Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Realistically, there was a chance the whole thing was partially Jason’s fault. He was man enough to admit that sometimes he might be a contributing factor in an overarching problem and it wasn’t like he was shy about trying to be part of the solution. Even if sometimes what he thought was the best solution didn’t necessarily align with the solution others were hoping to work towards. Most of it wasn’t his fault. He absolutely was not at fault for who his dance partners ended up being or the part of it that got weird. Just the part of it that got bloody.

In his defense, Jason had no reason to think they were on his side. They showed up overarmed to a gunfight in his part of town and knowing Roy meant that Jason couldn’t bring himself to underestimate the threat of an archer in combat, especially one who seemed to be working with someone who moved like he was a weapon himself. And there was that, too. Jason didn’t recognize them, which he absolutely stood by. Why would he have expected them in Gotham? Especially in Crime Alley? So, yeah. Jason stands by the reasoning, even if it wasn’t exactly a shining hour for him.

And it’d been a weird day, even by his relatively low standards. Fucking magic was not supposed to be part of his gimmick. He was here for the people making everyone else’s life worse, trying to make his streets just a little safer. Magicians, or whatever this guy wanted to call himself, were supposed to be the problem of Constantine or someone else who had signed on to deal with that. Jason’s limited interactions with magic had had their uses, but he wasn’t all that eager to renew the acquaintance. He wasn’t holding a grudge, exactly, but he didn’t think returning him to life and making him claw his own way out of the grave exactly balanced the equations. So, yeah. He would confess to being a little distracted.

So when the guy who moved like a living weapon (and Jason was sure he was allowed to make that distinction for someone else, at this point, having spent time with the literal League of Assassins) turned out to have a metal arm and looking like he planned to bring it to the fight, Jason didn’t really hesitate in his judgment call. He didn’t recognize them and didn’t think they were on his side. He shot the guy in his head.

And everything went dark.

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Waking up in the morning was… odd. He didn’t remember getting home. He didn’t remember anything after shooting that guy. Jason hadn’t actually planned to come back to this safehouse again last night. He was planning to go to the one on the other side of the alley so that way he could swing by the library and return those books before they got overdue. And the neighbors were fighting again, which wasn’t exactly unexpected in the Alley, but… It sounded an awful lot like the argument they’d had yesterday. Maybe exactly like the argument they’d had yesterday. Still, just like yesterday, it didn’t sound like it was escalating. No danger, no need to put his nose in. It was late enough in the morning that it wasn’t like they were going to wake up any kids going at it right now. Under other circumstances, maybe they wouldn’t have woken up Jason.

Jason rolled out of bed and dragged himself to the kitchen, trying to balance how much he didn’t want to go to the Cave against the likelihood that he’d been drugged. He seemed fine? A quick check didn’t reveal any new damage and he’d woken up in his own bed, in reasonable clothes, alone. Those were all good signs. And more importantly than the oddness, Bruce would probably be at the Cave. Or would want to know why Jason was running his own bloodwork there. Jason could try to work it out on his own, but the time commitment and calling in favors that he wanted to keep for a rainy day…

In the end, he decided the tried and true “walk it off.” Only walking it off turned out to be odd too. Walking it off revealed that things really were exactly like yesterday. When he passed the stand where some newspapers were out, Jason was unable to stop himself from letting out a truly heartfelt “what the fuck.” When the gruff man working the stand lifted an eyebrow at Jason, he shrugged a little and jabbed a finger towards the paper. “Those from today?”

“Of course they’re from today. Nobody wants yesterday’s news! Kid, you’re too damn young to be fucking yourself up so bad you don’t know what the date is.” Jason grumbled as he walked away and scrubbed at his jaw with his hand. He appreciated the sentiment, he did, really, but this wasn’t exactly a case where Jason had decided to get so fucked up he didn’t know what the date was. This was… what? He dreamed yesterday? Today already happening? Sure, it could happen. Weirder things happened in Gotham. It was detailed though, really detailed. Detailed enough that Jason would be hard-pressed to call it deja vu. He could try to go about the day and confirm what he remembered happening? He remembered everything up to the moment his bullet hit the guy with the arm. Parts of his day would be something he could verify and other things needed to get done if he hadn’t actually already done them.

