Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason seizes consciousness with his blunted fingernails and does not let go. 

He sits in a puddle of dirty rainwater and blood, mostly his own, at the head of an alleyway. The rancid mix of Gotham air—marijuana and sweat and grease and piss—is masked by blood clotting in his nose, like red, stinging salt. Blackness circles his vision as Jason digs pressure against the bullet hole in his thigh.

Those fuckers…Jason would be less pissed about the bullet wound if he had received it at his day job. Being a crime lord comes with those kinds of perks. But picking up chickpeas and broth from the grocery store should end up in falafel, not mortal injuries—because there’s no pretending otherwise.

Jason is about to die. 

He’s fucking pissed this is how he’ll go—bullet wound clipping his femoral artery and feeding blood loss, concussion eating up his mental bandwidth, broken arm and bruised ribs crippling his movements. Missing twenty bucks and change from his jacket pocket. Missing the fucking jacket too. 

But, Jason supposes, you don’t really get a choice of how or when you die. 

And that’s the last thought he allows for mortality. Otherwise, his thoughts might start trailing down certain pathways. Pathways like the hundreds of deaths he’s responsible for, duffle bags with blood leaking between seams and gunpowder under his nails. Pathways like being thirteen and pulling on crime fighting tights and pixie boots and quips that hid the satisfaction he got at hitting rapists between the legs and child killers again and again and again. Pathways about Willis and Catherine and Sheila. Pathways about Bruce and Alfred and Dick. Pathways about red lips and yellow teeth and gloved hands that grabbed him and hit him and killed him. 

Pathways, dangerous pathways. 

Jason hits his concussed skull against the brickwork of the apartment building behind him instead. The physical pain is easier, and if Jason is about to die—again—it’s about damn time things got easier. 

He lets his head loll. It’s hard to remember he has to keep pressure on his leg now, even if he’s only delaying the inevitable. It’s hard to remember he’s not thinking about the complicated stuff either…something about bleeding out makes his thoughts trail where they’re not supposed to. 

One second, Jason is pressing on his bloody thigh and tasting Gotham’s shitty, salty air, and the next, he’s screaming as Talia keeps him from clawing himself raw. Then he’s helping Catherine dry dishes, ignoring the broken mug on the floor. He’s untangling Damian from wound-up blankets as the boy thrashes and cries in the throes of a night terror Ra’s al Ghul would never condone. He’s sitting ramrod straight in the manor kitchen as Alfred tames his hair, trying to forget the time he got lice and Willis wasn’t careful enough shaving it off. He’s knocking on Bruce’s bedroom door for the first time, stomach tangled into knots and fingers shaking and  ignoring every instinct in his body that screams at him to run, because his room, with the nightmares and cold shadowed corners wouldn’t help either. 

And then he hears Dick’s voice, the closest thing Jason’s ever had to an older brother, calling for him. Suddenly Jason is Robin, grinning as Nightwing lets him tag along for a patrol through ‘Haven. Jason is fifteen and jumping in the driver’s seat for the first time as Dick clutched his seatbelt and winced at every acceleration and break. Jason is dragging a red helmet over his head and sneaking back into Batman’s city, watching as Nightwing finds body after body that he’s responsible for.

“...Little wing!? Jason! Jay, wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up…” 

Jason barely feels what happens next. He’s moved, pain lancing through him like sandpaper scrubbed to his bone. Familiar black and blue swims in his vision and the voice in his ear says all the right words in all the right tones. Streetlights glow overhead, and air buffets his body. Squealing tires. 

And then shouting. 

Jason blinks against the wall of people—nurses and doctors, people in clinical gowns and scrubs and gloves. They wave penlights that burn over his gaze, blocking out glimpses of scissors biting apart of his clothes and gloved hands pressing and palpating his broken bones and bruises. Someone does something to his thigh and it sears and Jason screams and then there’s a hand on his hair and the white lenses of a familiar mask overhead—Nightwing, his Robin—staying close. 

People move and Jason thrashes and there’s the bite of something, an injection, an IV, it doesn’t fucking matter, because suddenly Jason is clutching the black glove in his hand and falling. 

The blackness is an abyss. For two minutes, he swims in the senseless, cool murk. And then many hours later, he’s blinking awake in a hospital bed. 

There are LED’s searing overhead and a punishing world of AC. Jason shivers, acutely aware he’s wrapped toe to crown in bandages, with a sheet pulled up to his navel. The drugs lazing through his veins are good. His head floats and anything below his skin is gone. 

There’s a dark head of hair pillowed in arms at his bedside. 

“D’ck?” Jason mumbles. 

And then Dick is jolting awake, gaze cutting to Jason’s open eyes like he was made for it. He looks torn between ten kinds of impulses, hands jumping here, expression twisting here. And then Dick settles for reaching out, fingers curling around Jason’s, careful of the IV placed several inches up. 

“Little Wing?” Dick says, so gentle. 

If Jason didn’t have all these random chemicals and medications introduced to his brain and fogging everything up, he’d be pulling away, snorting at the dampness in Dick’s eyes and offering his some kind of sardonic shield, the safest gift he can offer them both. But Jason does have all these random meds pulsing through his body, like morals. He hacks on the dry feeling of recent intubation instead. 

“Here,” Dick is saying, rushing forward with ice chips that he drops into Jason’s mouth like he’s an invalid. Crap, he kind of is. Dick presses a button on one of the machines circling Jason’s bed. “Leslie will be here in a second,” he says. “Try to stay awake this time?” 

Jason frowns. “‘M awake.” 

“Good,” Dick says, all breathless and dramatic. He’s still staring at Jason, soft and gentle, and Jason is hit by a montage of distorted rememberings from the ride here, muttering senseless things about haircuts and body bags and…shit, did he start to cry? Fuck, he needs more drugs to deal with this. “Are you in any pain?”

Jason wishes he was. Very far away from this painless hospital room and Dick and those eyes…which kind of, start to trail down. Jason has to work to tuck his chin, to follow Dick’s gaze, because he doesn’t remember getting anything more than a couple of kicks and bruised ribs to the chest, but maybe he’s forgetting some kind of mortal injury, because why else would Dick have that kicked-puppy dog look on his face—

Oh. 

There’s a kind of panic that seizes Jason as he realizes the significance of a shirtless hospital visit. 

Jason shifts, but can’t quite gather the wherewithal or strength to pull the thin hospital sheet further up his chest, over the fucking autopsy scar. It’s the first time he’s been hurt and on decent enough terms with Dick-Head for the ensuing recovery period. It’s the first time he’s been caught carrying the scar…and Dick had to have known that Jason had one, an autopsy. He was a fifteen year old kid and his death was every kind of suspicious in the book. But knowing and seeing are different things. Under Dick’s damp, hurting gaze, he can feel the difference. 

And Jason does not want to deal with this. 

“St’p,” he says, fingers twitching in Dick’s hold. 

Dick flinches, looking up, somewhere around his face. Better. “Sorry,” Dick says. “I just…I’m sorry, Little Wing.” 

“N’t so little,” Jason points out. It’s been years since he trailed around in Big Bird’s footsteps. 

Dick shakes his head, both hands clutching Jason’s now. “You’ll always be my Little Wing.” 

“I…” Jason feels something clump up in his throat. Maybe it’s the brush with death, one of Jason’s closest since gasping into night air, covered with cold grave dirt and shaking maggots from his mud-licked skin, hair, and funeral suit. “I’m different now,” he says, not able to look at Dick, at the first Robin, who still flies weightless over city skylines because he learned to tread Bruce’s line. Not like Jason. Not like Jason, who was dragged over it, kicking and screaming and hurting, and stayed there . “I’m not Robin…I…I ruined it. ‘M not…”

Jason’s breathing becomes labored. Some of the beeping around them speeds up, becomes louder. Leslie is coming soon, Dick said, but she better hurry because Jason has a feeling the blackness encroaching his vision is coming sooner. He clutches at Dick’s hand—he doesn’t want him to leave. He might not be Robin anymore. He might be ruined, but he doesn’t want Dick to leave anyway. 

“Jay,” Dick says, standing now, leaning in close, one hand carding through Jason’s hair. “Jay, it doesn’t matter. You’re not ruined, I promise, I’m just glad you’re back. I’m glad you’re safe…I’m glad you’re alive.” 

Jason can’t help it. He finally regains some kind of feeling in his arm, his fingers, and he can’t help it. His hand rises to press against the thick cord of scar tissue that spans three corners of his body like it’s there for the taking. He clutches and something tight clogs up his throat and presses around his eyes and they squeeze shut but it still hurts. 

And then Dick’s hand is moving too. It lays right over the top of Jason’s, overlapping, so much smaller than it used to be, except it’s not, it’s just that Jason’s so much different. And then Dick is telling him to breathe, even as his hand holds over that damned scar, the first person to do it, the first person from his first life to see it.

“Just breathe, Little Wing,” Dick says as Jason’s vision swims and his hearing flushes and he starts to tip over the side and down and below but still held by Dick’s hand. “You’re not ruined.” 

And well, maybe there’s something about the near death experience and the drugs and that tone Dick uses as he says it. Maybe there’s something that happens in that damn hospital bed that makes it true.

Chapter Text

Damian focuses on keeping his head level and the heat from rising to his face. His failure to perceive the assassins before they stood at his bedside, blades raised and strike imminent, is an embarrassment to his lineage—when Grandfather finds out, Damian is sure to be punished for his incompetence. It has been years since anyone has come so close to a killing blow against him. And for it to happen in his own chambers…for Damian to have been saved… the disgrace is physical. 

“Remove them,” Damian says, as members of the League appear in the doorway. He’s clothed in nightwear and covered in the blood of his would-be assassins, but his tone is uncompromising. 

In moments, the bodies are pulled away. Damian is left standing, feet bare in puddles of cooling blood, alone except for Red. 

Red waits until the others have left the room, barely, before he is at Damian’s side. He does not speak as he reaches for Damian, hands petting through his hair, dropping to palpate along his chest, feeling for injury to Damian’s vital regions.

Damian pulls away. “I am uninjured,” he snaps. 

