “I was also thinking...if I’m not Robin anymore, maybe I’d have time for drama club. I mean, I don’t know how serious I am about it, but I at least want to try it, when I’m back in school.”

Drama club. Nothing would make Alfred prouder, than to see one of his charges take to the boards, just as he had himself, when he was a lad. “Have you and Master Bruce made any decisions on that front?” Alfred added bleach to the machine, and set the dial.

“Dad’s been stumping pretty hard for Gotham Academy,” Jason said, frowning. “I don’t know. I think I might. The academics are supposed to be really strong, and it might be easier than trying to go back to PS 35.” He sighed. “I think it would feel really weird to back to my old school but not know anybody there—except for some of the teachers, I guess. And anybody who does remember me, it’s gonna be awkward because they know what happened, or at least they think they do, and they won’t be able to forget about it. In a new school...it would be more like I just transferred in the middle of the school year or something, instead of all this missing time. And people there might know, too, but it would just be a background thing.”

“Sound reasoning, sir,” Alfred said, picking up one of the last of the clean, dry towels and shaking it out. “Thank you for your help with the laundry, Master Jason. Once I have these towels put away, what say you to a game of Go?”

“Really?” Jason said, eagerly. “We haven’t played Go in months. I’ll go get set up in the library. Heh.” Jason snickered. “Go.”

It made Alfred’s heart ache, just as it always did, when Jason seemed to forget the actual passage of time. He didn’t correct him, though. He never did. If anything, he envied Jason that, to be able to forget, even for just the odd moment, everything that had been stolen from him, even as he still fought to reclaim it.

But, Alfred thought, watching Jason depart, he is winning the fight.

Chapter Text

“Of all the cars Dad could have bought you, he had to go with a frickin’ compact,” Jason grumbled from the backseat. He shifted, and his knee bumped up against the back of Tim’s seat, despite it already being pulled as far forward as it could go.

“He didn’t buy it for me,” Steph corrected Jason, from the driver’s seat. “He’s loaning it to me.”

“Trust me, Stephanie, the day you turn eighteen, this car is gonna be in your name,” Jason said. “Do you think Bruce Wayne is the kind of man who would ever willingly drive a Honda Civic?”

“You can call me Steph,” Steph said cheerfully. “And doesn’t your dad have a giant garage full of cars?”

“He does, and they’re all flashier than Nightwing on a caffeine high,” Tim chimed in. “Man, I can’t believe he bought you a car...he never bought me a car.”

“You don’t even have your driver’s license, Mr. Timothy Drake.”

Tim wished she’d stop saying his name like that. Or at all. But he shrugged. “I already know how to drive, and it’s not like cops are pulling me over on the R-cycle to ask for my license and registration.”

“Do you actually call it that?” Jason asked him, incredulous. He turned to Steph. “Does he actually call it that?”

“It’s very uncool, but in his defense, I think it’s not inherently uncooler than ‘the Batmobile’,” Steph said.

“Yeah, but that was named by a ten-year-old.”

“Wait, what?” Tim saw Steph’s eyebrows shoot up to her forehead.

“Dick named everything in the Cave when he first got there,” Jason said. “‘The Batcave.’ ‘The Batcomputer.’ ‘The Batmobile.’ He was ten. Bruce rolled with it.”

Dick Grayson, Tim reflected, was a difficult person to say no to.

“No way,” Stephanie breathed.

“Dick denied it when I asked him, and he and Dad have this omerta thing going on so I can’t get much out of him, but Alfred spilled a lot of embarrassing stories about both of them the first time I cleaned my own uniform without being asked. He was just so happy.”

“This is glorious,” Steph said, gleefully. “I have to find some way to use this.”

“Save it for the right moment,” Tim advised. He craned his head towards the back of the car. “Do you think if I got my license, Bruce would buy me a car?”

“It’s worth a shot. Man, I should get mine,” Jason said, sighing. “But it’s so many hoops to jump through just to get a learner’s permit. And then six months of ‘supervised driving’—” Jason made air quotes with his fingers—“before I can finally get the license. As if I haven’t been driving since I was twelve. But I can’t exactly go up to the counter at the MVC and say, ‘Look, I’ve driven the Batmobile, trust me, I’m good for this.’”

