Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mornings in Gotham don’t come with sunlight. They come with gray.

Gray sky, gray street, gray coffee brewed too long in a scorched pot. But Jason hums anyway—off-key, grinning as he flips a Pop-Tart out of the toaster like it’s a grenade.

“You’re gonna burn your hand,” Dick says, half-asleep and all disapproval as he leans against the doorframe.

“Yeah, but I didn’t,” Jason counters, victorious, already taking a bite.

Crumbs fall onto the counter. Jason doesn’t notice. Or care. “You want one?”

Dick shakes his head. “Since when do you eat before noon?”

Jason shrugs and swings himself onto the counter, legs dangling. “Since you started stocking real food. Kinda hard to pretend I’m too cool to eat when there’s strawberry Pop-Tarts in the building.”

Dick doesn’t smile. Not really. But his mouth twitches. “You’re a menace.”

Jason grins, all teeth. “You raised me.”

They’re in the middle of patrol when Jason asks, “You ever think about how many ways you could die in this city?”

Dick falters on the fire escape. Just for a second.

Jason’s already moved ahead, perched like a gargoyle on the next roof. “Like, really. Elevator cables snapping. Gas leaks. Getting mugged and stabbed in the liver. Getting your face melted off by Joker acid—”

“Jesus, Jay.”

Jason laughs, loud and bright, arms spread to catch the breeze. “I’m just saying! It’s Gotham. Every Tuesday is a death trap.”

Dick catches up, grabs his wrist mid-gesture, too hard. “Don’t joke about that.”

Jason blinks. “Okay, whoa. Chill.”

Dick doesn’t let go.

“I’m serious, Jay. You—”

“I’m fifteen, not five.”

“You still do stupid things.”

“So do you.”

“You could’ve died.”

Jason pulls his hand free, mouth twisting into something colder. “I didn’t.”

Dick doesn’t know what to say to that. His heart’s in his throat.

Jason sighs and nudges his shoulder. “You’re being weird again.”

Dick looks away. “Yeah. Maybe.”

They get back late. Jason crashes on the couch, still in his gear, mask tossed somewhere under a cushion. Dick makes it to the kitchen, blinking hard, shoulders stiff. He doesn’t remember half the patrol.

He’s halfway through pouring a glass of water when Jason calls out, “Hey, you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you didn’t make it that night?”

Dick freezes.

Jason continues, casual: “You know. The mission in Kuwait. Or when you went off-roster to help B take out Scarecrow in ’03. What if you’d died?”

Dick grips the counter. “Why are you asking me this?”

Jason’s voice drifts in, muffled through the wall. “You’re the one who thinks about death all the time. Figured I’d try it out.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not supposed to be. It’s true.”

Dick walks into the living room. Jason’s lying with one arm flung over his eyes. “I don’t think about death all the time.”

Jason lifts the arm, stares at him. “You think about my death all the time.”

Silence.

Dick opens his mouth, then closes it. He sits on the edge of the couch instead.

Jason turns his face away.

At 4:12 a.m., Dick wakes up with a start.

The apartment is quiet.

Too quiet.

He pads out into the hallway, every step too loud, every shadow too long.

The couch is empty.

Jason’s mask is gone.

The cushions are perfectly arranged.

Like no one slept there at all.

Dick doesn’t panic. He doesn’t. He just stands there, alone in his own apartment, heart pounding.

“Jason?” he calls softly.

Nothing answers.

***

Wayne Manor smells the same. A little like old leather and lemon oil. A little like memory.

Dick wipes his boots on the welcome mat out of habit—Jason doesn’t—and pushes open the door with a too-bright, “Honey, I’m home!”

Tim pokes his head out of the library, eyebrow already raised. “Didn’t know you were coming.”

“You never know anything unless it’s in a file,” Jason mutters, trailing behind Dick, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “Seriously, does the kid ever go outside?”

Dick bites back a smile. “Tim, I need to talk to Bruce. Is he around?”

“He’s in the Cave. What’s going on?”

Jason snorts. “Of course he’s in the Cave. Where else would he be? Brooding is a full-time job.”

“Jason,” Dick says quietly.

“What?” Jason throws his hands up. “I’m just saying.”