The circumstances have curdled his stomach. Damian feels like a toddling child, tugging on Red’s pant leg after one of Grandfather's corrections, being lifted into familiar arms, head ducking under a clenched jaw, finding solace in the silent comfort as pains and weakness grip at him like hot teeth. 

The sensation is unwelcome.

Damian is no longer the infant Mother assigned Red to safeguard. Red may behave at times as though he is still a sentinel at Damian’s side, but as the years have progressed, Damian’s honed skills have long since made his position inessential. Red should not be here, dirtied with mortal gore and running careful hands over Damian’s lungs and heart in search of wounds.

But Red is here—the proximity of his quarters, and the attention he has to Damian’s well-being, has drawn him from his own bed to protect Damian’s. 

And without him, Damian would be dead. 

Damian scowls, stepping away from puddled blood, organic stick, and the warmth of Red’s ministrations. 

Red’s gaze follows his movements, his eyes the familiar, incandescent green that Damian often sees gleaming from the red folds of his hood. It’s rare for Damian to see his old guardian like this—clad in pants for sleeping and nothing else, no kevlar-lined suit and hood. No masks. 

Damian finds himself staring back. 

Red still has a tuft of whitened hair on what is otherwise a brunette bed-head. The curve of his jaw has sharped in the last couple of years, youth slipping away. His body has changed too—rising inch by inch, frame thickening with muscle, skin toughened and lined with a network of scar tissue. Damian finds his gaze drawn to one in particular. 

The scar isn’t new—as far as Damian knows, it’s always been there. It’s just been a while since Damian saw it. 

Clean, it digs the shape of a ‘Y’ across Red’s chest. The top lines cross from the front of each shoulder and span to a point at the bottom of his breastbone, where they intersect a third line that curves to avoid his navel before dipping below his waistband. Years ago, Damian did not recognize the autopsy scar for what it is.

Now, Damian does. 

Damian’s swallows, spit sour. Red’s autopsy scar is proof of damage requiring the pit’s attention. Bathing in viscous, Lazarus green as damage heals and thoughts tangle. Damian has seen the effects of the pit. The madness, the pain. Red has never loomed with the frenzy of bloodlust as he clipped Damian’s overgrown fingernails or taught him to loop and tie shoelaces. But Damian has witnessed the destruction of Red’s pit-mind, inflamed with the desire to raze, to slaughter.

Damian is hit by the realization that Red may have been there since Damian’s beginning—watching first steps, teaching him to grip shuriken, rubbing salves on concussive wounds. But Damian knows little about Red. About who Red was before. 

For a moment, the urge to ask Red about the scar, the pit, the change, comes over Damian. 

But Damian knows the questions will go unanswered. Red will look at him, glaring green eyes downcast and muted, and brush the matter aside. 

So Damian clears his throat instead. “You may leave.” 

Red’s head cocks questioningly. His eyes narrow, dipping to map the patchwork of blood worked into Damian’s clothes. Red does not leave. 

He pushes forward instead, grabbing Damian under the elbow, to move him. The gesture is careful, but unyielding. It reminds Damian of the grasp Red used to guide Damian to training or mealtimes. A move to mind a child—Damian’s teeth clench.

He breaks Red’s hold, backing away, only for Red’s to reach again to capture him, this time in a tighter grip. Damian shakes loose of this also, lashing out with a blow to Red’s kidney’s. Red steps around this and Damian prepares himself for the full-body hold he’s sure to try—

Red’s hand seizes the back of Damian’s shirt collar. He holds it like the scruff of an unruly pup, eyebrow raised. Done?

Damian feels red crawl up his neck. “Unhand me!” 

Red has the nerve to let his lip twist in amusement, but his grip loosens. His hand moves to rest on Damian’s shoulder instead. His fingers press against Damian’s back, thumb rubbing slow circles against his shoulder blade. 

Damian freezes. 

He should snap Red’s fingers, dislocate his thumb. He should order him from his chambers. Grandfather would expect Damian to retire to his washroom, alone, to cleanse the blood and failure of tonight. His lip would curl at the sight of Damian… leaning into ….Red’s hand. Damian has no need for physical platitudes and soft comforts. 

But…Red will not report what happened tonight to Grandfather.

The pressure of Red’s hand increases. The push threatens to topple Damian if he remains inactive, and he has a split second to choose—fight or submit. 

Damian pitches to avoid the embarrassment of a stumble. He is reluctant when addressing Red, but decided. “I will…allow you, to assist me." 

Red huffs, and leads him to the washroom. 

He helps Damian out his nightshirt, dappled with a dark spray of blood. Runs a cool cloth through Damian’s hair and over his face, working it between his fingers and along his forearms, on the soles of his feet. Erasing blood and any indication of Damian’s ineptitude tonight. 

Damian sits on the stool as Red works. His expression is mild, lips sealed. Again, Damian is hit by the peculiarity of seeing Red’s unguarded face. The dimpling of his forehead as he concentrates, the way lines of tension smooth and pull. Damian’s gaze dips away from the unfamiliarity. 

It lands on Red's scar. 

Damian has seen the scar overlapped with the healing and healed nicks of training, battle, and war. He’s seen it coated in medicinal sheen and mud and grit and grime. 

Now, it is covered in blood. 

Damian stares at that scar, lapped into vitality by Lazarus green. Damian stares at Red, who he knows and doesn’t. Damian stares at the blood-damp cloth in Red’s hand. 

Damian might not be the child Red was once tasked to serve, but tonight, once again, he’s saved Damian from the pit—from the change. 

Red casts Damian’s ruined sleepwear and cloth to the side for servants to collect. He walks with Damian back into his chambers, where the crimson pool staining his floor has been cleaned. Red waits as Damian crawls back into his bed, holding the blankets for Damian to curl under. And then he turns to leave. 

Damian’s hand snatches his wrist. 

Red stays.

Chapter Text

Tim is bleeding. Maybe not enough to justify shutting down Jason’s security measures and letting himself into his safehouse, but Tim’s closest is twenty minutes in the other direction, and he’s not entirely sure what drugs are in his veins right now. Tim can reset Jason's systems before he leaves—it's not he'll know he stopped by.

Tim goes ahead and jimmies the window open.

Shoving himself inside, Tim finds himself falling into an approximation of a living room. There’s a patched couch that looks like it should’ve stayed on the side of some road, one uninspired throw blanket cast over its back, a box pulled up to its front as a coffee table approximation. And then lots of open space. 

Tim hobbles through it, trying to keep weight off of his left ankle. It’s not broken or sprained, just stiff. He keeps pressure on his shoulder and rubs his knuckles periodically at his nose, which leaks blood like a broken, dripping faucet. That's okay—knowing Jason, he owns a mop Tim can use before he vacates.

Tim stumbles past the couch. He can see right into the kitchen, which looks slightly better off. There’s a coffeemaker on the counter, spices and dishware in the doorless cabinets and cupboards, and something simmering on the stove—

Tim pauses. 

Something simmering on the stove? 

...oh. Oh  no.

Immediately Tim is backing away, closing the distance between him and that unlocked window. This was a mistake—he didn’t expect Jason to be here. He planned to appropriate a couple bandages, run a blood test on the machine Jason stole from the cave, and then maybe sleep this off on that poor excuse for a couch. But if Jason’s here that plan is no longer an option. 

Tim is hustling past the couch, no longer worried about weight on his damn ankle and just booking it.

And then he is slamming into a chest. A familiar, broad, slight damp, and very bare chest. 

Tim doesn’t…ricochet off it. Except he kind of does. And then there’s only the hands that reach out and close around his shoulders keeping him from taking his second spill of the night. Tim’s bleeding side thanks Jason—the rest of him makes a very dignified ‘eep’ noise, and does not. His stomach sinks down somewhere near his toes. 

“Hey Baby-Bird,” Jason says. “Little far from the nest, aren’t you?”

Tim swipes at his nose, trying to keep it from dripping to the flooring, considerate houseguest he is. “I’m migrating.”

“Not here,” Jason says.

“You were closest,” Tim mumbles as an explanation. But he’s on two (mostly) working feet and a whole lot of his blood is still pumping through his body, tainted or not. He’s not really feeling the drugs either…just a thick and soft sensation that’s wrapping up his flesh like a heated blanket, thrumming somewhere near the base of his skull, all nice and comforting like. Tim can make it twenty minutes the other direction. He doesn’t have a choice. 

Even if his vision is a little wishy-washy, and his hearing isn’t quite tuning in. 

Tim’ll be okay—he has to be. 

“Woah,” Jason says, as he pulls away. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Out?” Tim blinks at him. His eyesight waters, lines dampening, colors merging. He has to hurry. 

Jason has him pinned by his shoulders again—when did he do that? “Yeah…no. Sit your ass down.”

“That couch probably has racoons living in it.” 

Jason scowls. “This couch is going to have a racoon sitting on it,” and then he’s yanking Tim closer.

Tim scowls right back and slips the hold Jason pulls him into, except then his head goes a little sideways and when he comes to, Jason is depositing him on some grungy pillows. “Gross,” Tim manages, breaths labored. 

“They just look like that—the couch is fine,” but then Jason’s gaze dips to the blood dripping around Tim’s side and he sighs. “It was fine.”

“Sorry,” Tim mumbles.

“Shut up,” Jason says. “I’ll grab a kit.” 

He stalks off, mumbling something under his breath about ‘not running a fucking motel’ and ‘gonna burn that damn soup’. Tim doesn’t say anything—he’s smart like that. 

Tilting into the cushions, he finds them surprisingly comfortable. They’re nothing like the firm, uninviting couches placed strategically around the Drake manor. They’re more like the one in the sitting room at home, broken in by the general chaos that follows everyone Bat—Cass chucking a spitting and furious Damian at its cushions, Dick jumping and vaulting off it’s back, Bruce steering Tim there by a firm hand on the shoulders so he could sleep until he's ‘able to keep his eyes open on the stairs’. 

Tim runs a hand over the comfort and blinks against the haze in his eyes and when his head starts to tilt he doesn’t notice the fall, or the body that catches him. 

Minutes pass, or is it days? Tim drags himself into awareness. His head aches and his eyes itch and there’s a kind of queasy feeling in his stomach. 

“...Tim?” A tap against his cheek. “C’mon Champ, wakey wakey.” 

