Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jason can't believe it's been seven years already.

Maybe it's the fault of Gotham's air, still polluted with toxic waste that those born there are used to but which wrinkles the nose of any outsider brave enough to enter this damned city. You don't come out the same person you went as, your lungs a little blacker, eyes less innocent.

He remembers waking up at six years old, and knowing that despite the city's environmental laws nothing would change.

The blanket of fog continues to invade the streets as if Jason had never left, covering the alleys in a dark cloak meant to hide what doesn't usually make the news. Gotham, however, doesn't need to hide from him in the shadows. He carries the purest blood in his veins, raised with the dirt of the streets in his feet and a coat of strong instincts that not even the last few years in Star City have managed to tear away. It rooted itself in him with the same force of a baby pulling its mother's hair, in revenge for the times when it was the other way around, when the only beacon of hope was a yellow cape.

Jason doesn't know why he's back. And Roy, who squeezes the car's steering wheel until his knuckles turn white, doesn't either.

"You can still tell me to turn around."

Roy's hair is slicked back in a makeshift bun, but he resists the temptation to tell him to get a cut before he can look too much like a nineties hippie. Instead, Jason snorts.

"After more than 600 miles?" He lowers his feet off the dashboard, once they're off the freeway. "I think you'd kill me."

Jason's hands itch to find a cigarette, even though 4 a.m. is approaching fast according to the clock on the clunker Roy calls a car. It doesn't. Roy doesn't like smoking near him, and anyway, he's supposedly been abstinent for six months on doctor's orders. If she finds out that his tone of voice has been worsened by a cigarette, it will no longer be his best friend who kills him, but that short woman who promises war every time he shows up at her office with puppy dog eyes.

"You'd have to rent us a room in a motel, because I refuse to sleep here again. Do you know how bad it is to sleep in the car for the back of an older man like me? And let's not talk about how cold it gets at night."

A small smile appears on Jason's lips, observing the exaggeration in Roy's gestures.

Shit, how he's going to miss him.

"...I still don't understand what we're doing here."

This is a discussion they've had so many times in the month. Same questions, same answers, over and over again. They tend to get into the same vicious cycle that neither of them is able to get out of, unless one of them puts the issue aside in favor of peace.

"Because this is my home." Jason crosses his arms, in an unconscious gesture of self-defense. The scar on his neck begins to itch. "And I want to spend the winter break here."

A month.

A month to remember what it's like to live among your people.

"Well, I'm sorry." The car stops at a red light as Roy turns his face to look at him, something Jason refuses to return. "You know I don't like this place. It's like going into the lion's den. No offense."

No offense taken.

It doesn't take them long to get to the rented apartment. It's a small, quiet building with cream-colored walls that look like they could use a fresh coat of paint, though Jason isn't going to be the one to say it out loud. Enough is that he's gotten it cheaper than usual thanks to his excellent socialization skills that got Miss Sanchez to contact the landlady to lower the price.

"It could be worse, I suppose."

"I'm only staying for a month." Jason reiterates again as he grabs the duffle bag from the back seat. "And get out of the car. You're not driving another ten hours back without a break."

"Okay, mom..."

The clock strikes five in the morning when they finally plop down on the couch.

The trip has left them exhausted. More so Roy than Jason, who has spent those hours playing music from his phone and making small talk to avoid going crazy. One of the advantages (or disadvantages, depending on how you look at it) of having an exemption from getting a driver's license for bad eyesight.

"Are you sure about this?"

After a few minutes of enjoying the silence, Roy breaks it.

"Roy..."

"No, I'm serious." He is rudely interrupted. Roy's eyes are a little red from sleep, but his tone of voice is so forceful that Jason doubts he'll let him drop the subject for the fifth time today. "I just... fuck, I hate this fucking city. Sometimes I really think it's cursed, because I can't believe the cliché is real that it's a real gothic city." As the seconds tick by, the words sound more borderline maniacal. "Just say the word and we'll get the hell out of here. I don't care if I have to drive ten hours again."

Something in Jason's chest tightens.

It's a feeling that continues for a while, without stopping, as he watches Roy's hopeful expression. Just like watching Lian ask for one more cookie before dinner.

