Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Are you sure you don’t want Nightwing to swing by?” Oracle asks in a private comm channel between her and Robin, fingers moving uninterrupted over her keyboard. “He could be there in less than ten minutes.”

“I’m fine,” Robin snaps. At fifteen, he’s well into his teen rebel phase, and Barbara rolls her eyes. She wonders how different it is when non-vigilante’s hit the infamous age, but she’s not sure she’ll ever know.

“Just keep me updated and I’ll stay off your back.”

“Doubt it,” he grumbles, just loud enough for his comm to pick it up.

“Robin,” Barbara says sharply. “Nightwing and I are trying to keep you safe-”

“You never let me do anything on my own!”

“You know exactly why,” she snaps back, each word biting even as she tries to keep her voice from cracking. She knows she’s only being aggressive to try and cover for how her eyes are tearing up. She hopes it’ll be effective anyways.

Yet, it doesn’t feel satisfying when Robin’s next reply is much more mellow. “I’m sorry, O,” Robin whispers. “I didn’t mean to remind you about Ja-”

“No names on comms!” Barbara pinches the inner corners of her eyes and takes a deep breath before she speaks again. “Okay, I’m calling it. Nightwing will meet you at base.”

“Good night, Oracle,” Robin says, like he’s trying to apologize again with just his tone.

Barbara turns her headset off, sends Nightwing a quick message, and drops her head in her hands.

The three year anniversary is today. She drops one hand to her lap and glares at the timestamp on her laptop. Specifically, the anniversary is in six hours and twenty-three minutes.

Dick has been pretending it’s a regular night.

Tim has been mediating while also pretending he’s not affected.

And Barbara’s been letting them do it for four hours, so she feels a little justified in cutting patrol short.

She’s mostly used to Tim, by now. 

She understands that the kid is smart and determined and everything Robin has always been. 

She understands that Dick needs him.

Despite all that, sometimes she almost can’t stomach the sight of him, black-haired and cracking jokes, wearing red, yellow, and green.

Tonight has been one of those nights, but she couldn’t look away, either. Not when looking away, leaving him unsupervised, could lead to his death.

Her computer beeps with a comm request from Robin. Adrenaline shoots through her body. She grabs her headset and yanks it on, frantically tapping back into the comms. “Robin, are you-”

“What are you, a stormtrooper?!” he taunts, somehow simultaneously making her slump in relief and tense in annoyance. “It’s like you’re trying to miss!”

“Robin,” Barbara says, voice flat and so, so done. “I told you to go home. Why, exactly, are you starting fights?”

“He started it,” Robin protests. He grunts quietly, presumably leaping over a rooftop. “And I’m being a good little Robin and calling you. You’re supposed to be proud.”

The gunshot is loud through the comms, although Barbara knows it must be considerably louder for Robin, who’s in the line of fire. 

“Watch the face!” Robin yells.

She cracks her knuckles and starts searching the city’s cameras for the Boy Wonder and his assailant. She also adds Nightwing to the conversation. “Robin, report.”

“This guy-” he gasps, and Barbara doubles her efforts to get eyes on him- “this guy in a red helmet just started chasing me. We’re on the roofs- I’m not sure if he was waiting for me or just decided I was a more colorful target. He probably wasn’t wrong.”

“Don’t drag the suit,” Nightwing says, smile clear in his voice. The scream of his motorcycle tires sliding over gravel as he takes a sharp corner is audible over the comms. “ETA eighteen minutes, Robin. Can you hold out?”

“If I can’t, then what was all that endurance training even for?” Robin replies. He’s smiling, too. He always does when Nightwing’s around. Sometimes Barbara can’t tell whether or not it’s fake-

Robin yelps.

“What was that?” Barbara asks. He doesn’t reply immediately. “Robin, what was that?”

“I tripped, I tripped,” Robin replies, sounding out-of-breath and embarrassed.

Barbara has to come down from an adrenaline high for the second time in ten minutes, and she is not having a fun time. Fortunately, she finally spies him on a camera, and it’s simple to follow him from there, even once he’s on his feet and running at top speed. “That’s a big guy,” she mutters, taking in Tim’s red-helmet-wearing tail.

“You know what else is big?” Robin says between pants. “His guns. I don’t think I can take him-”

“Yeah, probably not.”

“Gee, thanks. I don’t want to try grappling, either- I’d be on one path for too long. Nightwing, how much longer-”

“Thirteen minutes. If you need to fight him, play it fast and defensive. Don’t get hit.”

Watching a dangerous stranger fire at Dick’s little brother, Barbara has never felt more useless, and the Joker himself once shot her through the spine.