“Bruce let you drive the Batmobile when you were twelve?” Tim said, scandalized and wildly jealous.

“I didn’t say that,” Jason said, way too casually. “Just that I’ve driven it. Batman wanted to make sure I knew how, in case of emergency. But I already knew how to drive when I met him. Mostly.”

“...why?” Steph asked. “How?”

“Um.” Jason said. “Did they give you my file yet?”

“Nope.”

“See, when I first met Batman—I was boosting tires to get by.”

“Get by?” Steph sounded confused.

“I told you that my mom died a few years ago, right? My bio dad wasn’t around, I didn’t want to stick around until the social workers showed up—Gotham’s foster care system is a shitshow—and I ended up on my own. And the thing is, if you’re not old enough to work, there’s only a few things you can do to make money, and none of them are legal,” Jason said bleakly. “Lifting tires seemed like the least bad option, at the time.”

“Oh my god,” Steph said in a subdued voice. “That’s awful.”

“And it’s not that I was planning to get involved in anything more serious, but I already knew a lot about cars just from watching folks work on them, and when one of the older kids offered to teach me to drive—in a car I’m pretty sure he did not own—I took him up on it. Just in case.”

Tim digested the implications of this. “Does Bruce know about this?”

“Of course he does,” Jason said. “Why wouldn’t he? He already knew I’d been stealing tires, I mean, we met because I lifted his—”

“Wait,” Steph said. “You did not. Was it really—did you really—the car—”

“I did,” Jason said smugly. Tim looked back to see Jason grinning. “I had three off and Batman caught me coming back for the fourth. He made me put them back on myself.”

Stealing was apparently funny, now, because Stephanie was laughing at this.

“After he took me home, he wanted to know if I’d ever done anything more serious—like grand theft auto, maybe—and it seemed like a good time to be upfront about what I had or hadn’t done, or might have been thinking about doing, especially with Robin on the table.”

“I’m sorry,” Steph said, incredulously, “Are you saying you stole Batman’s tires and all he did was take you home? And make you Robin? This is insane.”

“Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but essentially...yeah.”

Tim could tell that Jason was having the time of his life, impressing Steph with this junk. Back off, buddy, she’s taken. “Hey, Steph, did I ever tell you how I met Batman—”

“No,” she said, “but Nightwing—Dick—and Jason filled in the blanks for me back when we were attempting to watch this movie in the first place.” She huffed in amusement. “Before a certain Bat-personage not to be named swooped in with Bat-plumage—”

“Bats don’t have feathers,” Jason interjected.

“And we had to stop, so everybody could feel bad and have just an awful time.”

Jason groaned in sort of an affirmative way.

And Tim was just done with this. Why had he ever agreed to this? “Yeah, okay. Cool.”

Maybe something in his voice tipped her off, because Steph glanced over at Tim, and said, brightly, “That was pretty impressive, though, Tim—recognizing Dick just from the somersault, I mean.”

“The stalking, though…” Jason sing-songed from the backseat.

“Oh shut up, Jason,” Tim snarled. “At least I never stole shit and bragged about it.”

The camaraderie they’d been building collapsed in an instant into strained silence. As they approached the Alan Davis Cultural Center, Jason said, abruptly, “You can let me out here. I’ll get the tickets while you guys park, and we can just meet up inside.”

“Okay,” Steph said, cruising to a stop. Jason climbed out of the car. Once he was out of earshot, Steph said, without moving the car, “Tim, what the hell was that?”

“Oh come on, he was milking it,” Tim said, feeling truly vicious. “He’s such a badass, Steph, he’s such a smooth criminal. How can you fall for that? You’re better than that, aren’t you?”

“Tim,” Steph said sharply. “Have you forgotten who my dad is?”

“Of course not,” Tim said. “We took him down together.”

“Yeah, so maybe you could just not. And you heard Jason, he was twelve, and he was homeless.”

“Sounds to me like he was doing just fine, Steph. He had a gig, he was gearing up for better things, right?”

“You know what?” Steph snapped. “Get out of my car.”

“It’s not your car, is it though?” Tim sniped. “It’s Bruce Wayne’s car.”