But this isn't a cookie, and with a shake of his head, Roy drops into the armrest of the couch with a deep sigh that Jason hoped wasn't one of heaviness weighing on him.

"What if... you know?"

"...You can say it."

"What if he finds out you're here?"

He's thought about it. He's thought about it so many times he's ended up with bad migraines, forcing himself to ignore the thought until it became too painful. Any minute now, it will happen. It only takes a small perceptible movement from Jason for alarms to go off in the alleys: Red Hood is back stronger than ever, back to business as usual as if he'd never left.

But not anymore...

Not anymore.

Red Hood no longer exists, in Jason's life or anyone else's. He has remained in a corner of his chest, immovable.

"Then I'll confront him."

What else is he going to do? Allow himself to be brought down by the person who was supposed to protect him? Let him do it all over again for a greater good he'll never understand? No. Things may have changed since that moment, but Jason's thinking has not.

Roy's pained expression becomes more latent on his face, deciding to trade the couch for Jason's lap, resting his head on it.

"Let me stay with you."

"...No," he replies, in the same whispered tone, "I have to do this alone."

Confront what hurt him. To allow himself to mourn for something he lost against his will, a land that was cruelly taken from him by an executioner. Gotham belongs to him, with its back alleys and black sea harbor. Crime Alley belongs to him, and its people, left to the fate of destiny, is why Jason decides to stand there, years after disappearing without a trace.

This time, things are going to be different.

Turns out that it doesn't matter where he is, because the nightmares continue to affect him.

It's something he risked having an apartment in Crime Alley of all places. The windows creak the same way they did in his first home, battered by the strong wind in a way that reminds him of a blunt object repeatedly hitting a skull. The rain, at least, has stopped, but Jason finds himself suddenly in the middle of the living room, a scream stuck in his throat.

Ah. Home sweet home.

It's not as if the nightmares magically disappeared once he moved to Star City, despite barely remembering that time in his life. However, the atmosphere... the atmosphere of Star City is different. Crime Alley is Crime Alley.

Roy, asleep on the uncomfortable couch that is surely going to give him a sore back when he wakes up, doesn't even flinch when Jason picks up the keys to the apartment from the table and heads for the entrance, with only one goal in mind that he is unable to dismiss. He needs to walk. He needs to get out of that space of self-flagellation he found himself in, ignore for just a few minutes the phantom pain of the scar on his neck.

Maybe going down Crime Alley at night isn't the best option. Jason doesn't care.

In only long pajama pants and a sweatshirt stolen from Roy, the first and only thing he finds open at this hour is a small convenience store he doesn't recognize, probably a couple of years old. The teenager working in it refrains from looking up from his phone to glance at him, and Jason does the same. At this time of night, a person in pajamas is the least weird thing you're likely to encounter.

There's no one in the store, just like on the streets, and for a few moments he manages to imagine he's at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, carefree.

From the shelves of sweets he grabs several, without looking at what they really are. Probably some chocolate that would keep him awake all morning with the bitter taste of memories on his tongue. He hates industrial pastries.

The sound of the store doors opening brings Jason out of his thoughts, long enough to notice the back, where his gaze has latched on.

Small pots are on sale.

They are decorated with simple patterns: lines, curves, circles of different colors, and the occasional illustration that he is unable to see because of the product label. The plant itself looks neglected, probably because of the lack of light, and Jason is not able to keep even a cactus alive but before he thinks better of it he is walking towards that hidden corner, hand outstretched about to touch the label...

"Jason?"

His fingers fall to the soil.

Something twists inside Jason, so strong that he folds just a little on himself, because he recognizes that voice.

"I—, shit." The boy shifts nervously in his peripheral vision, and from the angle he can only see a confusing mix of orange and black. "I didn't mean to startle you. Here, let me..."

Tim bends down, as carefully as if Jason were a stray dog, and picks up the fallen pastries. He's wearing black gloves, leaving not a hint of skin exposed, and the black doesn't stop at the suit until it reaches the collar, where it begins a layer of sunset-like orange and yellow hues.

What the fuck.

"Here you go." Tim slowly rises, and doesn't stop under Jason's astonished gaze.

"What the fuck." This time, he actually verbalizes what he's feeling. "You've really grown up."