Tim looks between them. His brows furrow. “...What?”

“Nothing,” Dick says quickly. “I just—need to check in. Patrol stuff. We’ve been tracking movement in the Narrows.”

“Right.” Tim doesn’t sound convinced.

The Cave is darker than usual. Bruce is by the monitors, back to them, shoulders tight.

“Dick,” he says without turning. “You're late.”

“Didn’t know I had an appointment.”

Jason’s already leaning against a pillar, eyes narrowed at the Batcomputer screen. “God, he still uses the same interface. Hey, B. You ever consider updating your system? Or are we stuck in Windows 98 forever?”

Bruce doesn’t respond.

“Rude,” Jason mutters. “He hears me. He just doesn’t want to.”

Dick sighs. “Don’t start.”

Jason rounds on him. “Don’t start? He hasn’t looked at me once since I walked in.”

“He’s busy.”

“He’s ignoring me.”

“He’s not.”

“He hates me.”

“Jason—”

“He always did.”

“Enough!” Dick’s voice bounces off the walls.

Silence follows.

Tim flinches.

Bruce finally turns around, frowning. “Who are you talking to?”

Dick blinks. Jason’s standing right there. Arms crossed. Hurt etched in the downturn of his mouth.

Dick glances at Tim, then Bruce, then back at Jason.

“...No one.”

“Dick,” Bruce says, slower this time. Measured. Like he’s speaking to someone on a ledge. “You’ve been acting… distracted.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re seeing him again,” Bruce says. “Have you spoken to Leslie? She can help you.”

Dick laughs. Too hard. Too bright. “I don’t need help. I work with him. Every night. What, you want a report?”

Jason folds his arms tighter. “Let it go.”

Tim steps forward. “Dick. You know he’s—he’s not—”

“Don’t.” Dick turns, sharp. “Don’t say it.”

Jason kicks at the floor, muttering under his breath. “Let’s just go. They’re useless.”

“Bruce,” Dick says, voice cracking now, “he’s right there. Say something!”

Bruce doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.

Tim looks like he’s holding his breath.

Jason walks past them all, toward the stairs, but when Dick turns to follow—he’s gone.

Upstairs, Alfred finds him in the kitchen. The counter is covered in sandwich ingredients—bread, mustard, lettuce, turkey—everything pulled out and scattered, but untouched.

Dick is on the floor.

He’s trying to unwrap a slice of cheese, hands shaking too hard to do it.

“Master Dick,” Alfred says gently. “Are you alright?”

Dick looks up. Smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I thought he liked grilled cheese. But I—I forgot which kind. American? Swiss? He always changed his mind.”

He laughs.

“There’s always so many ways it could’ve happened, Alfie. You know? All the ways I could’ve saved him. Or not. It gets hard to keep them straight.”

Alfred kneels beside him. Places a warm hand on his shoulder.

Behind them, the hallway is empty.

Jason doesn’t come back.

Chapter Text

Tim watches from the balcony as Dick spins lazily on the leather stool in the Batcave, half-eaten protein bar in one hand, tablet in the other, humming something tuneless under his breath. His boots are mismatched—one from the Nightwing suit, the other from casual civvies. He hasn’t slept. He hasn't even tried to.

Jason sits on the edge of the workbench, swinging his legs like a bored teenager. He’s fifteen again—scuffed boots, a Gotham Knights hoodie, and that stupid smug tilt to his mouth. His eyes flit toward Tim and then away, dismissive.

But Tim doesn’t see him.

No one sees him. No one ever does.

“Did you check the docks?” Dick asks, eyes still glued to the tablet. “Could be Penguin. Or Scarecrow. Maybe Black Mask, if he's bored enough.”

“We did. Bruce ran surveillance twice. Nothing,” Tim replies. He sets a fresh report down beside the laptop. “The shipments are clean. There's no trail.”

Jason snorts. “Of course there’s no trail. You think a decent villain leaves evidence?” He glances at Dick. “This kid’s adorable.”

Dick smiles faintly. “Be nice.”

Tim frowns. “...What?”

Dick looks up. “What?”

“You said, ‘Be nice.’”

Dick blinks. “I did?”