“I mean it, Timothy Drake. Get the fuck out of my car.”

“And that,” Tim said, bile rising up in his throat. “Why is it that he got to give you my name because he felt like it, and I’m not supposed to mind? Why is it that he gets to make fun of me, but I’m a jerk if I make fun of him?”

“Do you honestly think you’re the same—” Steph put the Civic back into gear, and slammed it into the first parking space available. “Okay, first of all, for months, you had my name and my face and my family and everything, and I had nothing, and I had to be fine with that. And as I recall, you were just fine with that, too. And now that it’s reciprocal, you’re whining about how you got outed without your permission. Hope you’re enjoying the karma, Robin.”

“That’s not the same,” Tim said. It wasn’t. They’d had to be sure about Spoiler. They needed to know if she was working for Cluemaster or not. Just because she wasn’t didn’t entitle her to know their identities. Putting on a mask and promising you meant well didn’t get you an automatic buy-in to Batman and Robin.

“You keep telling yourself that,” Steph said. “And you know what else? You’re rich, Tim. You think you aren’t, because you used to be richer and you lost some of that money. But you’re still rich. When you were following Batman around when you were five or whatever, if someone had seen you, the worst thing that would have happened is that the cops would have taken you home and told your mom. You think you know shit, and you really don’t.”

“You know what, Stephanie, just—” Tim broke off as Steph unbuckled her seat belt and swung out of the car. Tim followed her, in stony silence.

Jason was waiting for them in the lobby. He casually assessed them, and said nothing, only offering them their cheap thermal receipt paper tickets.

Tim silently seethed as they made their way into the cinema and found their seats. Steph said they’d watched this halfway through already; why couldn’t they just have just finished it at home or whatever?

He could hear Jason talking to Steph over to his right, in a voice too quiet for Tim to have been meant to hear. He leaned over as far as he could without being obvious.

“...this dive over in the Bowery. Cheap locks, not much staff. It was easy to sneak in.”

Tim rolled his eyes and sank back into his chair. This whole damn afternoon was a mistake, and he regretted ever agreeing to it.

***

Surprisingly, Tim’s foul mood didn’t survive much past the elaborate cartoon slapstick of the opening sequence. The movie was even funnier and better than he remembered. And it was actually…fun, watching a movie in a room full of other people, all snickering and gasping together, instead of sitting on the couch by himself, alone with the TV. Maybe Steph had been right to suggest this, after all.

He got so swept up in the movie, in fact, that he’d actually forgotten what he’d been angry about when he felt Steph’s hand slip out of his, and saw, from the corner of his eye, that she wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, but was leaning over towards Jason.

His previous jealousy came surging back to the surface. Sure, Jason had been Robin first, sure, he was stupidly tall all of a sudden, somehow, sure, Bruce was devoting more attention to Jason than he’d ever given to Tim, and somehow everyone just seemed to love Jason somehow, but Steph was Tim’s, dammit. How dare Jason try to take her away, too. Tim had even offered to give him back Robin, and wasn’t that enough? Did Jason have to take everything that was Tim’s?

And then Tim realized that Steph was leaning over towards Jason because Jason wasn’t breathing.

Tim scrambled out of his seat, stumbling past the both of them, thankful they’d taken the last three seats in the row, and then he could see that Jason was staring at the screen, eyes wide as saucers, transfixed in terror. And Jason was breathing after all, tiny, irregular breaths, but it wasn’t nearly enough. If he kept that up, he was going to pass out.

On the screen, Christopher Lloyd’s eyes suddenly bugged out into a cartoonish parody of a face, and his voice went helium high, as he screeched, “just. like. THIIIIIIIIIIIS.”

Jason shuddered violently, eyes still locked on the screen, but Tim didn’t think it was the movie he was seeing right now, or that it was Judge Doom’s monologue that Jason was hearing.

God, Tim was such an idiot. How could he have been so stupid? How could they both have been so stupid? Why hadn’t it occurred to either of them that this scene was guaranteed to freak Jason out? Jason had literally died just like that; trapped in a real-life warehouse with a psychopathic cartoon. What did they think was going to happen, dragging Jason into this? They were lucky Jason was just going zombie again, and not throwing punches left and right.