Tim lets his eyes flutter open. The ceiling overhead is unfamiliar, but whatever is beneath him is comfortable. There’s something warm next to him too. Tim’s fingers feel like melting ice cubes so he presses their numb tips against the heat—

Wait. Tim frowns at the organic give underhand. Skin? 

His head tilts over. 

“With me?” Jason asks. 

It floods back. An unlucky needle stick on patrol. The twisting of his eyesight, the floating of his mind. The couch. Jason’s couch. And then falling…

Tim swallows. Whatever happened at the close of his scattered memories, he didn’t end up sprawled on the floor. Or maybe he did, it doesn’t matter. He’s not there now. He’s propped up on couch cushions, leaning into Jason’s side. 

And Jason is…still not wearing a shirt. 

This would be fine—vigilante's give up things like privacy pretty damn quick, especially Bats, with all the injuries, emergency decontamination showers, and Stephanie’s lack of regard for locked doors. Tim wouldn’t blink twice at the sight or feel of skin. 

Except, it’s not just skin. 

There are lines, scars, raised and rough compared to the rest of the skin on Jason’s chest. And Tim’s coherency is slightly impaired at the moment, but dammit he can recognize an autopsy scar???

So many thoughts should be filling Tim’s head at the discovery, but mostly there are colors instead. Simmering red and a deep, dark, sickening purple that squeezes and pangs somewhere behind Tim’s breastbone. Tim taps his hand against Jason’s chest. He should say something. 

But Tim’s tongue decides right then to disconnect from his brain. Somehow wrangling a slurring, slushing, sliding form of speech, Tim manages to articulate a quiet “...Wh-a-a-a-at?”

Jason is not fluent in Tim’s newfound language. 

Instead of approaching Tim’s discussion with the tact and seriousness it deserves, he laughs. Jason gives him a squeeze around his shoulders. 

“You’ll be fine,” Jason tells him. “The drug will wear off in the next couple of hours. You’ll probably have a killer headache, but that’s why we’ve got these.” 

And then Jason is shifting and grabbing something from the cardboard box pulled close to the couch. There’s a popping sound and then Jason’s hand is nudging against Tim’s, two white pills held there. 

Tim frowns, he needs to say something, he needs to talk to Jason. It was important—

“Take ‘em,” Jason orders. 

Tim stares. 

“Tim,” Jason says. “You’re not actually a baby chick. I’m not dropping these into your mouth so it’s time to pick them up, and swallow them.” 

And then, somehow, Tim has the pills in his hand and is pressing them past his lips. Water comes next. Tim doesn’t really notice grabbing the glass, but then Jason is rescuing it from his tipping grip all the same. The water tastes cold and clean. It’s nice. 

“...go to sleep yet,” Jason is saying. “...to the bed.”

But the running of his vision is making his headache worse, pills or no, so Tim lets his eyes close to slits. In his narrow cut of vision, flashes swim. He sees hands he can’t feel sliding around him, one in the crook of his knees, the other sliding behind the flat of his back. And then the world tilts and the floor grows further away. He’s rocked. A new ceiling crawls into view, pressed with popcorn texture and stained off-white from smoke. 

There's a gray blanket beneath him, pillows and sheets. Tim takes back all the praise he had for Jason’s couch—this is so much better. 

But then the warmth around him recedes. Tim doesn’t like that. 

His hands come out, numb fingertips reaching and seizing and staying.

“Jay,” he mumbles, and he can’t quite manage more words. Somewhere in his head, he knows he wanted more of them. 

But then there’s a sigh and a dip on the mattress. Soft prickling sentences sound somewhere near Tim’s ear, the ones he never hears or remembers. 

And then Tim is gone again. 

He dips in and out of consciousness. Pills pass his lips, water follows. A blanket brushes his shoulders, a washcloth drags under his nose, fingers probe along the injury to his arm. Tim glimpses dark hair with white and calloused hands that smell faintly like spices. The eyes looking after him, squinted with amusement, are familiar. 

This is not how Tim planned the night, but this is fine. Jason is here, Robin is here. Tim is safe.

Finally, Tim crawls into consciousness and stays there. He groans. There’s about a minute of lying still, head aching, spit stale, eyes swollen. And then the door opens. 

“There you are,” Jason says. 

Tim groans again. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” Jason warns him. “We’ve gotta get some food into you.”

It’s then that Tim sees what Jason has in his hands—a steaming bowl. As he brings it closer the mouth-watering blend of seasoning makes itself known. Tim’s stomach is still a little reluctant but Jason’s been shoving meds down his throat and Tim knows he needs to get something substantial in him. 

“Sit up,” Jason tells him. 

Tim shuffles back to lean against the headboard. He glances around. Jason’s room is slightly better furnished than the living area. A bureau is pushed against the wall opposite of the bed, which has an actual frame, if metal. Books are straightened neatly on a small bedside table alongside a lamp. The laundry basket is empty and the corners are devoid of cobwebs—Jason’s room is immaculate. His derision at any time Dick throws his shoes with reckless abandon and Steph leaves plates unwashed in the sink comes to mind. 

“Watch your shoulder,” Jason warns, sitting on the bed. There’s an oven mitt held under the bowl. Jason places both on Tim’s lap, watching with an eagle eye for any sign of Tim face-planting in it. “You needed a few stitches.”

Tim hadn’t anticipated stitches when he first crawled into Jason’s safehouse. He hadn’t anticipated a lot of what’s happened since he jimmied that window, but most of it, including Jason’s appearance, is probably for the best. 

“Sorry,” Tim says. 

Jason narrows his eyes. “Your dumbass better be apologizing for finding and compromising another of my safehouses, and then breaking my fucking window, because if you’re saying sorry for getting injured I’m gonna—”

“Sorry,” Tim interrupts, because mostly he wants Jason’s voice to stop getting louder.

Jason breathes out a hard exhale through his nose, but Tim must look pretty miserable—curled up with a greasy bed-head, wrapped in gauze, and still wearing his blood-stained Red Robin pants—because Jason doesn’t try to escalate his bruised nose to broken. 

“Get slurping,” Jason says instead, gesturing toward the soup. There's a tense, pissed-off undertone to his voice that Tim doesn’t entirely know the cause of. He assumes it’s because he’s forced his way into Jason’s Saturday. 

Tim would say sorry—again—but recent evidence points to that being a bad idea. 

Tim focuses on wrapping his fingers around the spoon instead. It takes a second—everything’s still a little fuzzy and off but by the third bite he's got most of his dexterity on board. It helps that the soup’s good. Tim licks his lips and is quick to eat more. 

Jason sticks around as Tim works his way through the bowl, just kind of staring, like if he looks away Tim will try to hide the bowl under the bed or something. 

Tim frowns, because it’s like, a little insulting. But it’s true he doesn’t have the best track record with self-care—he’s on the worse end of the Bat’s spectrum, and considering their members, that’s saying something. Plus, Tim has commandeered Jason’s bed for who knows how long. He doesn’t really have footing to complain about how Jason’s running the show. 

“Told Dickie-Bird you were here,” Jason says about halfway through the soup. 

Tim winces. “Was he mad?”

“That you tried to bust those guys without backup?” Jason asks dryly. 

Tim ducks his head with a groan. He plunges another bite into his mouth for morale.

“Yeah, you fucked up,” Jason says. “He’s just glad you came to me for help after.” 

Tim swallows his soup, deciding not to mention his plan initially didn’t involve Jason. He redirects. “I’ll fix your window.”

“And my couch.”

“Mmm,” Tim hums, wondering if he’s brave enough to point out said couch had issues before he set first eyes on it. He is. “Your couch sucks.” 

Tim… kind of has memories that contradict that statement, but everything after reaching Jason’s place is mostly a confused blur. Vaguely he remembers there was something important he had to do…must have been the stitches. Blood loss is a bitch. 

“That is not what you said last night,” Jason tells him. 

Tim wrinkles his nose. “You’re lying. I couldn’t say anything last—”

Oh. 

Tim’s gaze dips automatically, landing on Jason’s shirt. It’s a custom print Jason made with ‘My brother went to Tamaran and all I got was dead’ that made Dick choke on a martini when he first saw it. Cass had to save him from death by olive. At the time, Tim thought the whole event was hilarious, but now he knows he’s going to have a different memory with this shirt, because all he can think looking at it is that the collar is too high to see the damn autopsy scar. 

Tim stares and swallows and remembers the feel of raised skin, damaged skin, dead skin—

“Baby-bat?” Jason asks, his voice a sharp question. “What’s wrong?”

Tim’s mouth works. He might as well be on the drugs again for all the words he’s able to find and use. Red and purple fill his mouth like vomit. 

“Tim,” Jason says, scooting closer. One of his hands takes the near empty soup bowl and deposits it on that bedside table. The other comes up to tap softly against Tim’s cheek. 

“I’m fine,” Tim manages, because that’s separate. He’s fine, and that furrow between Jason’s eyebrows should go away, because this isn’t about something wrong with Tim. This is…

“I remember,” Tim tells him. 

Jason is really frowning now. The hand holding Tim’s head so he’s facing Jason moves back, and then fingers card through his matted tangles of hair, probing for damage. “I didn’t see a head wound—”

“I’m fine,” Tim says, this time a little firmer. “I just…last night.” 

Jason is looking at him, all confused, and well, Tim probably isn’t qualified to have this conversation, but also, there probably isn’t anyone on earth who is. He bites the bullet. 

“You weren’t wearing a shirt,” Tim says quietly. 

It’s enough. 

Jason’s pauses, hand pressed near Tim’s nape. The worry framing his eyes tightens into something different as his gaze locks onto Tim’s. The moment stretches. Tim’s eyes fall to somewhere safer, Jason’s nose, and waits. 

Jason finally sighs. “I wasn’t exactly expecting company.” 

“Sorry,” Tim says. “I didn’t mean to…see.” 

“But you did,” Jason says. 

Tim nods. 

“It’s…” Jason crosses his arms. His shoulders come up in a kind of jerky shrug. “It’s…fine. I don’t care that you saw it, Tim—it’s not like everyone doesn’t know it’s there. I just…I keep it covered because it’s easier.”

Tim fiddles with the gray comforter. “Easier?”

“It makes people uncomfortable,” Jason says.