Jason cackles. “Smooth.”

Tim crosses his arms. “You said it like you were talking to someone. Like he was here.”

“Maybe I was talking to you.”

“You weren’t.”

Dick shrugs. “Guess I talk to myself now. Occupational hazard.”

Jason leans in close to Dick’s ear, voice low. “He’s starting to catch on.”

“Shut up,” Dick mutters.

“What?” Tim asks sharply.

“Nothing. Just—” Dick rakes a hand through his hair, eyes suddenly tired. “Nothing.”

That night, at the Manor, Tim finds Bruce staring blankly at a case file. He hasn’t moved in nearly twenty minutes. The chair beside him is empty.

Tim takes a slow breath. “He talks to Jason.”

Bruce doesn’t look up.

“I know he’s grieving. I know you are too. But it’s been years, and he talks to him. Looks at him. Laughs with him. And I think—” Tim’s voice tightens. “I think he sees him.”

Bruce finally lifts his gaze. Not surprised. Not even disturbed.

Just… resigned.

“I’ve tried to talk to him,” Bruce says. “He insists he’s fine.”

“He’s not fine.”

“I know.”

“Then do something.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Tim stares. “You’re Batman.”

Bruce closes his eyes. “Not for this.”

When Dick comes in the next morning, he’s carrying donuts and orange juice. Jason trails behind him, licking frosting off his fingers.

“I brought the good kind,” Dick says brightly, waving the box. “From that place near Crime Alley.”

“Nice of you to show up late while we do casework,” Tim says, dry.

Jason grimaces. “God, he’s such a nerd.”

“Don’t be rude,” Dick mutters.

Tim stares.

Jason leans against the wall, smirking. “Tell him I said hi.”

Dick doesn’t. He just opens the donut box and offers it silently.

“Thanks,” Tim says warily. “How long are you staying?”

Dick shrugs. “I dunno. Depends how things go with the Red Hood.”

Jason's expression darkens for the first time. “You shouldn’t be here, you know. It’s not safe. He’s not safe.”

Dick glances at him. “You’re being paranoid.”

Jason crosses his arms. “Or maybe I’m the only one thinking straight.”

Tim watches Dick have this exchange with empty air. A shadow. A space no one else can occupy.

He suddenly feels very cold.

Tim wants to scream.

He’s still here.

He’s right here.

He’s the one cleaning blood off the suits.

The one patching wounds Bruce won’t acknowledge.

The one tracking Red Hood across rooftops with too little sleep and too much caffeine, trying to connect dots no one else seems to care about.

He’s the one holding the line.

He tries so hard. Holds so tight to everything he can—logic, order, numbers, structure, reason—because if he lets go, even for a second, everything might collapse.

He might collapse.

And none of it matters.

Jason’s dead.

And still—still—they look at him.

They see Jason in every grief-strained pause.

In the way Bruce stares too long at nothing.

In the tightness of Alfred’s shoulders when someone mentions the second Robin.

In the shadow that flickers behind Dick’s smile—the one that curls just a little too hard at the edges, like he’s trying to make the laughter louder than the silence.

They don’t see Tim.

They never did.

He was the replacement.

The spare part.

The contingency plan no one asked for.

The world ended, and he walked in with stitched-up courage and a shiny new cape, hoping he could fix it.

He thought if he were good enough—

Smart enough—

Fast enough—

Quiet enough—

Useful enough—

Maybe they'd look at him.

Really look.

But they never did.

They saw Jason’s ghost behind his eyes.

Jason’s legacy in his shadow.

Jason’s absence in every space he tried to fill.

He was never enough to compete with a dead boy.

He was just the one left cleaning up the mess.

And sometimes, late at night, when even Gotham is too tired to scream, Tim wonders—

If he died tomorrow, would anyone see him then?

Or would they still only see Jason?

***

The Batcave feels colder than usual tonight.

Tim stands at the main console, eyes flicking rapidly across multiple monitors. Crime reports, surveillance feeds, patrol routes, encrypted messages from Gotham PD. The whole city pulses through his fingertips, but the screen shows only one name in heavy red: Red Hood.

He taps through files faster than he thinks—patterns, dates, locations. Every detail matters.