“Steph,” Tim whispered to Steph, urgently. “We have to get him out of here. Right now.”

“Yeah,” Steph said, and she didn’t sound so great herself. “Yeah, I think he’s having some kind of panic attack.” Steph took one of Jason’s hands in hers. “Jason, honey, can you hear me? You’re going to be just fine. Follow me, okay?”

Someone in the audience shushed her.

“Fuck off,” Steph said, audibly, in response.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” someone else in the audience said, lowly, but distinctly.

“Kiss yours,” Steph muttered. Fortunately for all, Jason didn’t resist as they dragged him out of his seat, up the aisle, and out of the theater, so the exchange ended before it could escalate.

Jason almost did pass out, just past the door, half collapsing over the trash can outside the theater. Tim could still hear Judge Doom’s helium ranting, though, so he nodded to Steph, and between them, they hauled Jason out into the corridor, where the sounds of the movie were supplanted by the sounds of ordinary foot traffic through the cultural center.

Jason sank against the wall in a stiff heap. A security guard noticed the little knot the three of them made against the wall and started to approach; Tim saw another guard some distance off, also eyeing them. Tim intercepted the approaching guard.

“Hi, excuse me, I’m sorry. My friend over there is having a panic attack. He’s going to be okay, but he needs some space.”

The guard’s eyes raked over all three of them, hand hovering over her radio. Tim thanked the stars he’d actually sort of dressed up for this—he wasn’t fancy, but he was what Babs might have called prep-adjacent—because Steph was showing a lot of arm and thigh in her summer dress, which Tim would normally have enjoyed, and Jason was wearing just a green hoodie and jeans. At least one of them looked respectable. “I can call an ambulance,” the guard offered—or was that a warning?

“Thank you, we’ll be okay,” Tim said, pleasantly, trying to channel his inner Nightwing-charm. “Thanks for noticing. We just need a few minutes. And some space.”

Maybe the guard had been offering, because she backed off, and as she passed the other guard, said something to him that made him casually turn away from them.

When Tim got back to Jason and Steph, she was kneeling next to Jason, hovering over him, but not touching him. Her eyes were wide—too wide.

But Tim couldn’t let himself think about that just now. He sat on the floor on Jason’s other side.

“Hey Jason, do you think you can you breathe with me?” Tim asked. “Come on. Deep breath in. We’ll all do it together.”

Steph followed his cue, taking a deep, slow breath in, then slowly exhaling. Jason tried to copy her, but instead, it was a sudden sharp, short inhale, followed by another.

“That’s good, Jay, but you gotta slow it down some. Four seconds in, four seconds out, okay? I’ll count.”

After several minutes of this, Jason’s eyes and fists were both clenched tightly, but it seemed like he was getting a decent flow of oxygen.

“You’re safe here,” Tim said soothingly. “No one’s going to hurt you. You’re not in the warehouse, you’re here in Gotham, in the ADCC with me and Steph, remember? You’re okay.”

Steph’s eyes flickered to Tim’s when he said warehouse, and he realized that she didn’t know. She knew Jason had died and come back, he knew she knew that, but she still hadn’t read Jason’s file, and she didn’t know, she couldn’t have known.

“He’s laughing,” Jason choked out. “He keeps laughing.”

“He’s not here,” Tim said, patiently. “You’re safe. Nobody’s mad. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Tim tried not to dwell on the fact that the Joker was actually currently unaccounted for, had been for weeks, after he’d mysteriously disappeared from his cell in Arkham. Which Bruce had not told Jason, and had explicitly forbidden anyone else from telling him. Batman and Nightwing been searching fairly intently for the Joker from the moment Commissioner Gordon had given them the word—although Robin and Spoiler had been told in no uncertain terms to stay out of it—but they hadn’t heard a peep from him, or seen any unusual activity from any of his known associates. That, and the timing—he’d vanished from his cell the same night Talia rejoined her men and skipped town—left everybody with the strong suspicion they were looking for a corpse.

Tim wasn’t exactly going to be crying if that turned out the case, but if Talia or one of her underlings had murdered the Joker and dumped the body, it would have been nice of her to give them a heads-up, so they weren’t left wondering.