“You have a body count,” Tim points out. “For murder. And you’re worried about making people uncomfortable?”

Jason shrugs again. “Fine,” he says. “It makes me uncomfortable.”

“You…” Tim trails off. Red Hood is six feet and two hundred pounds of anger and cockiness. His jacket is thick skin. He doesn’t get uncomfortable. 

But…the person sitting across from Tim has a ketchup stain on the right shoulder of his asshole shirt and downcast eyes and a twist to his mouth that reminds Tim of Bruce’s second ward being tugged into his first Gala. This is Jason. 

Jason can get uncomfortable—but why should he? Suddenly tides of simmering red are sloshing in, but it’s not all anger Tim feels. It’s something hot and protective and determined. Jason was tortured, and killed, and revived, and all tons of shitty things that they dance around with tasteless jokes and avoid gritty gritty conversations about. And none of it was Jason’s fault. 

Maybe someone qualified, like a very experienced therapist, or a dozen, would approach this situation differently. But Tim is Tim, and he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Just that he’s not going to sit here and listen to Jason feel uncomfortable over something that’s not his fault 

“Why?” Tim asks. 

Jason looks over. “What?”

“It’s just a scar,” Tim says. “Why would it make you uncomfortable?”

Jason is still staring. 

“See,” Tim is wearing pants and gauze and most of his torso, and the permanence of his chosen hobby, is on display. There are ugly lines and puckered circles form stab wounds and bullets. There’s a gnarled patch of skin from saving a young boy from a burning building. There’s scars from laying on the ground at the tower as his own bo staff came down again and again and again—

Tim swallows. Focus. 

“We all have them,” he points out. 

Jason rolls his eyes. “It’s…this particular one has a bit of a problematic shape, Smart-Ass.” 

“Yeah,” Tim says. “I guess ‘Y’ isn’t the coolest letter in the alphabet, but it could have been worse. Like…like a ‘Q’. That would look pretty bad…or an ‘F’? You would have looked lopsided.” 

“Oh my god, Tim,” Jason is saying, shaking his head 

“I’m just saying,” Tim says, sitting up a bit. “It could have been a stupid looking letter. At least now you’re symmetrical.” 

A humorless tug on Jason’s lips. A pause. “‘Coulda been a J.” 

“I—” Tim gulps. Is he allowed to answer that?

But then Jason is snorting, and Tim is too, and then they drop into some form of spluttering giggles that Bruce would find heinous for the subject matter. 

“Oh my god,” Jason says. “Imagine B’s face.”

Tim shakes his head. “He’d cry.” 

“Nah,” Jason says. “Dickie would though.”

“You’d never pry him off you,” Tim tells him seriously. “You’re lucky you’ve got what you’ve got.”

“Lucky,” Jason repeats, glancing down at his shirtfront, even though there’s no seeing the scar hidden beneath. He turns. “There’s something a little…off, in your head.”

“I was recently drugged,” Tim points out. 

Jason shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I don’t know if this is a nature or nurture thing going on but there’s something in you that’s real twisted, Timmy-bit.” 

“Look who’s talking.” 

“Hey,” Jason says. “Careful who you’re insulting, freeloader.” 

Tim rolls his eyes. “I’m rich. Twice over.”

“And yet, once again, you’ve found your way to one of my couches,” Jason says. And then he’s standing up, crossing around to Tim’s side of the bed to rescue the bowl of cold soup. He looks inside. “You want more?”

Tim is half prepared to mount a defense—he wasn’t really here for Jason’s couch , even if that’s where he ended up—but also, he wants more soup. “Yeah.”

Jason nods. “We’ll get another dose of meds on board after.” 

Tim thinks this is another good idea—there’s a throbbing section of brain matter that refuses to get in line and his shoulder, nose, and ankle aren’t quiet either. “Thanks,” he says. And then his tone dips a little. “Seriously, Jay.” 

“Just soup, Timmy.” 

Tim considers letting it be about soup. But no, Tim might not be a therapist or qualified, but he can say this.

“I mean it—I’m glad you’re helping me. I’m glad you’re here.” 

Jason is half in the doorway, holding an oven mitt and soup bowl and staring at Tim like he’s torn between chucking the spoon at him and grinning. 

He does neither. 

The smile that slips into place is softer than the cocky grin Hood strings aggressive sentences around. His lips turn up slightly and the tension framing his gaze recedes. For a second, Tim forgets that Jason is holding a metal projectile. 

And then the smile is tucked away. 

“Be back with your grub Baby-Bird,” Jason says. “Sit tight.” 

Chapter Text

The bedroom wing is eerily quiet. 

For a moment, Alfred is decades younger, walking down the same hall to the only occupied bedroom. That recollection is carefully tucked aside. Thankfully, the manor halls have long since become reaccustomed to the liveliness that wild children and young persons present.

He pushes the tea cart out of the elevator. 

Rescued from a film of dust and storage, the cart is now laden with bowls of stew and dining necessities, medicines sorted into labeled, paper souffle cups, a thermometer, hydrating beverages, and several further items necessary for the art of nursing. It has been several days since this illness first began ravaging the household, but Alfred will not be caught unprepared in its end. 

He pushes the cart to the first door of his round, giving an obligatory knock before entering. The young man curl ed up on the bed is no longer a small boy with a blinding, gapped smile, but he grins valiantly at Alfred’s appearance all the same.

“Alfie,” Richard says. His raspy, blocked voice matches the raw redness of his nose.

“How are you feeling Master Dick?”

Richard shrugs. “Better than last night—haven’t thrown up for a couple of hours.”

“Good,” Alfred says, though he knows better than to get his hopes up. When he checked on Richard most recently, he was deeply asleep. Alfred is experienced in caring for him through illness and expects the nausea to resurface with him awake. Still, it would do the lad good to get something substantive in him. At the very least, it will allow Alfred to administer the next round of medication. “Fit to manage some stew?”

“Yours?” Richard says. “‘Course.” 

Though the slight, downward twist to his lip as Alfred gathers the bowl betrays his reservations. 

“Sit up now,” Alfred says, waiting for Richard to prop himself up before relinquishing the bowl. “Slow mouthfuls.” 

“Mhm,” Richard says. 

“And these as well,” Alfred adds, picking up one of the medicine cups. Inside, pills to address the nausea, sinus troubles, and the headache Richard has seen fit to hide.

“Thanks,” Richard mumbles around a mouthful.

He looks so dejected—hair tangled into a mess, dressed loosely in Bruce’s clothing, and hurrying to snatch a tissue from the bedside table as a sneeze overtakes him—that Alfred doesn’t chide him about speaking with his mouth full. Alfred tugs the wastebasket closer for the tissue, noting he’ll soon have to change the bag. He settles a fresh box on the nightstand as well. 

“Thanks,” Richard says again, more miserable.

“It may be too soon for thanks,” Alfred warns, and then brandishes the thermometer. 

Richard grimaces. “Again, Alfred? Seriously?”

“As a heart attack, Master Richard.” 

In that moment, Alfred is very glad it is the aged Richard Grayson under his care, and not the nine-year old who would regularly lead Bruce, Alfred, and poor Dr. Thompson on wild chases around the manor and clinic. Now, Richard begrudgingly leans forward and places the thermometer under his tongue himself. 

“No fever,” Richard reports when finished. Alfred still checks the number as he receives the thermometer and disinfects the tip. 

Alfred delivers a shoulder squeeze. “Seems you may have turned the corner.”

“Hope so.”

Alfred steps away, reclaiming his place by the tea cart. “I must deliver these to your brothers while they remain hot— call for assistance if you need it.” 

Richard grins again, this time sweetly. “Always do.”

Which is not true, but Alfred is not inclined to lecture his infirm grandchild. 

“Rest,” Alfred says, and backs out of the room with the cart. 

Alfred circulates to Timothy’s room next. 

“Master Timothy,” Alfred scolds as he enters. 

Timothy is the picture of guilt—hands hovering over the laptop snuck into his sickbed, eyes shadowed with ill-found rest, and the coffee tumbler settled on his headboard moved (used) from where Alfred last spotted it. “Uh,” Timothy says, using a hand to slowly bat the laptop closed. “Hi?”

Alfred holds out a hand. 

“Alfred,” Timothy complains. “I have one more email I have to send—”

Alfred shakes his head, tone uncompromising. “That email thread will remain where it is after you have fully recovered from your illness.”

“Fine…” Timothy hands the laptop over, reluctance slowing his hand. 

Alfred reaches over him to confiscate the tumbler as well, which Timothy handles with more disappointed grace. He watches, mulish, as Alfred deposits both items on the cart. 

“Your body needs rest,” Alfred says firmly, passing a bowl of stew over. “And food and liquid.”

Timothy opens his mouth. 

“Uncaffeinated liquid,” Alfred says. 

Timothy’s mouth closes. He takes a bite of the stew instead, grimacing. Alfred narrows his eyes. Handing over Timothy’s own medicine cup, he adds a handful of throat lozenges. Cherry, the only flavour he will tolerate. A water is placed where the coffee tumbler once loomed.

“I’m bored,” Timothy tries, eyeing his laptop. 

Alfred’s gaze lingers on the dark shadows beneath his red eyes, and nudges the marked book on the bedside table closer. “Some reading will relax your mind for sleep.” 

“Alfred…”

Alfred is steadfast, taking out the thermometer. 

Timothy groans at the sight. “I’m eating!” 

“A break is in order,” Alfred tells him. 

When his latest mouthful has disappeared Alfred hands over the thermometer. He’s much quicker with taking it back than before, with Richard, to be certain Timothy won’t have the opportunity to hide the number. 

Alfred clicks his tongue at the temperature. “A low-grade fever.”

“I feel fine.” 

“Is that so?” Alfred says, disinfecting the thermometer. He fixes the laptop and tumbler to a more secure position on the cart. “Perhaps that will make sleep come easier.” 

Timothy levels a rather bland look in his direction. 

Alfred is unphased. “Take your medicine. Drink the water and eat the stew—get some rest.” 

Timothy swallows the pills—dry. He follows up with water at Alfred’s look.