She watches as Robin finally skids to a stop, barely dodging a smattering of bullets hitting the HVAC unit in front of him. She watches the barely-sixteen-year-old crouch flip over it and slide across the ground, getting some distance from his last obvious location, and slip into the smallest cranny he can find. She watches him hold both hands over his mouth because he’s breathing too heavily to be totally quiet on his own.

“Keep quiet,” Barbara cautions, forcing her voice to remain steady. “He lost you.”

Red Helmet lands on the roof and stalks towards the HVAC. He holsters his guns with a sharp, angry movement and starts turning slowly.

“He’s put his guns away,” she reports.

“Nine minutes,” Nightwing says, falsely cheery. Barbara wonders if Dick knows that Tim can tell when he’s faking it.

She switches to a private line with Nightwing, keeping one eye and ear on Tim. “This is just us. Robin is hidden, for now. How much are you pushing that bike?”

“Way beyond what’s safe.”

“Push it harder.”

The rev of the engine is the only audible reply.

“Assailant is roughly six feet tall, wearing a leather jacket and a customized red helmet. Two guns in hip holsters. Fit and holds himself like he’s trained to fight. He’s closing in on Robin’s hiding place. I’m patching him back in.”

The comm beeps once as the line switches, and Nightwing immediately says, “You’re doing good. I’ll be there in three minutes. Get a birdarang in your hand and take a deep breath. We’ve trained for this, and he’s nothing you can’t handle.”

Barbara watches Robin’s face screw up in doubt. “Hey, little bird. You’ve done this stuff countless times. I mean, usually the goons aren’t this good at jumping across rooftops, but the only difference here is that you were trying to avoid this fight instead of leaping right into it. That doesn’t make a difference. You’ve got thi-”

“Found you,” Red Helmet growls, close enough to Robin that Barbara and Nightwing can hear it.

Robin scrambles up and onto the ledge he was hiding next to, dropping into a ready stance and sending three birdarangs flying in quick succession. Red Helmet dodges all of them, but Robin doesn’t flinch.

Barbara cheers into the comm as he flips over Red Helmet and expands his collapsible bow staff, aiming for the backs of the knees.

She doesn’t manage to contain her worried gasp when Red Helmet simply jumps over Robin’s swing and brings his fist down hard towards the kid.

Robin rolls away, but Red Helmet follows him, and Nightwing’s advice comes strongly into play.

The most Robin can do is dodge and occasionally deflect blows with his staff, which works until Red Helmet knocks his staff away.

“Luck is on my side today,” Red Helmet says with a voice that’s clearly being modified. Something about the way he says it makes chills run down Barbara’s spine.

Red Helmet pushes Robin back, back, towards the edge of the roof, and draws a knife. He pulls back and is just about to send it plunging into the kid vigilante when he freezes.

Robin freezes too, only briefly, before he remembers he’s supposed to be ducking away. He does so, spinning to keep Red Helmet in his sight, but the man doesn’t continue to follow.

Instead, he holsters his knife and jumps off the side of the building.

Robin, Barbara, and Nightwing all gasp simultaneously and Nightwing rolls onto the roof after his grapple and Robin runs to look over the edge. 

They watch silently as Red Helmet fires a grapple of his own, and swings away.

“He knew you were there,” Barbara says, frowning.

Nightwing shakes himself and grabs Robin by the shoulders, looking him over. “Are you okay? Full report.”

“I’m fine.”

“Robin-”

“I dodged, just like you told me. I’m fine. Let’s just get back to the cave.”

Barbara follows them on cameras all the way back to Bristol. She takes off her headset and goes back to where the fight happened, replaying the footage all the way back to when Red Helmet first appeared.

Her Nest is silent.

She can’t figure out where he came from.

No banter lightens the mood.

No one has mentioned seeing or hearing about him before.

She’s alone, miles away from Nightwing and Robin.

The knife he pulled had a familiar make, but she can’t place it.

Robin might have died and there was almost nothing she could do.

Red Helmet disappeared after that last grapple.

All she did was watch the boys travel home, because she was afraid something would happen to them.

Because of that, she lost him.