“Hey Jason,” Steph said, in an engaging tone. “I’ve been thinking about it, and you might have a point about Empire. But I have to ask: isn’t it weird that Leia kisses her brother?”

“She didn’t know Luke was her brother,” Tim pointed out, distractedly.

“Mmph,” Jason said.

“You know what really gets me, though,” Steph continued, “is the way Luke just drops his training and goes running off the second he finds out his friends are in danger—”

Jason’s whole body jerked.

“You know what, let’s talk about something else,” Tim said, frantically. “Like, hey, where’s the best place to get tacos in Gotham?”

“There are no good tacos in Gotham,” Steph said, without missing a beat.

“Emilia’s,” Jason said, faintly.

“What?”

“Emilia’s Taqueria.”

“They have tacos?” Steph asked, gently and irony-free.

“Yeah,” Jason said. He was shivering, and Steph hesitantly reached out and rubbed his shoulder. “Yeah, the good ones. Al pastor, and...Renata, next door. It wasn’t really a restaurant, it was a hair salon she ran out of her living room. But she also sold empanadas. She made them in her kitchen.”

“Oh yeah? What kinds of empanadas?” Steph asked.

Jason’s eyes closed again. “I don’t remember.”

“Work with me,” Steph said, with a wry smile. “Twenty questions: animal, vegetable, or mineral—”

“Um,” Jason said, hesitant, as if sifting through memories, trying to find the right one. “Whatever was cheap. Shrimp or chicken. Vegetables, if there was nothing on sale that week.”

“That sounds good,” Steph said.

“Yeah, they were.” Jason said. And then he continued, unprompted, “Emilia’s daughter Emmy lived in my building and sometimes Emmy would watch me, when Mom had to do an evening shift. One time, she got called in at the last minute to help her mom in the restaurant, so she took me along and they gave me dinner and a coloring book. But I fell asleep in the dining room, so Emmy took me next door. I woke up on the couch, and I went into the kitchen, and Mama Renata was making empanadas just for me to take home to my mom.” Jason’s hand drifted up, and glanced his mouth. “We had them for breakfast the next day. Peppers and mushrooms and cheese. They were so good. We were...” he trailed off.

Jason seemed to be lost in this memory, but it was clearly a lot better than being lost in whatever it was he’d been seeing and hearing before. Which...Tim didn’t really want to think about that.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know. They all knew what had happened to Jason. It was just that Tim had never realized what it must have felt like.

How scared Jason must have been. How much it would have hurt.

Tim looked at Jason, crouching against the wall, fighting his way out of a memory, and felt like he was seeing Jason for the first time.

Something awful happened to you, Tim thought. I’m sorry.

Jason’s breathing was almost back to normal. Tim gave Steph a thumbs up, and then he stood up and wandered a little ways, so he wasn’t in earshot anymore, and called Bruce.

“Hello?” Bruce sounded muzzy on the phone. “Who is th—oh, Tim.”

“Yeah,” Tim said. Something in Bruce’s voice sounded familiar. “Sorry, did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, no,” Bruce said, starting to sound slightly more together. “I was...catching up on paperwork.”

Ahh, that was it. Bruce had been napping on the couch in his study.

“Sorry to wake you,” Tim said. “Jason had a bad reaction to something in the movie, and he had a flashback or a panic attack or something—”

“What?” Bruce was fully alert now.

“It’s under control, he’s fine,” Tim said. “Steph’s with him now. But it might be a good idea if you came over to the cultural center and picked up him. I’m pretty sure he could make it back with us all right, but I think it would help a lot if you were here.”

“I’m on my way,” Bruce said, crisply, and Tim could hear keys jingling. “And Tim? Thank you.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Tim said. “I mean, for him, yeah it is, but I know how to handle a panic attack, Bruce. You taught me.”

“I know, Tim. But still, thank you. For being there today, and for calling me.” Tim thought he heard the sound of an elevator’s hum. “I know that all of this has been hard on you. And I haven’t been as present as I should have been. But I appreciate your forbearance, and how much you and Nightwing have stepped up over the past several months, while my attention was divided.”