“I’ll be back to check in,” Alfred says. It’s half a promise, half a warning. Alfred knows Timothy has several more devices available for replying to emails. Hopefully, the threat of Alfred’s unannounced check in will incline him toward more productive uses of his time. Such as hydrating. “Call if you require assistance.”

“I won’t.”

Alfred closes the door with a sigh. He loves his grandchildren, he does. Even their stubborn, self-neglecting versions. 

Alfred continues stopping in each of the manor’s occupied bedrooms. Two are empty. Cassandra retreated from the manor at the first case of illness and remains at Barbara’s. Stephanie also has avoided her bedroom—the guest bedroom, she insists—since Duke first started sniffling. As the first of the household to fall ill, he is now the first to recover. 

“Hi Alfred,” Duke says as Alfred enters his room. 

The boy is curled up on a pile of beanbags, clad in sweats. Alfred eyes the hems of both pant legs, sitting too high on his ankles. He will have to order more. 

“How are you feeling?” Alfred asks. 

Duke shrugs. “Better. Just a little sniffly.”

“Good,” Alfred says, settling a box of tissues on his desk. Duke’s color does appear improved and traces of the ‘sniffly’ quality to his voice has lessened. Alfred decides against the thermometer.

“Thanks,” Duke says as Alfred delivers a bowl of stew. “Do you need any help with the others? I heard Tim coughing earlier.” 

Alfred shakes his head. “You’ve had a long week, lad. Recovering from an illness is different than resting. Use this time to recharge.” 

Duke plays fidgets with the spoon and bowl in his hands. “...But you’ll tell me, right? If you need help?”

Alfred smiles down at him. In pajamas and reclined in a mound of beanbags, hair a mess, he looks comfortable. This is the first illness Alfred has seen Duke through. Alfred was initially concerned he would feel out of place in accepting help, as had occurred with the first of his injuries. But Duke has accepted every bowl of nourishing food and temperature checks and carefully planned medicines. His being well on his way to recovery is the morale boost Alfred needs to see to the rest of the household. 

“I will come fetch you at once,” Alfred assures Duke, knowing he has everything well in hand. “In return, I expect you will call me should any of your symptoms return.” 

“You got it,” Duke says. He pauses. “...I think I’m ready to start patrolling again, too.” 

Alfred raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps, Master Duke, we should begin with more simple steps. Such as finishing a bowl of stew.”

“Uh,” Duke says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Maybe.” 

“I will be back to check in shortly.”

Damian’s room, is next. 

Alfred knocks, and is it not Damian’s voice that answers. Sighing, Alfred enters. 

Damon himself is in the room—asleep in his bed with a cooling cloth draped over his forehead, cheeks flushed, expression twisted in discomfort. Bruce however, is also present. He’s pulled a chair to Damian’s bedside and has one hand curled into the comforter, the other pressed against the bed’s headboard to keep him more steadily upright. 

“Master Bruce,” Alfred chides quietly. 

Bruce looks at him with shadowed eyes and a deep, gray paleness. “I had to check on them,” he says.

“You should be in bed,” Alfred argues. 

Bruce sighs. “In a minute? Just…let me stay with him a little longer. The others are awake and Damian…” 

Bruce doesn’t say what he could. That Damian would never allow Bruce to camp at his bedside, draping cold clothes over his forehead and tugging slipping blankets and staring worryingly at flushed cheeks and twisted expressions. 

“...I will do a second round,” Alfred says. “When I have finished checking on the children, if you still have not rested, there will be consequences.” 

“Consequences,” Bruce says blandly. 

Alfred narrows his eyes. “Yes, Master Bruce. If you continue to neglect your health you will not like the repercussions.” 

At the very least, it seems Alfred’s tone is convincing. Bruce rubs the back of his neck. “Fine,” he mumbles. “I’ll get some sleep.” 

Alfred steps forward to pat him on the back, letting his hand linger for a moment. “Here,” Alfred says finally, passing over two cups of medicine. “Take this, the other is for Master Damian. It should be administered no later than a half an hour from now.” 

“I’ll wake him,” Bruce promises.

“And this as well,” Alfred says, passing over an ice pack. It will keep its temperature against Damian’s fevered forehead. He watches as Bruce wraps the pack in folds of the damp cloth, turning it over the same way Alfred does himself. It’s a pleasant realization to have, watching Bruce fold the same way he does. 

“And one more bit of unpleasantness,” Alfred says, brandishing the thermometer. He has to smile at the alarm that fills Bruce’s eyes at the sight. “For him,” Alfred says. “Unless you are feeling feverish yourself?”

Bruce shakes his head hastily and watches as Alfred slips the thermometer between Damian’s slightly parted lips. He curls in on himself in his sleep, frowning. It’s a clear indicator of how unwell the poor boy is, to not jump up with intentions to fight. Instead, he mumbles unsurely. 

“...Mother?” 

Bruce’s hand reaches out, smoothing his hair. 

“...Akhi?” Damian says instead, eyes still dragged closed. 

Bruce sighs.

Alfred pulls the thermometer free, frowning at the number. He leaves several ice packs on the bedspread and sets the stew and water on the bedside table. “Perhaps the medication sooner, Master Bruce.” 

Grimacing, Bruce nods. The hand running through Damian’s grimed, sweat-damp hair drops to rest on the boy’s shoulder. He gives a small shake. 

“Damian,” Bruce says softly. 

Alfred leaves him to it—Bruce is no longer the twenty-something bachelor staring horrified and lost at a young, vomiting Richard Grayson for the first time. He has the situation well in hand. Alfred steps into the hall. 

There is one more room to visit. 

Alfred knocks and receives no answer. He raps his knuckles once more against the door, perhaps not as insistently as he could, but loud enough an awake person would hear. When there is still no response, Alfred lets himself in. 

The curtains are dragged open and the window is cracked, letting a flood of sunlight and crisp, clean air flood through the room. Everything is in order—marked books stacked neatly on the bedside table, clothes deposited in a closed laundry hamper, ammo and weapons thankfully zippered into the duffle bag slid beneath the bed frame. 

Everything is in order. 

Except for Jason. 

At the sight of him, Alfred pauses half in the doorway. Rigidly, he forces himself to wheel the cart inside, letting the door close softly behind him—not ready for Jason to wake. 

Alfred takes his time neatening the cart’s surface. He straightens the medicine cups, disinfects the thermometer a second time, and finally lets his hands rest against the cart’s edges, staring at the small pills and ice packs and boxes of tissues. When the ache in his chest becomes bearable, Alfred lets his gaze return to his grandson. 

Jason is sprawled on his back, limbs tangled in odd folds of comforter, pillow slipped somewhere near his feet. His pajama pants are rucked to his mid-calf, twisted so their seams are off center. The sheets around him are damp with sweat and his shirt has been discarded. On his bare chest, is a scar. 

The sunlight relieving the room leaves little imagination to its cause. 

Alfred steps lightly to the bedside. For a moment, he considers that the illness may have overcome him, because the twist of pain and nausea that swells in his chest is so strong and sudden. But he recognizes the feeling. Paired with pressure in his throat, behind his eyes, bearing down on his shoulders, and squeezing his heart like lead, the feeling of grief is an old hat. 

He expects the feeling to fade the longer he looks at the scar—this is not the case. Despite its effect, he cannot turn away. 

Alfred analyzes the wound. Each raise and bump to the gnarled incision, red and lurid against the pallid white of Jason’s sickness. Alfred stares and when his memories tilt into recollections that tighten his sorrow, he lets them. 

Cutting Robin from torn and bloody clothes. 

Winding bandages around his bruised, hurting ribs. 

Helping him into loose, comfortable sweatshirts while his broken arm and collarbone healed. 

Standing by as Bruce took Jason’s arms and coaxed him deeper into a pool, watching as the fear in his eyes turned to something more relaxed, becoming tentatively excited when his skills improved. 

Waking a younger, shirtless Jason from this same bed for school, a different comforter tangling his limbs and curled underhand, his hair messy and without white, his shoulders smaller, his expression softer, his body younger, still scarred, but untouched by this grotesque mark of death, revival, madness.

Alfred sighs. 

Dampness has snuck into his gaze, the same that crept into place as a battered body, too small to be broken, was carried by bloodied gloves into the Cave. As the preparations were made, the lies and covers orchestrated. As Alfred stood beside a dug hole and watched a box heavier than its weight be lowered into it. 

In between that blur of anguish and dark memories, somewhere, a blade sunk into cold skin and a brutal reminder was carved into Jason’s skin. 

Of course Alfred knew of the autopsy—he read it. The details in the report, the clinical explanations of tortures and mortal hurts, are etched into his brain like a brand. But to know is different than to see. 

Alfred stares at the scar, the autopsy wound, stretching around the young man in a disquieting grip. Minute by minutes crawls by. 

Finally, when the stew no longer steams, Alfred will no longer delay. He needs to wake Jason—it’s time for his medicine, for food, to check the progress of his fever. Alfred dries his eyes. He will not allow Jason the discomfort of seeing him brought to tears by the scar that is sure to haunt him day in and day out. 

The first thing he does is draw the comforter from its kicked and twisted web. Jason has always been a light sleeper. In a house full of nightmares and trauma, this is not unusual. Already, Jason’s eyes flutter and his mouth tightens as Alfred draws the smooth expanse of soft fabric to cover him, tucked over his shoulders like a shield. 

“...Alfred?” 

“It’s time to wake up, Lad,” Alfred says, approving the steadiness with which he voices the familiar, if old words. 

Jason shifts, dreamworld clinging to his senses. Alfred settles a hand on his shoulder to keep the blanket from falling.

“...Something wrong?” Jason asks, eyebrows knitted together. 

Perhaps, Alfred has given this young man, the gentlest of his boys, too little credit. He forces a bitter smile. “Everything is well,” he says. 

The wounds of Jason’s ordeal, physical and otherwise, may have pierced, agonizing, in the past. But they have long scarred over. There will be more grief, more pain. Alfred refuses to subject Jason to anymore than he must. He forces a tone of normality. 

"It's only time to check your temperature.” 

Jason groans. “Again?" 

“Again,” Alfred says, firm. 