A man had the very real possibility of killing Robin, and now he’s nothing more than a ghost.

~~~

Dick stands in front of the batcomputer, one arm propping up the other as he rests his hand on his chin. The main chair is sitting empty a few feet away, as Barbara sits in her wheelchair in front of the keyboard.

They’re both silent as they watch the newsreel footage. 

“...Robin was spotted near the scene at the same time the eight severed heads were discovered at GCPD. There is speculation as to how he might have been involved-”

Dick reaches over Barbara’s shoulder and mutes it. It’s unfortunate that one of the fastest news stations in Gotham also happens to be rather against vigilantes. “Tim,” he calls.

The teen startles, but still manages to gracefully lower himself from his handstand atop the balance beam he’s been practicing on. “What’s up?”

Dick moves on quickly from the flash of pride at how far his little brother has come and asks, “Where were you, when the man in the red helmet started chasing you?”

Tim blinks and looks at the news feed, which happens to be showing a “viewer discretion” image of the eight severed heads. “I, uh,” he says, talking before he knows what he’s saying, as he so often does. It takes him a moment to read the banner scrolling across the bottom of the newsreel. “I was… pretty near GCPD, actually.”

Barbara sucks in a quiet breath. “That’s what I was afraid of. This ‘Red Hood’ they’re talking about… he’s definitely the one who went after you.”

“The guy who did… that?” Tim asks, pointing at the bloody picture still on the screen, clearly horrified. 

Dick slings his arm over Tim’s shoulders, pulling him closer and squeezing lightly. Tim had gotten off without a scratch, and from the looks of it, that was a very, very good thing. Dick can’t imagine what might have happened to Tim if Nightwing had shown up even two minutes later. He’s impressed with the progress Tim has made, and he knows he’s capable, but his stomach still twists every time Tim calls for help on the comms. It’s often worse when he doesn’t call for help.

If Tim had been cornered by this ‘Red Hood’, and Barbara and Dick hadn’t even known about it—

It’s been three years. Two years, eleven months, three hundred sixty-four days, twenty hours and—he checks the time in the corner of the batcomputer screen—forty-eight minutes.

Jason was in Ethiopia. An entire ocean away from Dick and Barbara.

Dick doesn’t know if it would be worse if something were to happen to Tim only a few miles away. He doesn’t want to know. 

For a moment, he’s so grateful for Barbara. She’s proven time and time again that she can find Tim no matter where he is in the city. If not for her, Dick would never have let Robin start patrolling separately from Nightwing, no matter what Tim would have to say about it. He reaches forward to place a firm hand on Barbara’s shoulder, lightly rubbing a single circle with his thumb before he continues with business. 

“Here’s what we know: this Red Hood is a new player out on the streets, most likely not on our side. He appears to be unaffiliated with any known gangs, but Oracle and I are going to keep an eye out for any changes on that front—the people he killed were all known, high-end members of different gangs in the city.”

“What about Robin? He has a vendetta against me,” Tim adds, and both adults twist to look at him.

“What?” Dick asks. 

“Are you sure it’s not a vendetta against all vigilantes-?”

“I’m sure.” Tim chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, and it’s all Dick can do to wait patiently for him to share his thoughts. “He said some stuff, while he was trying to find me. I don’t think you could hear him when he wasn’t close to me?” Tim’s voice is uncertain enough that what would normally be a statement turns into a question as he looks at Barbara.

“I wasn’t aware he’d said anything before he found you,” Barbara agrees, brow furrowed.

Dick doesn’t like where this is heading.

“Right,” Tim says. “So, he was taunting me a bunch. Classic villain style, just short of monologuing—I totally agree that he’s not on our side, for the record. He didn’t say a whole lot, because he found me pretty quick—” Dick resists the urge to rub the self-deprecating scrunch out of Tim’s nose—“anyways, it was mostly stuff like, ‘I’m gonna clip your wings, little bird’ but it sounded personal. I don’t know, it’s not much to go off and maybe I was just making assumptions about nothing—”

“I believe you, Tim,” Dick says. He makes eye contact with Barbara, who nods slightly. “...Which is why we’re sending you to Washington DC.”

“What?” Tim slips out from under his arm and steps away, looking slightly betrayed.

Dick mourns the loss of touch even as he placates the teen. “Just until we know more about him. Barbara and I didn’t like how he immediately went after you. He’s clearly well-trained, and now that we have an even better idea that he’s targeting you—”

“But he wasn’t even hunting me down or anything. We’ve had way creepier villains—”

“None of which have left eight severed heads on GCPD’s doorstep,” Barbara cuts in drily. 

Dick nods and, with a twist of his mouth, explains, “There’s also the issue of his name being Red Hood.”

The corners of Tim’s mouth pull down farther as he puts it together, and he stares at the ground. “A name associated with the Joker.” His head snaps up. “When did you guys talk about this? Barbara only got here from the clocktower an hour ago, and I’ve been here the whole time—”

The woman in question simply turns back to her work on the batcomputer as Dick interrupts him to say, “It doesn’t matter. You’re leaving for the Hall of Justice tomorrow.”

“I can’t!” Tim exclaims, stepping forward and jabbing his finger into Dick’s chest. “I have to be here tomorrow. It’s important. You think I don’t look at the calendar? After what happened today last year—"

“Robin,” Dick orders, voice dropping into the more authoritative tone he uses as Nightwing: the tone he uses as Robin’s boss. “Pack your things. You’ll be staying for at least two weeks, maybe longer. That’s an order.”

Tim leaves silently after a moment of just staring blankly at Dick, fury clear only in his most subtle tells, like the way he presses his thumbs into his legs and the way his eyebrows tighten without really moving from their resting position.

It doesn’t make sense for his retreating form to blur with that of Jason, when angry Jason always stomped and threw his arms out to either side and bared his teeth, but Dick can only stare helplessly as his mind puts the image of his first brother on top of his second.

He startles when Barbara gently reaches up and touches his arm. “He’ll be okay.”

Dick exhales and leans back against the batcomputer desk, dragging a hand down his face. He stares off into the depths of the cave and listens to the bats shrieking through watering eyes. “I don’t know if any of us will be okay,” he says, one of the few moments of honesty he ever allows himself. If he’s ever going to be allowed, it might as well be today.

Barbara takes a few moments to reply. He drags his gaze from the black to take in her face: the stress lines around her mouth and the tension between her brow. When she sees him looking, she grabs his arm and pulls him down into a hug.

“I don’t know either,” she whispers. “But you know I was talking on a much smaller scale.”

Dick nods against her shoulder, feeling her hair itch his ear, and echoes her reassurance. “Yeah. He’ll be okay.”