Plan in place, Jason spun around and headed back to the safehouse, ignoring the guy from the stand yelling at him to make better choices. He made fine choices, or, at least, survivable ones. Ones that meant he didn’t need some guy old enough to be Br- he cut the thought off and focused on putting his gear in place.

He wouldn’t say he was spooked, exactly. Maybe a little curious, but mostly just irritated that everything he did yesterday had to be redone today. Sure, some of it could wait, but parts of it… He wasn’t exactly unhappy to stop that robbery again. And while that firefight still happened, Jason found himself in a much better position. He had hoped from this angle in the building across the road he’d be able to find out where the magician had gone after Jason lost track of him the first time, but no cigar. Still, he was able to vent some of his frustrations by shooting at the idiots who had been working with him. And he got a pretty good view of when those guys showed up again, the archer and the one with the arm.

They were pretty, Jason allowed, as much as he let himself think such things while he was working. But they were in his way again. Still, when he had shot the guy with the arm before, his… dream had ended. So maybe… A moment’s hesitation and Jason shot the archer instead. As soon as the shot was made, the guy with the arm was turning towards the sound and looked furious. That one was definitely exactly the kind of threat that made Jason shoot him the first time. In his dream.

The bullet made impact with the blond archer, and everything went dark.

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“What the actual fuck,” Jason gasped as he bolted upright in bed. The same bed. The bed of the safehouse he woke up in the last two days. That couldn’t have been real. It couldn’t have been real and yet here was Jason listening to the same damn argument in the hall between the neighbors. He snarled and ripped his alarm clock from his bedstand to throw at the wall. It wasn’t mature, but it did make the fighting quieter. Sometimes people just needed a little incentive to be their better selves.

Was that what this was? Was this Jason’s brain trying to convince him to be a better version of himself? A dream? Was he having visions? Fuck visions, was he having some kind of seizure? He hadn’t heard of anything like this happening to someone before, but he drove a motorcycle and was a vigilante. Jason wasn’t sure this living thing was worth doing twice, but he wasn’t trying to put himself back in the ground just because his brain decided to malfunction. Something affecting his brain was something that was going end up with him dead.

After a moment, it clicked. Of fucking course. The goddamn magician.

Jason seethed for a moment and then ripped the blankets off to get ready for the day. He’d been through it twice before, but that just meant that he could optimize a little. He could skip the newspaper stand. He’d place himself so that he’d be right in the magician’s path when he tried to get away. It’d mean coming in at a worse angle, but… Well, letting this guy get away clearly hadn’t worked out for him before. It’d left him free to do… whatever the hell this was to Jason, and this needed to stop. Jason had better things to do than to keep reliving this day over again.

It went smoother than he thought, honestly. The magician’s idiots still fell to bullets, so it wasn’t like they were learning. Jason nearly had the magician himself before the guy bolted through a door and locked it. Jason was prepared to pick it when he realized that the archer and the guy with the arm were about to arrive. He spun to get into place and lined up his shot, knowing he couldn’t risk those two on his case if he was going to get the magician and have a conversation with him. He frowned, the gun lowering a little automatically. It was just the archer and he was… waving at Jason?

Oh fuck, where was-

BANG.

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Jason hurled himself over the side of the bed and threw up on the floor. “Fuck,” he screamed even as his fingers scrabbled at the back of his head to feel for the bullet wound. The fighting in the hallway stopped. It must’ve been a bullet, right? That was a gunshot and that meant there was a bullet and Jason died. Jason fucking died and he didn’t even see it coming. Maybe it was better that way, but Jason didn’t think he’d be waking up again if he actually died. He frowned and smoothed his hand over the back of his head. He woke up again.

New plan. Clean this up? Did he need to clean this up? The alarm clock was back on the bedstand. Maybe it didn’t matter if he cleaned it up. But he imagined waking up tomorrow and accidentally stepping in it before shaking his head. He needed to clean this up. Jason frowned as he set himself to it. Did they remember or was the archer just that much of an asshole? Where had this guy even fucking come from? It wasn’t exactly like Gotham was overrun with archers, even as weird as it was, and Jason was pretty damn sure he would’ve heard of a guy with a metal arm running around. So they were probably new. Jason would look into them and the magician.