The thermometer is used, the stew is obligingly eaten, and pills are given. Alfred leaves tissues and ice packs. He chats with Jason about a pasta dish the younger has saved on social media with him in mind, about the latest ongoings at Gotham’s opera house, about babysitting a young miss Lian Harper and going unaware of the glittering stickers pressed sneakily to the underside of his boots. Alfred lets the conversation dwindle when Jason begins to tire, eyes lidded and head tilting. 

“I believe,” Alfred says. “It’s time for you to rest.” 

“I’ve been resting,” Jason points out. 

Alfred smiles at him. “I’ve found, in this household, resting has yet to be overindulged.” 

“Check in again tomorrow,” Jason mumbles, but his grip on his empty soup bowl is loosening and his head has rediscovered his pillow. Alfred rescues the dish and settles Jason’s head to a position his neck will better appreciate come several hours. He leaves more water on the stand and closes the window to keep out the dropping temperatures. Alfred returns to the cart.

He should check in with the others—ensure Bruce has found a way to his own bed, and that Timothy has kept work from invading his. 

But first. 

Alfred reaches out and smooths the blanket over Jason once more, letting fabric fall evenly. This adjustment is not to hide the horrors of the past, but to comfort Jason in the now. 

“Sleep well, my boy,” Alfred murmurs, and turns to leave. 

He is consoled by the certainty that, this time, Jason will wake up. 

Chapter Text

JASON

One second, everyone’s laughing. A red-faced Damian backs away from Dick—who refuses to acknowledge that some people don’t want forehead kisses, hair ruffles, and hands that pull scarves over noses and ears and cheekbones. And then, there’s the sharp, sinister noise of cracking ice. 

Jason’s snicker dies in his throat. 

Damian lunges forward even as the splits spearhead the surrounding ice—it’s not enough. 

The kids' legs sink into freezing whorls of slushy lake water. His hands catch and bleed on chunks of ice. A narrowed, fierce look masks the panic in his gaze as he fights for a foothold. 

Dick’s chair clatters back. Bruce’s thermos plunges to the ground. Stephanie staggers painfully over a propane heater. Everyone lurches toward Damian with bared teeth and wide eyes and reckless abandon. 

None of them are close enough.

But Jason is.

Because that’s Jason’s charge. His little brother. His responsibility. 

And he is not going into that lake. 

Jason’s fingertips slip against the water-resistant glide of Damian’s jacket, but he just clamps his hands around the kid’s upper arm, hard enough to bruise, and yanks. 

Damian pulls free of the lake and ice in a scatter of water and ragdoll limbs that he tucks into place as Jason flings in him the direction of Bruce. Jason doesn’t see what comes of it. 

There’s ice and water and blue and white and some murky approximation of green. 

There’s a final, sharp inhale, and then water in his nose. 

There’s cold. There’s pain. There’s panic. 

And Jason sinks. 

The first second is the worst, with the biting cool of the water piercing his clothes, chewing up his skin into numbness, dragging him down. One of his hands dips toward his belt for his rebreather—but his belt isn’t there. Jason’s senses blur and his thoughts whirlwind. And then he gathers enough wherewithal to remember that he needs air. 

He swims, limbs heavy, instincts scattered. Jason heads in the blurred, muffled direction of light. His eyes sting and his pulse starts to pound between his ears. 

He hits the ice. 

Slamming his fists against the solid, frozen barrier, Jason scowls. He starts to swim parallel to the ice, searching for the cracks, the hole, that he came from. But his visibility is shit and the ice seems endless. His lungs really start to scream as the seconds pass by, each one infinitely faster than the last. The cold has wrapped around him, heavy and draining, raking through his body. He needs out. 

Darkness eats his vision. His body, tissues, cells, scream for oxygen. Jason’s struggles against the ice become more ineffective. This is going to be different from the last time he died—last time was endless, drawn out pain, and dimming hope, until that final moment of resignation. 

This time, this time it’s fighting, and struggling, and not knowing when that final second is hovering in wait. This time is sudden, unexpected.

But one thing’s the same—Jason is alone again. 

And then he’s not. 

He doesn’t register the ice breaking, barely feels the freezing water give away to brisk, biting air. But the feeling of hands seizing him under the arms, grabbing, holding, touching, shoots through him like lightning. 

Jason chokes on the sudden ability to breathe. He shudders and coughs and blinks. The hands around his arms tug him up like he’s a small child, towing him onto firmer ice and continuing to drag him away from the cracked lip of the hole. Jason lets himself be moved.

“Jason!”

Around him is chaos that Jason blinks languidly at. Dick swims in front of Jason, his eyes blown wide with alarm, hand coming to press against somewhere below Jason’s eyeline—his cheek? Duke runs into view with a blanket in his hold, Tim right behind him, yelling. The girls aren’t anywhere to be found. And Damian…

Isn’t there either. 

Every trace of listless confusion is gone, replaced by alarm that jackknifes Jason into motion. He starts to twist, trying to tear himself out of the arms of his rescuer.

“Jason!” It’s Bruce, of course it’s Bruce. He’s the only one who could pull Jason against his chest and hold him immobile, even half-frozen. “Hold still, chum, you’re alright—”

“Dami,” Jason gasps. His lips are numb and pull awkwardly around the name and his teeth click together rapidly, mangling it. He slurs again. “Where is he?! Damian!?”

“He’s okay,” Bruce says. “Steph has him—he’s okay.” 

Bruce has to say it a few more times for Jason to stop struggling. He sinks into Bruce’s hold—his body can’t hold himself up. Maybe if he was alone, if he was working a case, it would be different. Maybe then Jason would muster the fight to find his feet. But honestly, in Bruce’s arms, Dick hovering over them, one hand planted comfortingly on Jason’s knee, with Duke and Tim both flinging themselves onto the ice beside them, he’s safe. And he just wants to sleep. 

“No, no, no, stay awake Little Wing,” Dick says as he takes the blanket from Duke and rushes to start toweling Jason’s hair and face and everywhere else he can reach. “Eyes, eyes Jay.” 

Jason forces them open if only to glare. “F’ne,” he says.

“We need to get him inside,” Bruce says, and then his arm is winding around Jason’s waist and he’s dragging them to their feet. Dick is there to take up Jason’s other side. 

Duke's tone is incredulous. “Inside is a tent.”

“We should have Alfred call the plane,” Dick says. 

Bruce shakes his head. “We’re here as civilians.” 

“B!” Dick complains, voice loud in Jason’s ear. 

“He’ll be okay,” Bruce says. “We just have to get him warm.” 

Dick mutters something unsavory under his breath but between him and Bruce they get Jason stumbling across the iced-over lake. Tim goes off ahead and Duke hovers around the four-legged race with an anxious twist to his face. 

It’s for Jason, isn’t it? 

“F’ne,” Jason says, because the kid looks like he's on verging on the edge of a conniption. “C’n walk.” 

Everyone ignores him. 

It’s a minute walk to get back to the ‘tent’. Unfortunately, staggering along, the minute drags out to be much longer. By the end of it, Jason’s eyes are really in danger of closing and his feet mostly trail through the layer of slush blanketing the ice. His shaking starts to slow. 

Bruce and Dick are none too gentle dragging him inside the tent when they finally reach its threshold. Immediately, Jason is hit with a wave of warm air. The ‘tent’ is really a high-tech glamping structure from a sporting goods company Wayne Industry invested in. Steph laughed herself silly when Bruce invited them along on a camping trip to ‘bond’, picking him apart with questions about what five-star hotel they’d be slumming it in. The tent was a compromise.

Jason’s kind of regretting taking Steph’s side and making fun of Bruce on this one—a hotel and its hot tubs would be so nice right now. At least the tent is heated. 

“Jay?” It’s Tim, hovering in front of him. “You have to stay awake.” 

“Sh’t up,” Jason tells him. He’s barely twitching, head lolling to rest on his chest. 

Bruce tightens his grip, his voice swimming through Jason’s ears. “We have to get him warm.” 

Dick and he pull Jason into one of the tent’s ‘rooms’. There’re a few of them, small offshoots—one of them even has the hookups necessary for a kitchenette. But they don’t bring Jason to that one. They deposit him into one of the ‘bedrooms’, lowering him onto a bedroll, where Jason sprawls, unmoving. 

A second later Duke is back, pulling a heater into the room. It starts to blast hot air into the space that honestly burns Jason’s stinging skin. His eyes squeeze shut and he tries to shuffle away. Hands stop him. 

“Grab some hot water bottles,” Dick says, and then Duke is gone again. 

“His clothes,” Bruce says, but Dick is already working on Jason’s coat zipper. Bruce pulls off his boots.

Jason rolls this way and that—why are they trying to pull off his socks? His pants? And then his shirt…

His shirt. Somewhere, Jason remembers that this is bad. His hands clutch the fabric. “No…” he mumbles, twisting. 

“It’s okay, Jaylad,” Bruce is saying. A hand rests against his cheek and the ministrations pause for a moment. “We’ll get you warm—comfortable. Just a second. Just a second, chum.” 

“Nnnn,” Jason says. 

But then someone is pulling his shirt off anyway. 

He almost doesn’t catch the next exchange, his eyelids have dropped into slits that can barely make out the stricken look that crosses Bruce’s face. The way his eyes bore into somewhere near Jason’s ribs and refuse to tear away. Bruce makes some kind of noise that Jason’s never heard from him—that he never wants to hear again. 

Jason should sit up, try to find out what happened. Was it Damian? Is Damian okay? He was…he wasn’t going to be. He was falling through the ice. Jason needs to save him—

“B,” Dick says, relentless for a reason Jason can’t grasp. “Grab the blankets.” 

“I—”

“Bruce,” Dick hisses. 

Jason is wrapped in blankets. They surround him, fuzzy, dark. There are voices and soft things around him. 

He lets himself drift in it. 

DICK

“Jason?” Dick shakes his shoulder. “Jay?”

Jason’s eyelids flutter but there’s no verbal response. Gritting his teeth, Dick uses one hand to keep the blankets closed tight around Jason’s frozen, pale skin, as the other reaches out to pull the heater closer.

“Bruce,” he says. 

“I know,” Bruce says, already stripping out of his jacket and shirt. He takes Jason from Dick, sliding himself into the wrap of blankets and holding him close to his chest, running hands up and down his arms, pulling his frozen fingers between them. Dick reaches out and tries to rub some circulation into his feet. 