~~~

Barbara is–

She doesn’t–

Her brain is stalling and she can’t–

…

Barbara grips the armrests of her wheelchair, takes a deep breath, and heads to her car.

Driving in Gotham is always a very reaction-heavy endeavor, but Barbara simply lets her instincts take over as she tries to get her thoughts in order.

Tim has only been out of Gotham for eight days. Somehow, in that amount of time, the Red Hood found out where he was and found a way to get into the Hall of Justice.

There was something in a text that Tim sent her, two days ago, that she’d dismissed because she hadn’t wanted to talk to the teen.

Wasn’t that horrible? She ignored the only text he’d sent her all week long, and then he almost died.

He isn’t dead.

Dick would have said something.

He’s maybe (definitely) not okay, but he’s alive.

She focuses a little more on the real world just so that she can push her car to go even faster than the already-speeding crowd of cars on the road. She weaves through traffic, ignoring honks and narrowly avoiding crashes, as she also keeps an eye on the code she has processing the Hall of Justice’s security’s recent performance.

Each minute goes by without a single flag of suspicious activity. There haven’t even been any unsuccessful password attempts lately. 

Her tablet finally pings as she parks in the batcave, but she waits to check it until after she’s gotten herself and her wheelchair out of her car.

She takes note of the ping on her way to the in-cave infirmary—it’s a notice that lockdown was manually triggered by a known user, but not one who was expected to be in the Hall at the time—but it isn’t alarming enough to pull her focus out of the present.

She’s at Tim’s bedside when he wakes up.

She almost drops her tablet when he shoots up, gasping and immediately, frantically rattling out a sentence:

“The Red Hood is Jason Todd!”

Barbara can only stare, slack-jawed, as his face scrunches with pain, definitely having exacerbated his injuries. Dick just lowers him gently back onto his pillows, apparently having no reaction to what Tim just said.

By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense.

Barbara wheels her chair closer to Tim, but she’s staring directly at Dick. “Am I the only one who heard what he just said?”

Dick’s mouth twists. He doesn’t reply, instead having a quiet conversation with Tim about whether or not he needs anything. They settle on adding some more painkillers to his IV. Or, Dick settles, while Tim pouts sleepily.

Barbara’s perplexed, to say the least. “I’m glad you’re okay, Tim,” she murmurs quietly, returning his newly-doped up smile with a strained one of her own.

She follows Dick from the Medbay all the way to the batcomputer, where he sits down in the fancy, unnecessary chair he bought when he was sixteen, and refuses to look at her.

“Dick, you can’t ignore me. I’ll just ask Alfred.”

“No, don’t–don’t wake him up,” Dick replies, dragging a hand down his face. “I only just got him to go to bed.”

“I guess it’s up to you to explain, then.”

“Just… give me a minute.”

Barbara is unyielding as she glares at the side of Dick’s head. She doesn’t lighten up even when he finally starts to speak.

“Tim’s woken up a few times over the last hour,” he explains. “From either nightmares or pain, every time. And the nightmares always end with, well.” He waves a hand vaguely. “You heard.”