“Oh,” Tim said, feeling a little overwhelmed by the unaccustomed praise. “Well, thanks, Bruce.”

“We should…” Bruce trailed off.

“What?”

“Sometimes, on a patrol with Dick or Jason, we’d stop for ice cream,” Bruce said. It was a statement of fact, but Tim thought maybe, maybe, there was an offer there. Or a question.

“Well,” Tim said, nonplussed, and a little pleased, and a little relieved. “That sounds great, Bruce. But you know, maybe instead of ice cream, we could get something else. Pizza. Or tacos? Because Jason was just telling us about this great taqueria in Park Row…”

***

All three kids were sitting on the steps outside the cultural center when Bruce pulled up in the Bentley. He pulled into a loading zone, putting on his blinkers, and exited the car.

Jason was sitting with his head bent over his knees, but one or the other of them nudged him, and Jason’s face, a little too pale, swung up towards Bruce. He stood—God, Jason was so tall, now, when was he ever going to get used to the fact that Jason was as tall as he was—and stumbled down the steps, as Bruce jogged up them.

Jason buried his face in Bruce’s shoulder, silent and still except for his breath against Bruce’s neck. “It’s all right, Jay-lad,” Bruce said, wrapping his arms firmly around Jason. “You’re all right.”

Over Jason’s shoulder, Bruce saw Tim and Stephanie standing up and brushing themselves off. Steph gave Bruce an awkward little wave as she detangled her purse from...Tim, who was trying to dig around in it, apparently. Tim glanced up at Bruce and smiled, hesitantly.

Jason still hadn’t said anything, but Bruce didn’t mind. There were so many worse places to be, so many worse feelings to have, than that of standing under the September afternoon sun, arms around his son. Whatever the reason for it.

Eventually, Jason relaxed, and drew back a little. “Sorry. I hope I didn’t ruin your afternoon because I’m a mess.”

Bruce hadn’t even realized Jason was crying, until he saw the tear tracks. He brushed his thumb over Jason’s damp cheek. “Why don’t we go sit in the car?” he said.

Once they were both inside, Bruce put out his arm, and Jason leaned into it. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, Jason,” he told him. “I’m here because I want to be here. It’s not your fault, what happened. You got hurt. You’re getting better. This is a part of that.”

“I was having fun,” Jason said, miserably. “And then I felt like I was dying again.”

Bruce leaned his head against Jason’s. “I’m sorry, son.”

“Is it always going to be like this?” Jason asked. “Things are okay and then, they’re just…not, and…”

I am the last person you should ask about this, Bruce thought. Who was he, to console his son, to promise him that things would be better, to suggest that he could ever recover, when Bruce was what he’d made himself into. How dare he even try to steer Jason away from the path that Bruce and Bruce alone had put him on, now that he was having second thoughts? (And what about Tim? Wasn’t that the same mistake as before?)

“Dad?” Jason said hesitantly.

“Do you feel up for talking about it, Jason?”

Jason scrubbed his hand across his eyes. “Not right now. It was...it sucked. I promise, I’ll try to talk about it with Dr. Sheridan on Tuesday. But for now, can we just go home?”

Bruce clasped Jason’s shoulder, smiling, and started the engine. “Home it is, Jason.”

Chapter Text

“How was the shift?” Bruce asked, as Jason climbed into the passenger seat of the Bentley.

“It was good!” Jason said, buckling his seatbelt. “Doc says I’m really good with the younger patients.”

“I’m not surprised,” Bruce said, pulling the car away from the curb outside of the Martha Wayne Memorial Clinic. “You always did have a knack for kids.”

“Yeah, once you’ve learned how to soothe a four-year-old who just got pulled out of an apartment fire, convincing a kid that a measles shot isn’t gonna be that bad isn’t the challenge it might be.”

(Jason remembered that exact night. The suffocating heat, the smoke, the flames licking around him. He’d doused himself in water before he’d leapt into the fire, trusting his rebreather to protect him from the smoke. Trusting in Bruce, and his training. He’d found a young man lying on the floor, unmoving; Jason took the boy's pulse, but it was too late. Then he'd heard the faint sound of crying, and sure enough, hidden under the bed was a little boy, wet towels stuffed all around him. He'd lain down and dragged the kid from underneath the bed, and hurled them both through the window with Robin’s cape wrapped around the sobbing child, falling into the cool, fresh air.)