He risks a glance in Bruce’s direction. His gaze is a little lost, a little misted, pinned miserably in Jason’s direction. Dick looks away—it feels like something he shouldn’t see. 

“He’s so cold,” Dick says, instead of acknowledging the rigidness in how Bruce holds Jason, hands working with forced movements, but still achingly gentle, like Jason’s something breakable.

“Hn,” Bruce says. 

Dick risks another glance. Bruce’s teeth are clenched, his jaw tight. Dick’s gaze drops back to his wrung hands. 

“B,” Dick begins. “Are you…okay?” 

“Don’t,” Bruce says. His mouth moves like he’s about to say something else, except he just snaps it shut again. He shakes his head. “...Not now.” 

Dick swallows. “Okay.” 

They wait in silence after that. Dick strips off his shirt and curls in on Jason’s other side, both of them squeezing him close. It’s not comfortable—Dick feels like he’s cuddling a bag of ice cubes—and Jason keeps shifting and murmuring incoherently. Dick just carefully adjusts the blankets each time, doing his best to keep them from dropping below his collarbones. 

He knows Jason never meant for any of them, much less Bruce, to have an eyeful of the scar. From the way Bruce’s gaze tracks his fingertips against the falling blanket’s edge before snapping away, Dick knows that he’s doing all he can to not think about it. 

Unfortunately, Dick knows from experience trying to ‘not think about it’ is next to impossible. He runs a hand through Jason’s wet hair, brushing away the damp and ordering the unruly strands. Taking care to sort out the twisted mess of the soft, white tuft plastered to his forehead. Jason doesn’t push him away. 

Dick sighs. He has a bad feeling that today’s mess has only just started. 

DICK

Once they’ve settled, it’s a couple of minutes before Tim comes circling in. He has hot water bottles in his arms, face pinched as he takes in their position. “How is he?”

Jason would say he’s fine. But Jason doesn’t surface from his haze, just shifts, one hand crawling up to lock on Bruce’s wrist. So Dick answers for him. 

“Not good,” Dick says.

Tim’s expression drops as he hands over the bottles, gaze fixed on Jason’s face, all purpling and pale and twisted. 

“Damian?” Dick asks as a distraction, but also because the image of Damian—pink fingers clutching at crumbling ice as he sunk into the freezing appetite of winter lake-water—has been plaguing him since the immediate scramble to get Jason inside and wrapped up tight receded. 

“He tried to bite Steph,” Tim says, the twitch of something less dour in his voice. “So Cass has custody.” 

Dick shakes his head. “‘Course he did.” 

“He’s pretending he isn’t,” Tim adds. “But he’s worried about Jason.” 

For a moment, Dick doesn’t have a response. 

It’s Bruce who finally surfaces in the conversation, but he doesn’t address Tim. His eyes bore into Dick’s above Jason’s head. “You should go to him.”

“What?” Dick blinks. “Damian’ll be okay, Bruce. He barely got wet—Jay saved him.” 

“Cass and Duke are with him now,” Tim adds. 

But Bruce has turned back to Jason, curled up in his arms. His gaze dips down to the edge of the blankets. Something in his face closes off. 

And Dick hesitates—he knows Damian will be fine. As much as Dick wants to find him and see that for himself, he trusts the others to have him covered. 

Jason however…they have him on his way to warming up, getting better. But right now? He’s groaning and freezing and hurting. And Dick wants to sit next to him and watch, and wait, and hold tight as he claws himself into health. But what good does any of that do really? He’s replaceable by hot water bottles. 

And Bruce…he has that look to him. Tight shoulders, pressed lips and expression. He’s not really asking Dick to check in on Damian—he knows just as well that he’ll be okay. He’s asking Dick to give him a moment with Jason. 

Dick isn’t sure if it's the best idea—leaving them together. Maybe, when Jason feels better, this will all blow up. Maybe Bruce puts his foot in his mouth and says something that has Jason swearing and snarling and leaving again. Maybe this is a huge mistake. 

But maybe the only thing Dick can do to help anything, to really help right now, is leave. 

“C’mon Timmy,” Dick says, starting to untangle himself, adjusting the hot water bottles in his stead, trying to ignore the pained noise Jason makes. “Let’s go.” 

“Dick—” Tim begins. 

Dick just curls an arm around his shoulders and starts to tug him out, even as Tim cranes his neck to look back at Jason, lip bitten. 

“It’ll be okay,” Dick promises. 

He shoots a final look back at Jason, his lips a concerning slash of purpling gray. Curled up between Bruce and his mound of blankets he’s almost recognizable as the little twelve year old Bruce dragged kicking and screaming into their lives years ago. Dick turns away. 

Hopefully, Bruce can drag him in one more time.

Chapter Text

BRUCE

Bruce watches Dick leave with relief. Seeing Damian skidding dangerously on the sinking ice, cold water welling around his body, and then seeing Jason jump in after him, was heart-stopping enough. No matter how many tall buildings they jump off of, bullet wounds they live through, and chemical attacks Alfred nurses them past, Bruce will never get used to the terrible tangle of adrenaline and fear and desperation that seizes him when his children face danger. At least without Dick glancing at him with those not so subtle searching, concerned looks, he can let his guard drop slightly.

Bruce makes himself busy, slipping the hot water bottles into place. He pulls a new pair of sweats out of the bags in the corner of the room and goes to get Jason into those too—

Only to pause. 

With Jason bundled in swathes of warm fabrics, Bruce can’t see it. 

The scar. 

The brief glance of it that he caught before Dick was there, with blankets and hard words and those eyes, lingers. Bruce has one hand on the blankets wrapped around under Jason’s collarbones. For a second, he can’t. 

Something angry and vindictive wraps around his mind and wrangles together every memory he has of Jason’s death—skin cooling alongside the heat of the steaming rubble, limbs twisted and mangled, flesh beaten and broken, his Robin, his son, gone. And then, the body. The shell. Placed dispersonably on cold metal as gloved hands press scalpels and cut and tear into him. Bruce sees a brutal Y-shaped wound without mortal bleeding, he sees Jason with his chest drawn open, he sees Jason zippered into a body bag and then a coffin and then clawing himself out of the nightmare of being alive and buried, only to find out he’s awake—

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut. He holds Jason close and forces the lump from his throat and the stinging from his eyes. When Jason resumes coherency, when he realizes what happened, Bruce refuses to look upset. He’s already handled so much incorrectly—he will not let it happen again. 

Jason makes a pained mumbling noise and shifts, like he’s trying to pull away from Bruce, from the heat. 

Bruce just holds tight, resting his cheeks against Jason’s damp hair. 

“Shh,” Bruce murmurs. “I’ve got you, chum.”

Slowly, he lowers the blanket. 

JASON

Jason must have dozed off because the next thing he knows, he’s waking up sprawled over Bruce, drooling into his shoulder. 

Jason pulls back, only to freeze, groaning. He feels like shit.

“Jay?” Bruce says, hand hovering between them. Jason tucks himself away from the look in his eye—all mushy and soft and damp and so so dangerous. “How’re you feeling?” 

“Fine.” 

It’s not true. He feels like crap—there’s a pressure headache squeezing around his brain and he’s nauseous and shaky and all around wants to burrow himself into bed and sleep his way into recovery. But he refuses to let himself drop back into the very comfortable crook that is Bruce’s side. He peers around the room instead—vaguely, he remembers Bruce and Dick towing him into the tent’s offshoot, dragging blankets around him. He doesn’t recall much of what was said. 

“Damian?” Jason asks. His throat sounds like he gargled with razor blades. 

Bruce nods. “He’s fine. The others got him warmed up—he barely touched the lake.” 

Jason lets out a breath. “Good.” 

There’s a look that crosses Bruce’s face, a contorted cross of gratitude and disapproval. “I’m…” Bruce grimaces. “Thank you, for saving him.”

Jason shifts away. He starts to work his way out of the net of comforters. He’s in a new pair of sweats underneath, but they’re nowhere near warm enough when his veins feel like slush and his skin feels like the surface of a glacier. He decides to keep one blanket yanked over him—like a cape.

“I wasn’t going to let him fall in,” Jason says bitingly.

“I know,” Bruce says. “I know, I’m glad you caught him. I just…I didn’t want you to…” 

“Didn’t want me to what ?” Jason asks, eyes narrowed. 

Part of him is aware of the frustration curdling in his gut, but really, there’s no tempering it, because dammit there’s no winning with Bruce—it’s like everything Jason does is a fucking mistake. Because that’s what he is—right? He’s the screw-up. The black sheep. He shouldn’t have come on this damn trip, even if Alfred asked. And he should leave, right now. Before Bruce starts laying into him about his shitty morales and recklessness and fuck-ups—

Except…they’re in the middle of nowhere. And Jason has a feeling stepping into the only available escape that isn’t frost-biting wilderness comes with a boatload of concerned siblings. There’s no walking away from a blow-up right now. 

So Jason takes a deep breath. He stays in that damn offshoot of the tent and stares at Bruce guardedly and waits for whatever the hell lecture he wants to level at Jason today. Jason waits. Waiting some more….Still waiting. 

Why is Bruce just looking at him like that? 

Jason glances away, discomfort crawling through his nerves like an itch, chasing a modicum of the anger away. He crosses his arms and scrubs his hands up and down his upper arms. His gaze goes downcast. 

When Bruce finally says something, it’s not the sharp, disapproving tone Jason’s prepared for. It’s something much, much softer. Something Jason hasn’t stuck around to hear since he was a young teenager curled up on the couch with Bruce to watch a movie, or turning over on a gurney to find Bruce at its side, head pillowed in his arms. 

It’s totally unexpected. 

“I’m glad you saved your brother,” Bruce says, all open. “But I can’t lose you.” 

Jason’s gaze shoots up. 

“When we were trying to find you,” Bruce continues. “Under that ice. I didn’t know if…I didn’t know if we would get there in time. If I would. Again.”

Jason stares— because where is this coming from? It’s not like they don’t have bi-monthly close-calls. Bruce fights the clock to save his kids from danger all the time. He’s done it for Jason, over and over, since he…came back. This isn’t new. So why is Bruce saying the things they leave unsaid? He’s going off book. And Jason doesn’t know why and he doesn’t really like it.