This was probably the magician’s fault. This was probably just magic bullshit, but if there was a chance at least the archer remembered… Jason considered the rage on the other guy’s face when he’d shot at the archer and then thought about what it’d take for him to shoot someone in the back of the head. On the one hand. He’d done it. He’d do it again. On the other hand… He wasn’t actually enough of a betting man to lay down money, but he would’ve put his on the guy with the arm remembering too. If either of them actually did remember.

Jason scowled again and went to take a shower. If he was going to spend his entire morning researching, he wasn’t going to smell like this while he did it.

Three hours later, Jason was scowling again. The motherfucking Avengers. He’d shot two of the Avengers on the Repeating Day From Hell. Well, maybe he wouldn’t do that again today. At a guess, they weren’t doing anything that he should actually be shooting them for and he’d already pissed them off enough for them to decide to get the drop on him when he showed up last time. Assuming that was planned instead of something that just sort of worked out. Based on the wave though…. Yeah, they remembered.

Maybe he’d leave the rooftop to them and try to get the magician before he even got there. It couldn’t be that hard to figure out where he was now, if he knew where he’d been, right? And if he could find him, then maybe he could convince him that it’d be nice to move on and see what tomorrow held. If the magician was cooperative enough, maybe it wouldn’t even hold very many broken bones.

It was a good plan, if Jason said so himself.

So maybe it shouldn’t have been that surprising when it turned out the Avengers, Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier- and holy shit, he’d shot the goddamn Winter Soldier-, also turned up to the party. Jason knew the huff sounded bitchy as soon as he did it, but he could’ve done without Hawkeye laughing at it even as the Winter Soldier threw himself at Jason.

Jason grunted with the impact and threw his own punch toward the guy’s core. “Listen, I think maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he snarled as he tried to put a little space between them.

“I haven’t been getting off at all. There has been a distinct lack of getting off,” came from the side where the archer, Barton, was watching as Jason tried to dance back and keep himself from becoming a smear on Barnes’ metal fist. Jason snorted a laugh despite himself, and wasn’t that a trip to hear come through the voice modulator? He watched as Barnes lifted the corner of an eyebrow, shrugged a little, and tipped his head towards Barton. The muzzle made it hard to tell, but Jason got the feeling that Barnes was smiling too.

“Sounds like a personal problem,” Jason teased even as a part of him acknowledged that he hadn’t exactly been making time for him to jerk himself off either. He’d been distracted by this whole mess, he decided as he dodged a kick from one of Barnes’ heavy boots, which wasn’t very good self-care, if he was being honest. It was important to take care of his needs, if he wanted to be someone who still was able to have needs in his future. Or something like that. He hadn’t really listened to all of what Stephanie was saying about self-care, but that may have been because she sounded like a TikTok while she was saying it.

“I mean. Not entirely personal,” Barton said with a motion towards Barnes. It took Jason a moment, but he raised his eyebrows to look between them and then grinned.

“Well… I can see why that might put you out of sorts,” he agreed, letting himself take a long look over Barnes. Barnes paused while he did so and Jason felt his stomach clench a little in excitement when he realized that Barnes was looking back. He glanced towards Barton and gave him a slow, obvious once-over. “You know, I think the world might be worse for your lack of orgasms. You should make it a priority to fix that.” Jason took a moment to appreciate the way the voice modulator kept him from sounding too desperately thirsty, though he also suspected that it came through well enough based on Barton’s answering grin.

Jason brought his attention back to Barnes as the man started to stalk forward. He thought, well, he hoped…

A blast and a roar of fire. Everything went dark.

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Jason woke up screaming again, though he forced himself to stop quickly. He snarled when someone banged at the wall between them, before acknowledging they probably had a point. Jesus. He’d been blown up. It hadn’t happened to him very many times before, but he’d like to think it was the type of experience that stayed with you in a way that wasn’t entirely unique to him. Weird that he’d died that way twice though. Jason rubbed his hands through his hair and stared at the bed.

“What the fuck am I doing?” he asked himself. Apparently hitting on some of the Avengers and getting too distracted by their bodies to realize there was a fucking bomb nearby. It had probably been a bomb. He couldn’t see them doing it though, at least not while they were in the blast radius. Team Good Guy usually had an issue with casualties, which bombs had in an area as densely packed as Crime Alley, and he couldn’t imagine either of them risking that the other one wouldn’t come back this time. He might’ve been projecting that, but…. Again the memory of Barnes’ rage. He wasn’t projecting. Barnes wouldn’t risk Barton dying like that, especially when they might actually stay dead. He wouldn’t risk that last time would be the actual last time.