This is not how the first encounter with a bat was expected to go. It was expected to be something dramatic, theatrical, maybe on some rooftop with the moon above them, not in some stupid convenience store in Crime Alley. Also, what has Alfred fed this kid?

"Yeah, well." Tim lifts a hand to run it through his black hair, slightly longer than the last time they saw each other. "That's the thing about being twenty-five, I guess."

Twenty-five years.

Shit, sometimes he forgets that time forgives no one.

Actually, Tim hasn't changed so much as to be unrecognizable. Aside from having a slightly huskier voice, slightly more tired eyes, and being almost as tall as Jason, separated by barely an inch or two, he's still the same kid he was seven years ago. His expression even warps in confusion much like the one he last saw.

"Change of costume?"

Now that he can get a good look at it in the incandescent ceiling light, the suit doesn't look like Red Robin's at all. It's completely different, with the inverted arrow symbol in the center of the chest. The orange cape, however, is of the same fabric he recognizes as that of Nightwing's costume: flexible, adaptable, and far from Batman's shape.

"Red Robin was a little outdated. It's not like it originally belonged to me, anyway."

If those words are a direct jab at him, Jason ignores them in favor of pushing his glasses over the bridge of his nose to accommodate them.

"You should see Robin." A small amused chuckle escapes Tim's lips. "He's just as tall as Nightwing, and he's not even twenty-one yet."

Tim gets no response to that, and it seems to bother him if the way he clasps his hands before relaxing them several times is any indication. He's always been like that: curious, reckless, impatiently seeking answers. Answers Jason doesn't have.

"I thought you hated soil." In an attempt to make amends for the awkward silence, Tim shifts the subject to the stains on his fingertips. The dark dirt is still there, dry, and Jason holds back the urge to shake it off as fast as he can.

"I hate it." He replies. "This is just... shock therapy. I work with small children, I can't be sensitive to textures."

He's giving away too much information, he realizes as soon as Tim's expression changes to the one he wears when there's some mystery he wants to solve. And that mystery, right now, is Jason, missing for seven years and back in Gotham as if nothing happened. The boy's eyes scan him, even behind the white lenses of his domino mask, looking for maybe something that will tell him why he's back. Or maybe looking for some weapon on him, some Red Hood symbol on his clothes. All he has, really, are some keys and his wallet.

They both have so much to say, and neither of them is able to talk.

"Are you all right?"

The question jolts Jason out of his thoughts of escape. Tim's tone of voice is vulnerable, even though he tries to sound calm and controlled.

"Yeah."

He knows it's not going to be enough. Tim's gloved hand lands on his shoulder, gently and awkwardly leaving a couple of pats in adult mode. Even the way he touches others has changed, but Jason can't bring himself to make a joke for fear this spell will break, and he'll suddenly be overwhelmed with the other bats behind him. Chasing him out of the city again. It's been seven years, and still, he doesn't know if he could do it all over again.

His breathing changes to something more erratic, so the hand is withdrawn.

"I know... you probably don't want to see me. Or the others." Tim says, tentative, though bordering on hopeful. "You're perfectly within your rights to tell me to fuck off if that's what you want, but... I'd like to talk. There's a coffee shop near here that opened a couple of months ago, they also sell books and stuff, and maybe we could meet there. If you're going to be around for a while. I have... so many things to tell you, Jason."

This isn't something they did before.

Sitting down and talking to each other without having someone as a mediator? No way. But Tim looks... different, more mature, with an almost imperceptible scar on his cheek that he doesn't recognize. He has fought his battles, just like Jason, even if they were in different cases.

And Jason is unable to say no to him.

"...Okay. Only you."

"F- Sure!" Tim stutters. "Just me. I promise. Do you have my number?"

In response, he just gives a nod.

Even though Roy told him a hundred times to get rid of Gotham's phone, he never did. Reading old conversations... it helped, sometimes.

"Cool." It seems like a weight is off Tim's shoulders, relaxing his jaw and hands. "I have to go, but I'll keep an eye out, okay? Just... have a good morning, Jason."

And just as he came, in a swirl of orange and black, Tim disappears from the store with a small bottle of water in his hands, probably paid for in exchange for some kind of favor to the store owners. Wielding the pastries, however, Jason lets out a (somewhat) controlled sigh.

Crap.