He shifts, glancing at the door. Maybe a room full of people bringing him mugs of hot chocolate and heated blankets with wringing hands and worry would be worth it, compared to this conversation. 

“You..” Jason shrugs, shoulders crawling to his ears. “You guys found me. It’s not like…I mean, I’m fine.” 

“It was too close,” Bruce says. 

And then his gaze dips. 

And everything clicks. 

Oh, Jason thinks. That’s what this is about. 

All at once a distorted crawl of memories hits him—Dick pulling his socks off, Bruce carefully easing his arms out of the holes of his t-shirt. The look that came into his eyes. The brazen grief and shock and pain that bored into his expression. The way Dick went blank to finish the job. 

Damnit. Damn it. This is…this is not the bonding he came here for. 

Jason crosses his arms over his chest self-consciously—even though someone has fed his body into a very cozy sweatshirt that definitely isn’t his and the scar is very much hidden—but Bruce is a fucking detective, so of course he realizes that Jason’s realized that he saw the scar. 

And then it kind of just sits between them. 

It’s Jason who gets sick of the waiting. 

With a sigh, he drops himself back onto the bedroll, opposite of Bruce, despite every instinct in his body telling him to leave. They need to deal with this now, because Jason’s not okay with it becoming one of the issues—one of the many issues—they shove around like the dinner on a toddler’s plate, picking away at the gory mess that never seems to leave and always seems to wait. 

“Tim says it looks cool,” Jason mumbles. “The scar.” 

Bruce looks back at him. “...What do you think?”
“I think,” Jason says. “That’s it’s there no matter what I think of it.” 

Bruce tilts forward, his hands on his thighs, pressing. His hair falls over his eyes, which is good, because they’re looking a little red, and Jason feels like he missed a step on the stairs seeing them like that. “I’m sorry,” Bruce says. 

“It is what it is.” Jason shrugs. “You couldn’t have…you didn’t know I’d come back.” 

“It doesn’t matter if I knew or not,” Bruce says. “I’m sorry you have to deal with it—with any of it.” 

Jason realizes he’s holding his breath. This is so far from a lecture, it’s so far from a blow-up, it’s so far from safe. He doesn’t know what to say. 

“I’m sorry for all of it, Jay,” Bruce says. “There’s so much I should have handled differently, before and after. You shouldn’t have had to deal with the consequences.”

Jason crosses his arms. “...What would you have done differently?”
He almost can’t say it, and he kind of regrets it, with the way Bruce’s shoulders fold in. Jason holds his breath again.

“I shouldn’t have taken Robin,” Bruce says finally. “There were other ways…I shouldn’t have taken it the way I did. I shouldn’t have let you leave. I should have gotten there in time—”

“That part wasn’t your fault,” Jason interrupts. “I know you tried.” 

Bruce’s lips tighten. 

“I just,” Jason almost doesn’t say anything, because he knows it’ll be what ruins whatever this is. But he doesn’t need Bruce pulling away from this conversation with more fucked up ideas about how he wasn’t good enough, or fast enough. Jason doesn’t care about that. He cares about what happened next. “After.” 

“I didn’t know you were back, Jay,” Bruce says. “If I knew you—”

“No,” Jason says. There’s something sharp in his throat and stinging in his eyes as he glares at Bruce in the too-small bedroll. Bruce isn’t getting it. “I don’t care about that Bruce—I don’t care about your mistakes, or about you not being there—I know all that crap was out of your control. I care about Joker.”

“Jason—”

“He  hurt me. He took me—Bruce he fucking killed me!”

Jason springs up, the cape of his blanket pooling on the ground as he glares down at Bruce, not caring that his raised voice is probably carrying through the damn tent. “It’s all his fault—he did that to me, to us! Why didn’t you kill him?”

And god Jason wants to be angry, he’s trying so hard to be angry, but it’s not anger clogging up his nose and watering his eyes and squeezing his chest. He closes his eyes and balls his hands and twists away from Bruce and clenches his teeth and stands there in a burning haze—

“Jay-lad,” Bruce murmurs from closer than the bedroll, and then there are arms winding around him. 

Jason pulls away once. “Stop—”

And Bruce pulls away to hover with arms raised and waits. 

Jason doesn’t. 

He dives into the open embrace like he’s a kid again, except he has to bow down now, to let his face press somewhere at the top of Bruce’s chest. He starts to shake. “Why didn’t you kill him, why didn’t you care, why didn’t you care about me, Bruce, why—”

The words are muffled and half-senseless in a blur of questions and snagging syllables and Bruce doesn’t try to answer the half-formed pleas. He just holds Jason tighter, rocking them back until they’re back in the swell of blankets and Jason curls up, right into Bruce’s side.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, again, and again. “I’m sorry, chum.” 

Jason doesn’t know how long it takes for the words to stop, for the shaking, caught inhales to even. But they do. He still doesn’t pull away from Bruce. He just shifts, so he catches his gaze, still red, still misted, less dangerous. Jason tries again, his voice more wrecked than ever, all grated and harsh. “Didn’t you care?”

“Jay,” Bruce says, pressing soft circles into the blankets that have been tugged back around Jason’s back. “You’re my son. When he…when he did that to you…I cared more than anything.” 

“Why didn’t you do something?” Jason presses, anger receded to an endless well of exhaustion. “He’s still out there, B. I don’t want him out there—he should have to pay. He shouldn’t get to walk in and out of Arkham like it’s his Airbnb.” 

Bruce has a hand on his nape, it squeezes. “We don’t kill,” he says quietly.

Jason sighs. He’s too tired for that one. He’s too tired for pressing back on Bruce’s stupid fucking morals—the hug feels too nice to pull back, to fight back. He just dries his eyes by nuzzling his face into Bruce’s coat. He can’t even be embarrassed about it—Bruce is on the verge of tears too. What does it matter? For right now, Jason doesn’t want to pretend, to protect. He just wants Bruce. 

Bruce must understand. He doesn’t say anything else about it, the mess that is Joker, and him still being alive…but he does say something.

“Jason,” Bruce says, somewhere near the shell of his ear. “When you died, it hurt more than anything I’ve ever felt. More than the death of my parents. It was..I don’t think I can explain it, chum. But when you went into the ice today, when we saved you and I saw…” 

Bruce swallows tightly. “I love you, chum.” 

Jason is quiet. How long has it been? Since Bruce said it, said that he loved Jason? He’s not the kind of man who lives with his feelings put into words. But he’s changed. Changed so much. And Jason…Jason feels so much warmer , hearing it. 

“I,” Jason mumbles. “Love you too, B.” 

Bruce’s grip tightens, curling Jason’s head back to rest against his shoulder. This time, Jason doesn’t pull away, stand up, try to leave, because he doesn’t want to. 

Absolutely nothing is fixed—Bruce and he are still going to play their game, jumping between tentative affections and the high-strung feelings of near-death danger, to festering hurts and clashing views that end in blow-ups and multi-week silences. Alfred and Dick are still going to play hopeful mediators. The rest of the family will hover on the sidelines, walking on eggshells with bated breaths. Nothing is going to change…completely. 

But today didn’t hurt. This conversion didn’t end badly. Jason doesn’t feel like he’s been dug open and exposed and brushed aside—he doesn’t feel the way he thought would, when he imagined the day Bruce would finally see it, the scar. 

Jason lets himself sink against him. 

Something feels safer. 

DICK

“Tim,” Dick mumbles in warning, as he takes a step toward the tent’s offshoot. 

Tim looks over, brow furrowed, hot water bottle in his hand. “I was just—”

“Not now,” Dick tells him. 

Tim hesitates but eventually puts the bottle down and settles himself into the mound of blankets and air mattresses and siblings. Dick eyes him, all sulky and withdrawn, arms crossed and head bowed. He reaches over to capture his elbow and yank him closer. 

“Hey!” Steph complains as a stray heel thuds against her calf. 

Damian hisses where he’s been curled into Dick’s other side. 

Tim flails. “Dick!” 

“You’re fine,” Dick tells them all, dragging Tim closer, until his untidy mop of hair, still matted and slightly damp from the falling snow, rests under his chin. Damian shuffles again, glare peering out from folds of blankets. 

“I was just trying to help,” Tim mumbles. Cass reaches over Duke and Steph to pat his ankle. 

“I know,” Dick says. “Just…let’s give them a minute.”

It’s very clear, from the sounds of raised voices, words muffled, that Bruce and Jason need a minute or two. Dick eyes the offshoot of the tent nervously. Part of him wants to peek his head in himself. But he gave Bruce this chance, and part of that is letting him finish. 

Tim looks as reluctant as Dick feels, but he doesn’t argue. 

They all pull out their phones, scrolling social media, checking texts and emails. The sounds of shorts and videos overlap, further masking the words being spit in the other half of the tent. With one hand curled around Damian as his eyelids flutter sleepily and his breaths even, soft and slow, and other other playing through Tim’s hair, brushing through its mess, nails scratching at the base of his skull in the way that makes him nudge closer like a please cat, he doesn’t have a hand to extract nor navigate a device. It’s fine—Dick’s thoughts are too tangled and convoluted to focus on even mindless scrolling. 

He feels his heart rate spike when the raised voices suddenly cut out. For a second, Dick eyes the entrance nervously, body tense, ready to jump between a half-cocked Jason and the winter weather that overcame him hours earlier. He’s wondering how in the world he’s going to stop six-plus feet of little brother from barreling past him into bad decisions…but the moment doesn’t come. The offshoot stays close. 

Dick catches Steph’s eye in his peripheral vision. The girl shrugs and goes back to her phone, scrolling through notes from her latest lecture. 

Dick realizes Tim is just as tense in his arms.

“Hey,” he mumbles. “They’ll be okay, bud.” 

“I know,” Tim says, shifting to dig his ice-cold nose into Dick’s neck. He doesn’t relax, exactly. But he settles enough so he’s not ready to spring into action. Dick forces himself to do the same. And as the minutes pass, and Jason chooses to stay with Bruce in the aftermath of what Dick knows has become one of his insecurities, he feels the wrenching squeeze of anxiety loosen. He starts to believe himself—they will be okay. 

This time, Bruce pulled Jason just a little closer.