And that meant that Jason had been a distraction in that situation. He’d kept the two of them from finding the magician just as surely as they’d kept Jason from finding him. Too many cooks in the kitchen. But, well, Jason could take care of that. Trying to ignore the memory of fire and the part of his brain that was stuck trying to find a countdown, Jason went to get dressed as he thought about which way to drive. He just needed to get out of town. He’d get out of their way and they were Avengers, so they’d handle the problem. Was it cowardly? Maybe. Was it lazy? Almost certainly. But those two were heroes and Jason knew he wasn’t really counted amongst their number, so that made this their problem.

Jason got up to take another shower, thinking about the self-care he’d recommended to Barton. The bed would’ve been nice, but… Well, Jason was probably just imagining the way it reeked of fear. Either way, he didn’t want to be in it while he took care of himself. If he spent the time in the shower thinking about the missed opportunity of yesterday, that was no one’s business but his own. If he was pretty sure he’d be coming back to that thought again soon, well, that was still no one’s business but his own.

It was short work after that to eat breakfast and head out the door. South, he decided. Away from town, away from where the Avengers would be going once they’d figured out whatever the magician was doing. They’d go back to New York and Jason would stay in Gotham and they’d probably never see each other again. They were geographically close, but it’s not like the Bats and the Avengers were exchanging Christmas cards or some shit. It was… actually weird that they were here at all, he considered as he hit the highway on his bike. Maybe they were here specifically for the magician. Jason had thought he was another homegrown lunatic, but if he’d come here from New York originally, it might explain why those two were hunting for him.

They had their own magic stuff going on, from Jason’s research. The witch girl and that literal Asgardian god. Give him Ivy or even the Scarecrow any day. At least they were human, even if they were freaks. The shit they pulled could be explained by science. Magic? Back to the part where that was supposed to be Constantine’s problem. And apparently also a problem for the Avengers. Either way, count him out.

The drive had been smooth, if aimless. A stop to buy a burger. Pulling off somewhere to piss. Seeing a sign that mentioned a lake and thinking stopping to read there for a while might be nice.

He had just gotten on the exit when everything went dark.

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Jason blinked at the ceiling a couple of times and frowned. He was back in the safehouse. He hadn’t done anything! He didn’t kill anyone! He didn’t think he’d been killed! Though there was a distant corner of his mind that worried that his bike might’ve totaled that minivan if he wasn’t there to steer it. Did it even count if time reset? Was this still technically the same day or was there now a variant of the multiverse where Jason… disappeared? Died? On that exit? He allowed himself one horrible moment of thinking about what that’d do to Alfred and then got out of bed. There was nothing he could do about it now.

Jason paused in front of the bathroom door and rocked his head back and forth as he tried to decide. Fuck it. Self-care was important and so was Never Thinking About That Again. He’d go find out what those two had done after he’d gotten his day off to the right start. He wouldn’t want to approach them while being a hypocrite, after all.

The hotel they were staying at wasn’t that hard to find, now that he knew what he was looking for. The research yesterday had been thorough enough that Jason had been pretty sure where they’d been staying and just a little bit of investigating had led him to their room number. When he knocked, Barnes opened the door looking awake, but not exactly delighted, reminding Jason that he was probably here a little earlier than they would’ve liked. Barnes could blame the fucking magic. Jason smiled broadly at him and took the unspoken invitation of Barnes opening the door wider to step into the room.

As soon as the door closed, Barnes had a gun pointed at him, but Jason decided to ignore it to stare at the lump on the bed that he was pretty sure was supposed to be Barton. He couldn’t quite figure out where Barton’s head was, but he must’ve been able to see Jason with his set-up because there was a definite “No. No coffee yet. Come back to kill us later. After coffee.”

Jason snorted and leaned back against the wall, trying to portray, well. Not innocence. But at least to be not-threatening. “I’m not here to kill you! I just. Didn’t. Know who I was killing the first couple of times. And Short, Grumpy, and Armed over here got me back for it! And last time I didn’t do anything at all! Did you two get sick of each other or something?!”