She narrows her eyes and reaches out to shove the side of Dick’s chair, spinning him to face her. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Each of the stereotypical five stages of grief play out clearly on his face. 

Barbara huffs and spins towards the batcomputer, plugging her tablet in and pulling up both Tim’s old text message and the alert from the Hall.

This time, emotions tuned out, she actually reads both.

‘hey o, I know this is a terrible time but the timing is kind of why it makes so much sense and I think that I know Red Hood’s identity so please call me so we can talk about it and don’t ignore me just because you think I should be kept out of this case for some reason’

He’s terrible when he texts. The thought is fond, and Barbara moves past it quickly as she takes in the unusual activity report.

Apparently, the Hall was sent into lockdown by Robin #3. After all, how was the computer supposed to know Jason Todd has been dead for three years when neither Dick nor Barbara could stomach looking at his profile long enough to update his status?

“Dick, he’s right.”

Her partner doesn’t reply, so Barbara turns to look at him. The glowing computer light reflects off the tear tracks on his face. She speaks slower, more gently.

“Tim figured it out two days ago, and I understand where he got it from. There’s enough evidence here that I’m inclined to act as if it’s the truth until proven otherwise.”

“He’s dead,” Dick growls.

“We both know there are ways–”

“He’s dead to me,” Dick clarifies, and storms back to the Medbay. He pulls the privacy curtain around Tim’s bed shut with a snap.

Barbara, alone again, shoves down harder on the feelings welling up deep in her chest. She can’t fully process the implications of everything right now. She doesn’t even know where to start.

She gathers the concrete evidence and organizes it in a folder, separate from Robin Three’s old folder because… well, she’s not entirely sure why. The point is, she puts together everything she has and prepares a system for adding new information.

Finally, she marks the file as Priority one.

This is the most important thing that’s happened in their lives since three years and one week before.

~~~

The story is that Dick and Tim got into a car accident when Dick went to pick up his younger brother from Washington DC. Another car had hit the passenger side seat, where Tim was sitting. No one was at fault, so there was no need to press charges; Dick paid for the other vehicle’s damages anyway.

He had ushered Tim to a hospital in California and paid the entire bill, plus whatever it took to keep the ordeal out of the press’s radar (read: paid for three identical cars and caused collisions until one actually appeared to match the necessary level of severity for Tim’s injuries).

Tim came up with it all himself as he was stuck on bedrest and banned from most Robin work. 

Bruce believes them, and fusses over his youngest son near-constantly when he’s not at work. 

Dick doesn’t know how it’s possible to convince their father, a doctor, that every single one of Tim's injuries logically came from a collision, but Tim’s a better liar than him, so he lets him handle it. 

Letting other people handle things has never really been Dick’s style, though. If it was, Robin would never have happened. Overall, the weeks after he brings Tim home leave him itching to do anything. It would be so much worse if Tim wasn’t on comm every night, reassuring Dick that his little brother would remain alive if he let him out of his sight.

As it is, nightly patrols aren’t enough to release even a fraction of his energy.

Each day that passes leaves him wanting more and more to come face to face with Red Hood and show him exactly what happens when you mess with Robin. 

Dick isn’t sure he should do that, though.

He’s been made well aware that he has anger issues. Bad anger issues. Hurting his little brother is something Dick would not let slide. 

Would he cross the line in Tim’s name?

Tim would never condone that.

Left unfulfilled after yet another night of trying not to picture Jason’s face Red Hood’s helmet on criminals as he slams his eskrima down on their skulls, Dick showers too-hot and too-long before going upstairs.

Tim is up and moving now, albeit with crushes, but he should be in bed. Dick figures he’ll find him in the kitchen, scrounging up late night snacks while waiting up for Dick. Bruce should be working his usual night shift at the hospital, but he’s in the family’s most-used sitting room when Dick walks past. Like father like son; neither is ever where they should be.

Dick chuckles quietly under his breath, and then remembers that no, seriously, Bruce is supposed to be at the hospital.

“Bruce?” he calls quietly, backtracking and peering in the doorway to find his father kneeling in front of the couch, where an older teenager is sitting. His brow furrows. “Tim?”

The face that turns back to him is not, in fact, Tim. Dick freezes as he tries to do a double take, but his brain refuses to cooperate. Seeing fresh tear tracks on his father’s face, reflected in the fireplace light, just makes the whole situation harder to comprehend.

“What’s-” he cuts himself off, clearing his throat almost desperately. “B, what’s going on?”

“Dick,” Bruce says with a teary laugh. He reaches up to brush some of the wetness off his face as he gets to his feet, reaching a hand towards Dick as if he could cup his face from across the room. “Dick, look, it’s Jason. It’s your brother.” He reaches his other hand down to settle it on Jason’s shoulder, squeezing tightly. “Jason’s back!”

Dick’s jaw hangs open as his gaze snaps quickly between his father and an aged Jason Todd.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Jason asks, voice hesitant and eyes glistening.

Bruce holds his lost son tighter, worry mixing with joy as his eldest seemingly refuses to enter the room.

Dick stares with wide eyes as his (first?) brother’s mouth curves into a smirk.

He can’t just tell Bruce that his miraculously-returned son is a murderous crime lord who, only a couple weeks ago, nearly killed Tim.

…And Jason knows that.

“I–I have to go,” he says, and spins on his heel.

He ignores Bruce as he calls after him. 

He has to go warn Tim. 

Tim is in the kitchen, but he’s not rummaging around, top half of his body entirely hidden in the cupboards, like Dick expects.

Instead, he’s sitting at the island, hands wrapped around an empty mug in a white-knuckled grip.

He already knows.

Dick sends Barbara a quick text before he sits down next to his little brother. He’s silent for as long as he can bear, but considering he’s also trying to keep his leg from jittering up and down, it’s not as long as he would like. “So,” he says, and stops.

Tim lets go of the mug with a sigh and turns to smile at Dick.

It aches that Dick can’t tell what Tim is thinking, even as he can clearly see that the expression is a mask.

“Told you he’s alive,” Tim says, and they both laugh quietly, stiffly.

Dick gets up to make a pot of tea so he can actually fill Tim’s mug.

They don’t say anything for the rest of the night, and they ignore the sound of Bruce, Alfred, and Jason fixing up the dead boy’s old room.