Dick is out chasing shadows on rooftops. Bruce is buried in strategy meetings, his silence heavier than the stone walls around them.

Tim clenches his jaw. Why am I the only one who can’t let this go?

He draws a deep breath and pulls up the latest incident report.

A shootout near Crime Alley.

A masked man seen fleeing.

No confirmed identity.

Just another ghost.

He rubs his temples, willing the headache to stop.

His fingers drum on the keyboard as if he could type louder than the weight pressing down on him.

He’s trying to hold the pieces together.

Because if he doesn’t—

Everything else falls apart.

He moves from screen to screen, clicking through maps, cross-referencing sightings.

But no matter how many cases he cracks, no matter how many nights he spends chasing leads no one else sees—

He feels like a shadow shrinking in the corner of a spotlight meant for someone else.

Jason’s name echoes everywhere—on the streets, in the files, in the hushed conversations between Batman and Nightwing.

But Tim? Tim is the unspoken question mark.

The forgotten puzzle piece.

The one who’s supposed to be there but never really seen.

He leans back, staring up at the cavernous ceiling, tracing the familiar lines of the stalactites like constellations.

The cave is alive with ghosts.

Some real. Some imagined.

And Tim—he’s lost somewhere in between.

A quiet voice in the cacophony, screaming to be heard.

He closes his eyes and whispers, “I’m still here.”

But the echo that returns sounds like someone else.

Chapter Text

Jason never leaves now.

He’s in the passenger seat of the bike, legs kicked up, humming tunelessly over the roar of the engine. He sits cross-legged on rooftops while Dick checks his comms, boots swinging like he’s still fifteen. He walks beside Dick through Gotham’s alleys with that same damn grin and a bat hidden under his jacket.

It’s like the city never took him. Like that night never happened.

Like Dick never had to bury a coffin filled with nothing but grief.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this alone?” Jason mutters, keeping pace with him across a fire escape. His voice is sharp with attitude and smoke, but softer than Dick remembers. “You think B and Replacement can’t handle one guy in a red bucket helmet?”

“We’ve got better eyes on him from here,” Dick replies automatically, breath curling in the cold air. “West route’s clear. He’ll head for the train yard.”

Jason scoffs. “Or he’ll blow it up just to be annoying.”

Dick presses his earpiece. “Moving west. I’ve got eyes.”

A pause on the comms.

Then Bruce: “Stay focused.”

And Tim, hesitant: “You’ve got eyes or Jason’s got eyes?”

Dick doesn’t answer.

Doesn’t have to.

They already know.

Jason’s laughter echoes through the alley as they drop down together—Robin and Nightwing, just like it used to be.

Except not.

Except wrong.

Because as they hit the pavement and round the corner, Dick sees him.

The red helmet flashes beneath the lamplight like a bloody wound. Leather jacket. Arsenal strapped across his back. The Red Hood.

Jason.

But not the one beside him.

Older.

Taller.

Heavier.

The boy in the alley is gone.

This one—this one is real.

Dick stumbles forward, heart hammering like thunder.

“Jason?”

The Red Hood pauses mid-stride.

Turns.

The mask tilts.

“Yeah?” Jason—the real Jason—says slowly. Warily.

Dick takes a step forward. “I saw you this morning. You looked younger.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Jason doesn’t respond.

Behind the helmet, something changes. A subtle shift in the air, like the world holding its breath.

“This morning,” Dick repeats, almost smiling. “You were fifteen. You had the domino mask on, remember? You were talking about that guy with the flamethrower. We were up on Gotham Heights.”

“…What?”

“You’re… not wearing the mask now. But it’s still you.”

Jason stiffens.

“Dick.” His voice is sharper now. Careful. “What do you think is happening right now?”

“I just—I thought we could talk,” Dick says, throat tight. “I didn’t mean to make it weird. I know you don’t always remember things when you’re like this. But it’s okay. I’m here now.”

Jason takes a slow step back.

Dick doesn’t notice.

Or refuses to.

“Hey. Hey, don’t run,” he pleads, reaching out like he could catch time with his fingertips. “Please, Jason, just talk to me. I need you to talk to me. I can’t—”

“Nightwing.”