“I could drive, you know,” Jason said. “It would count towards my mandatory supervised hours.”

“Nice try, chum,” Bruce said. “You can finish them up with Dick or Alfred. My car; I’m driving.”

“Speaking of which—“

“For your birthday. You can drive something from the garage until then, once you have your license.”

“Soon,” Jason said. “God, I can’t wait. Soon you won’t have to drive me here and back.”

“I don’t mind picking you on the way home,” Bruce said, sounding perhaps, maybe, just the tiniest little bit hurt. “It’s nice to spend time with you.”

“I like spending time with you, too,” Jason hurriedly assured him. “It’s just. Rite of passage, and everything.”

Bruce reached over to clasp him on the shoulder. “I understand, son.”

“So,” Jason said. “....can I pick the car myself?”

“You can pick the color,” Bruce said. “You’re getting an SUV.”

Jason made a face at him, but didn’t bother arguing. He’d try again closer to August. Bruce either ignored the face or didn’t see it—it had started to snow while Jason was at work, and Bruce was paying close attention to the road, which was quickly disappearing under a carpet of white. Jason stared out the window at the thick, heavy flakes swirling in the air. If this weather held, they were going to have a white Christmas after all.

Jason wasn’t normally much for snow—that winter he’d spent on the street had been rough—but he’d developed a certain grudging appreciation for a snowstorm from the right side of a window, in a nice warm room—or car—preferably with a mug of hot chocolate and a heavy blanket. Dick was determined to introduce Jason to the joys of sledding on the hilly parts of the Manor grounds, which, well. They’d see how that went.

After a few minutes, Bruce broke the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. “How are you feeling about next month?”

Good question. Jason had been avoiding thinking about it, so the answer was probably anxious. “A little nervous, I guess,” he said. “But I am ready. I know I don’t want to wait until September, and I’m where I need to be in coursework.” The last few months of blitzing through the material he’d missed in the uncompleted semester of his sophomore year plus the coursework he would have been doing first semester of his junior year at Gotham Academy (had he enrolled just four months earlier) had been more than a little intense. Especially after Dr. Sheridan had encouraged Jason to take Dr. Thompkins up on her offer of a volunteer position at the clinic. But Jason was determined not to fall any further behind his peers.

“You’ve worked hard for this,” Bruce said. “I’m proud of you, Jason.”

“Thank you,” Jason said, and then, finding he still didn’t really want to think about the looming semester at the moment, changed the subject. “Did Alfred say what we’re having for dinner?”

Bruce took the abrupt conversational turn in unusually graceful stride. “Beef Wellington.”

“Steph came over?”

Alfred had a tendency to break out the fancy stuff when Steph stayed for dinner—the restaurant-quality dishes—probably because she was so appreciative of Alfred’s cooking. Jason didn’t think he was exactly jaded, but Steph still had him all beat out.

(“He makes fresh mozzarella, Jason," Steph said. "Fresh mozzarella. You can't buy that.”

"You actually can," Bruce had pointed out, but Steph's enthusiasm was undiminished.)

“Her school had a half day, so she came over for a training session with Dick,” Bruce said. “Apparently, she finally managed to pin him.”

“Good for her,” Jason said, and meant it, even while thinking that he probably couldn’t have done that. Even with all the additional height, and even though he still kept in shape. He was definitely, officially, getting out of practice. Maybe he could take up wrestling at GA—no, that probably wasn’t fair. Track and field? Soccer? Definitely not ice hockey. “I bet she texted you the second he tapped out.”

“She did,” Bruce said, ruefully. “At the same time Dick was calling me to tell me. He was very proud.”

“He should be,” Jason said. “He’s a really good teacher. He could start his own gym.” Jason had watched Dick run through more than one self-defense class at the Y. He was really, really good at what he did. It made Jason feel weirdly proud of Dick, when he’d slip in to watch one of Dick’s classes, and think that’s my brother.

“I don’t disagree, but I do wish he hadn’t called during a board meeting,” Bruce said dryly.