~~~

Jason is having the time of his (second) life. 

He hadn’t realized it at first, but it doesn’t matter what Dick had done or refused to do.

Jason’s dad is still Jason’s dad, and Dickhead and his broken little pet bird can’t do anything about it.

…

He goes into Tim’s room in the middle of the night.

Tim literally falls out of bed and stares up at him from the floor, chest moving up and down like that of a frightened rabbit as Jason laughs.

“Sleep well, Pretender.”

…

He shoulder-checks Dick in the middle of the hallway and revels in the fact that the most Dick can do about it is glare, and glare he does.

He watches Dick and Bruce’s relationship strain with things left unsaid and wonders how he can make it worse.

…

He has a movie night with Bruce. They watch The Notebook.

They both cry.

…

He steals Nightwing’s motorcycle on patrol and takes it back to the Cave.

The following screaming match echoes so loudly that it’s a wonder those up in the Manor don’t hear.

…

He wonders where Batgirl/Barbara is.

…

He intrudes on Robin’s cases, using the Batcomputer to show up at every single stakeout and fire his loudest guns.

The cases are left open longer, and people die. Jason wonders if he’s to blame.

…

Alfred refuses to let Jason into the kitchen. 

He doesn’t trust him not to deliberately sabotage the food.

…

He wonders what any of this has to do with his mission. 

…

When Robin is knocked unconscious in a fight, Red Hood takes out the attacker and activates the boy’s emergency beacon himself.

…

He finds Batgirl’s file. It’s closed.

…

“C’mon, open the door,” he mutters, fingers tapping rapidly at his hip, where he would have his gun on any other day. Today, though, he’s visiting the police commissioner, and that seemed like it would be particularly stupid idea.

The door inches open, the man peering out warily. “You look familiar.”

As the Red Hood, Robin, or Jason Todd? Even Jason Todd-Wayne has different connotations.

Jason shrugs. “I’m looking for Babs.”

The man raises an eyebrow and looks him up and down. He nods and opens the door farther, and Jason is honestly surprised. Did Jim find whatever was making Jason so familiar, or did he see something else that marked him safe?

He supposes he’ll never know.

“Have a seat. I need to find a pen and paper so I can give you her phone number.”

The relief Jason feels that Barbara isn’t dead is startling. He hadn’t realized he had convinced himself so wholly that she was gone. He also hadn’t realized that he cared so much.

He sits and starts tapping his fingers on the table as he looks around. He doesn’t take in much–aside from every possible exit, potential weapons, and hints about the personality of the man living here–as he’s otherwise occupied with his thoughts.

When Jim gets him Babs’s number, he mumbles a quick “Thank you” and heads out the door, already dialing.

He leaves his motorcycle where it is. If it gets stolen in front of the literal Commissioner’s house, he’ll eat his shoe.