Barton snorted and pushed his head free of the blanket to look over Barnes appreciatively. “Armed,” he repeated with a type of glee that made Jason open and close his mouth a few times before looking over at Barnes uncomfortably.

“I didn’t. I mean. Gun?”

“I know. Clint just can’t help himself,” Barnes said sympathetically before crossing to sit in front of the blanket lump and setting the gun on the bedstand. “And speaking of can’t help himself… We were just talking about yesterday. Maybe you want to clarify things for Jason, Clint?” He looked up at Jason, his eyes bright with amusement even as he kept his mouth relatively flat.

Jason allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction that they’d looked into him, too, at least enough to know his name. They knew his name and had flirted with him. If he’d wanted a sign that maybe this could end up going nicely for him after all…

Clint squirmed a little, looking for all the world like he was considering pulling the blanket back over his head. He muttered something, his shoulders hunching as he turned to look at the black TV screen.

“Sorry, Clint, I didn’t catch that and I don’t think Jason did either. Maybe you could say it a little louder,” Barnes said with the quiet glee of someone who knew exactly what had been said, but intended to rely on plausible deniability to drag a situation out.

“I SAID… There was a dog. She ran in the street and I thought she was going to get hit by a car!”

“And then?”

“…Coffee?”

“After you tell us what happened next. And then?”

“And then I got hit by a car. Coffee?”

Jason startled himself laughing and watched as Clint blinked at him blearily. After a moment, Barnes started laughing as well. It’d be rude to say an Avenger was pouting, but, well. If the shoe fits, then that’s definitely what Clint was doing. “You got us reset by getting hit by a car trying to keep a dog from getting hit by a car?”

“Not trying! I did! I did keep her from getting hit by a car!” Clint argued as he struggled to be upright without unwrapping himself from the blanket. Barnes- was it weird to still be thinking of him as Barnes if he was thinking of the other one as Clint?- waited until Clint was relatively stable and then held out a paper cup. Clint made an eager sound and half-lunged for it. “So it is happening to you, too. We thought so,” he told Jason before starting to drink the coffee. Jason caught himself frowning in concern as he watched the cup drain faster that was probably necessary. He glanced at Barnes, who shook his head with a half-smile before holding out another cup. Clint traded him for the empty and held the full one against his chest.

“Yeah. It’s been days. I thought it was because,” Jason paused here and glanced at Barnes again before frowning down at the ground, “I thought it was because I shot you? But then I was the one who got shot and it happened again. Eventually it made sense that I needed to catch that magician earlier in the day, and then the bomb. Yesterday I was trying to get out of town so we wouldn’t trip over each other, but that… didn’t really work out the way I hoped.”

Barnes was nodding a little and then tipped his head towards Clint, who was trying to become one with the coffee again. “We’ve been chasing him since New York, but the time resets is a new one for us, too. We’re pretty sure we narrowed it down to a few options yesterday, leaving us with two real options out? Find him and make him undo it, or figure out what he set as the release sequence. If it’s the three of us living out the loop, then whatever gets us out should also involve all three of us.”

“Well,” Jason drawled after a moment, “if we know the day is going to reset on us anyway… Maybe we’ve got time for you to see the sights, maybe grab a bite to eat? Avoid heavy traffic and gunfights?”

Clint grinned at him and leaned against Barnes a little before letting his expression settle into something closer to innocent. “Well, we’d love to, but we’re so new to the area… Do you think you might know anyone who could show us around?”

Barnes- no, it was probably time to call him Bucky, if this was happening- looped an arm around Clint and smiled up at Jason from the bed. “Maybe someone gorgeous who wouldn’t be too surprised if things got a little weird or heavy?” And damn, that voice was an invitation all its own.

Jason smiled back at them. “Oh, you know. I think I know just the guy.”

Jason groaned a little and stretched as he woke up before curling back towards the warmth nestled against his chest. A large calloused hand tugged one of his back around the torso in front of him and held his arm in place around them. “Too early. More sleep,” came a drowsy rumble. A different voice hummed agreeably with that plan. A new morning, a new day. Jason allowed himself a moment to consider all that needed doing and then also hummed before kissing the scarred shoulder in front of him and closing his eyes again. There would be time for that later.