Jason snickered.

They were quiet, for awhile.

Eventually, Jason broke the silence. “Are you and Tim going out tonight?”

Bruce cleared his throat. “Yes. Probably to Arkham. You might not have heard this while you were working, but the GCPD finally confirmed the rumors about the Joker, and it’s likely the news has spread there already. I’d like to keep an eye on the place, in case it kicks up some dust.”

“Hmm,” Jason said. “Be careful.”

It had been two months, two months since Bruce had told him they’d found the body, rotting in a basement of an abandoned house in Robbinsville. Which was the first time Jason had even heard that the Joker wasn’t still safely ensconced in Arkham Asylum. The GCPD had done a good job keeping the fact of his disappearance under wraps.

So had Bruce.

And Dick. And Babs, and Alfred, and Tim, and Steph…Jason had been equal parts furious and grateful when he’d found out. Only Tim’s matter-of-fact admission that they’d been pretty sure he was dead the whole time he was unaccounted for—and the fact that even just hearing the welcome news that the Joker was gone for good had left Jason with violent nightmares for days—pushed Jason grudgingly towards appreciation at having been spared months of constant anxiety.

Two months, since Bruce had received a text message from an unknown, untraceable number with just that Robbinsville address, nothing more. It wasn’t proof, but no one was really in doubt at this point.

Dick thought she was bragging. Rubbing Batman’s face in it. Whatever Bruce thought, he was keeping to himself; Jason didn’t think he’d ever so much as offered an opinion about the matter, just dry facts.

Jason, though...Jason knew it was a gift. Maybe the last gift she could give him—just to know.

He remembered the conversation they’d had; the thing she didn’t say. He hadn’t been asking her to do it—well, he didn’t think he’d been asking. Maybe he had, without realizing it. Either way, he had a pretty strong suspicion that the only reason Talia had taken the time to have the Joker killed when she was in the middle of running for her life was because of Jason.

He was fairly certain he could live with that, but it wasn’t exactly a small thing.

“I’m always careful,” Bruce said.

No you’re not. Bruce had come home with a fractured collarbone last month, and Jason had been furious and terrified, and feeling like what he thought maybe Alfred felt like all the time.

This was turning out to be the hardest part about having given up Robin, not being there to watch Batman’s back. Jason felt a lingering sense of duty, even though he knew there was still a Robin there for that, and Nightwing, and now Spoiler, even though Batman had Oracle, now, too, with eyes in places Batman had never had before.

At least Bruce wasn’t as bad as he’d apparently been…after, for the part Jason hadn’t been around to see. Alfred had reluctantly shared stories that made the hair on the back of Jason’s neck stand up, stories that Tim and Dick had grimly confirmed. Bruce coming back bruised and battered from fights he should have been able to win in his sleep, out-of-control bursts of violence directed at petty thugs, Bruce pushing himself so hard he was on the brink of collapse…

When Jason asked Babs about it, she outright admitted that she thought—that they all thought—that Bruce had been hoping to die.

Jason had gone home, locked himself in the attic while everybody was out crusading, and he’d wept for hours. For the first time, he was truly, genuinely grateful for Tim, because whatever he’d done, whatever he’d been to Bruce back then, it had apparently worked. Had been enough to keep Bruce alive. Jason couldn’t get the horrible thought out of his head—what if he’d come back, and there’d been no Bruce? What if Bruce had been gone, because his grief over losing Jason had destroyed him? Jason knew, he knew, that he could not have made it through the last nine months without Bruce’s steady support, that he would not be where he was now, if not for Bruce—safe, and sane; about to start school again; thinking about his own future in a way he’d never been able to since the day his mother first coughed up blood.

“You know,” Jason said, feeling a lump rising in his throat, “you’re a really good dad.”

Bruce took his eyes off the road just long enough to meet Jason’s, looking a little thrown by the out-of-the-blue praise. “Well, thank you, Jason,” he said, sounding pleased. “I do try.”

Jason peered out the window, at the thick snow; they were drawing close, and he could just make out the outlines of the Manor through the whirling white.

“Finally,” Jason said, with a happy sigh, reaching down for his backpack, stashed in the footwell. “We’re home.”