Right now, he needs to run. Get some of this frantic energy out instead of trying to figure out where it’s coming from.

~~~

“Hey, kid,” Babs says tiredly, wheeling her chair back until there’s room for Jason to step inside her apartment. He’s so much bigger than he used to be. She’s relatively certain that, if she could’ve compared her height in the wheelchair to the younger Jason’s height, they wouldn’t have been far off from each other. Now, she has to crane her neck to meet his eyes.

“Babs,” he greets, staring at the aforementioned wheelchair for a moment. When he does come in, it’s only far enough to shut the door behind himself. He shoves his hands in his pockets and Babs blinks away the image of a younger boy, one without any white streak in his hair.

She grins ruefully and waves him farther in as she heads for the kitchen. It seems they both have their work cut out for them, what-with trying to get over ghosts of the past. “I hope you didn’t bring gun,” she says shortly. She has reasons for why she hasn’t reached out to him directly before now, choosing to stay updated on his status through Dick. The reasons being a red chrome helmet, a visit to the Hall of Justice, and a duffel bag of heads. There was really only one reason she could think of off the top of her head for why she even let him visit now.

“I’ve missed you,” he mumbles.

She sighs. There’s the reason. “Why are you so mad at your brothers?”

“Timothy Drake is not my brother.”

“He’s Dick’s brother, and I would say mine, too. Where does that leave you?” She raises one pointed eyebrow and hands him a cup of tea.

He ducks his head under the guise of blowing lightly on the drink. 

She rolls her eyes. He probably thinks of himself as an adult now, and that his decisions are well-thought out and justified. It seems Babs is going to have to deal a few blows to his ego before she and Dick can really have their little brother back. “As it is, Jason, you don’t have a real claim to your old life.”

His head snaps up. She doesn’t bother analyzing his expression before she continues.

“Bruce will take you back, of course, because he only has half the facts. Everything that isn’t Jason Wayne, though, is still dead and buried.” That burns to say. She’s always known how to stick to a mission, even a painful one. “I barely recognize you, Jay. You come back and kill anyone who annoys you, you attack Tim–a literal teenager–and the only time you even talk to Dick is when you’re yelling at each other in the Batcave. You might have come back to life, but I don’t have my little brother back.”

He gapes. She stares flatly.

“You’re back physically. I suppose it’s up to you if you want to walk around your home like a ghost of what was or actually exist as you are now.”

He slams his cup down. A small crack shoots up the side, although it doesn’t quite shatter. “The whole problem is that you won’t accept who I am now!”

Babs maintains her demeanor, staring coolly up at him. “You’re right. I’m not going to accept someone pretending to be the boy I lost years ago who’s trying to use that charade as an excuse to harass my family.” She goes back to the door and opens it. “I believe I’ve made my point. You have my number.”

He leaves without complaint. Whatever plan he has now, it apparently doesn’t include attacking Babs.

She closes the door behind him and drops her head in her hands. She planned the whole conversation ahead of time, practiced different solutions in the mirror. It was exactly as difficult as she knew it would be.

Being prepared for it doesn’t let her stop the wave of emotion, or the tears. 

She decides she’ll be spending the next weekend or so at her dad’s house.

~~~

Tim had never actually met Robin Two—pre-death, at least. He knew a lot about Robin, because of a bit of an obsession that makes his stomach twist weirdly whenever he thinks about it ( one of his heroes tried to kill him what did Tim do wrong–) . He knew basically nothing about Jason. 

For all the ways Bruce was so much better than Tim’s biological parents, there was one subject that he, too, always responded to with something along the lines of “I’m too tired now, Tim. Maybe later.” That subject being Jason, and ‘maybe later’, of course, meaning ‘never’. 

Tim has met Jason, now. It was very clearly established that the second Robin was way better before he died.

The most prominent factor being that Jason simply doesn’t care about anyone. What kind of Robin doesn’t care?

He has it very firmly established in his mind that dying and coming back to life changed Jason, and he will never be the sort of person that Tim can get along with.

So, Tim is very confused when Jason sets a glass of water on the batcomputer desk next to him and then walks away. He runs it under every toxin test he can think of, and, when it comes up blank, tests it on himself just to be sure.

Nothing happens.

Clearly, the water wasn’t actually meant for Tim, otherwise there would have been something wrong with it. Right?

The next day, Jason cleans Dick’s motorcycle. Tim and Dick both thoroughly inspect it for sabotage, half-considering scrapping the thing and getting an entirely new one, but there’s nothing wrong with it.

Jason invites Dick and Tim to join him and Bruce for a movie night, a setting in which none of them can get away with anything underhanded without Bruce getting involved. No one ever wants Bruce involved, so it’s basically neutral territory.

Jason deliberately met them on neutral territory.

The mounting evidence was undeniable: Jason was just being nice.

Nice to both Tim and Dick.

“What did you say to him?” Tim overhears Dick saying into the phone.

“Who was that?” he asks when Dick hangs up.

“Babs,” Dick says brightly, and practically struts away, smiling for the first time since post-death Jason moved in.

Tim doesn’t understand. He does not like it when he doesn’t understand.

It’s a matter of gathering intel, he reasons to himself. First, dig up whatever he can on his own. 

He uses the batcomputer to create a map of Red Hood’s recent movements. He hacks into the GCPD to double check their reports. He piggybacks off of Oracle’s network to check cameras around the city. 

Overall, not much has changed–but there are noticeably less dead bodies at Hood’s busts in the past week.

Tim grits his teeth and moves on to step two.

“I’m here for Babs,” he says, fiddling with his hoodie string as he smiles up at Commissioner Gordon.

The man just gives a quiet sigh and lets him in, moving to rummage in the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”

“Do you have any energy drinks?”

“He’ll have water,” Babs says, wheeling into the room. She steeples her hands in front of her, peering at Tim over the rims of her glasses.

He notices her eyes are a little red. He also notices her smile lines are more pronounced than they ever have been before. 

From what he dug up, Jason and Barbara had their little chat eight days ago.

His hand curls into a fist, and stays there for the entire conversation.

Step three, Tim drags Dick to Sal’s Diner, his excuse being:

“You haven’t been letting me go on patrol–”

“It’s not safe,” Dick cuts in. 

Tim ignores him. “--so I haven’t been getting my necessary amount of reward sugar.” It’s not the most sound argument, but Dick goes along with it, so Tim figures it doesn’t matter.

Now, they sit across from each other at a table against the wall. Tim picks at his banana split–with no cherries–while Dick practically inhales his blue-dipped rainbow sprinkle Superman-flavor cone. 

“I’m just saying, he’s already proven himself to be sporadic.”

“Meaning?”

“He showed up in Gotham and started cutting off heads,” Tim replies flatly. “He has movie nights with Bruce. He threatened to pin me to the wall like a butterfly. I don’t know, none of that screams ‘sane’ to me.”

“Look, Tim,” Dick says with a sigh, licking the last bit of ice cream off his finger and crumpling a napkin into a tiny paper ball. “I’m still wary, I promise. But… I just want my brother back.”

Tim drops the subject.

At least, until the next morning, when he goes to the kitchen extra early in the morning (read: gets zero sleep) to corner Alfred.

“I have shared few words with Jason since his return,” Alfred reveals as he methodically towels a plate. “However, I believe your eldest brother is fond of second chances, and I often find his judgement to be at least marginally sound.”

‘Eldest brother’. As though he has more than one. 

Unsatisfied, he turns to the last step on his itinerary.

He knocks on Jason’s door. Exactly three, crisp knocks.

The door opens and Tim doesn’t wait for a “hello” before he says, “What is wrong with you?”

Jason blinks at him, apparently surprised by Tim’s glare. “What?”

“What is wrong with you,” he repeats. “You know, what’s your problem? What reason do you have for existing the way that you do?”

Jason sort of scoffs, sort of laughs. He looks very out of his depth, and Tim feels very vindicated. “Want to be more specific, Timmy-tyke?”

Tim shoves him, full force. Embarrassingly unprepared, Jason loses his balance and falls back onto his floor. Tim scoffs and obliges the man’s request. “You tried to kill me. Multiple times.”

Jason opens his mouth, probably to say something stupid like ‘If I’d been trying I would have succeeded,’ since he’s the worst person Tim has ever had the misfortune of living with.

Tim steamrolls right over the potential statement. “You moved in. Your motive has clearly been to make our lives more difficult while doing whatever you want, including trying to get in the way of me spending time with the man who is my dad, too. You kill people because you died and didn’t like it, which is a bit of a logical fallacy, in my humble opinion. You’ve given me plenty of brand new problems, thanks for that, by the way. And now you want to pretend that didn’t happen? You want to act like you’re just some guy who moved in, and not a criminal of the Rogue variety? Get off your high horse.”

Jason just breathes for a second.

Tim wonders if Jason hit his head when he fell, but he surely would have noticed.

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally, and then Tim wonders if he hit his head at some point, actually.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been stupid.”

Tim nods in agreement then frowns. “What, you want me to think you regret it?”

“Yeah. I mean, I want you to… understand. That I regret it.”

Tim turns on his heel and walks away.

The next time Jason invites him to movie night–the original Top Gun–Tim takes a deep breath…

…and says yes.