The voice comes over the comms like a snap of cold steel. Batman.

“Stand down. Right now.”

“Jason,” Dick whispers.

But the Red Hood is already turning.

Already gone.

***

Back at the cave, Dick is shaking.

The helmet. The jacket. The voice. All of it. He saw him. He knows it was him.

He keeps repeating it while Bruce guides him inside, too gentle to be comforting. Alfred stands nearby, grim. Tim hovers by the stairs, pale and silent.

“Leslie’s on her way,” Bruce says.

“Why?” Dick snaps, but his voice cracks in the middle.

Bruce doesn’t answer.

Because the answer is already crawling up the back of Dick’s throat.

Jason isn’t here.

Hasn’t been here.

Not really.

And whatever he saw—whatever he chased—

It wasn’t the truth.

But the lie felt better.

***

The fluorescent lights in the medbay of the cave hum too loudly.

Dick stares at the space Jason used to be in. The bed. The chair. The corner. He’s not there right now, and that should be a relief.

It isn’t.

Leslie clicks her pen and speaks softly, as if louder words might break him.

“I think we should consider a prescription.”

Dick’s eyes snap to her. “No.”

“It’s not forever. It’s just to help you stabilize. Antipsychotics, maybe something to take the edge off the manic episodes. You’re barely sleeping, Dick. And you’re seeing him everywhere. You’re hearing him.”

“I’m talking to him,” Dick snaps. “I’m not hearing voices, Leslie, I—he answers.”

She exhales, slow and careful. “That’s what hallucinations do, sweetheart. They answer.”

He flinches at the word. Hallucination. He doesn’t want it to apply. Not to Jason. Not to his Jason. His little brother who always wore his grief like armor and laughed in the face of pain, who’d pick fights just to feel something. Who died with blood on his hands and still managed to smile like he’d done something good.

Leslie keeps going. “You know the medications aren’t magic. But they might help you get some distance. Some clarity.”

He scoffs. “So I can what? Forget him?”

“No. So you can remember him. For who he really was. Without this... filter.”

Dick’s hands curl into fists in his lap. “You think this is my fault. That I’m sick.”

“I think you’re grieving. And trauma has nowhere to go in people like you. So it cracks you open from the inside.”

The silence stretches long. Then:

“I’ll take the damn pills,” he mutters.

Leslie doesn’t smile. Just nods and scribbles something onto a script pad.

When he steps back into the cave, the cold air hits hard. Like a slap.

Tim’s there, leaning against the batmobile with his arms crossed. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even look at Dick. His jaw is tight.

Jason stands behind him, glancing between them with something like guilt on his face.

Bruce is off to the side, half in shadow, coat collar turned up against the wind. He looks... older. Not in years, but in weight. Like he’s been carrying something he can’t ever put down.

Dick takes a shaky breath. “I’m not crazy.”

Neither of them say anything.

Jason whispers, “I don’t think they believe you.”

“Shut up,” Dick mutters under his breath. “You’re not helping.”

Bruce steps forward. “Dick. Maybe you should stay at the manor. Just for a while. Until...”

“Until what?” Dick snaps. “Until you lock me up in the cave next to the dinosaur? Until I’m another failure under glass?”

Tim finally looks at him then, and something about the look makes Dick stop.

It isn’t anger. It’s grief.

Jason shifts uncomfortably beside him. “They think you’re losing it.”

Dick’s breath catches. His chest aches.

“I’m fine,” he says again, quieter this time. “I’m handling it.”

Bruce doesn’t argue. He just steps back, like he doesn’t know how to fight for him anymore. Like he doesn’t think he can.

Tim doesn’t follow as Dick walks to his bike.

Jason follows, of course. Jason always does.

As he swings his leg over the seat, Jason crouches beside him. “You should’ve stayed.”

Dick stares ahead, helmet dangling from his fingers. “Why? So I can sit in a museum full of ghosts?”

Jason doesn’t answer.

“I’m not ready,” Dick whispers.

“I know.”

“I still see you.”

“I know,” Jason says again, soft. “You always will.”

Dick slides the helmet on.

The engine growls to life.

Behind him, Bruce and Tim stand like sentinels in a story that’s lost its ending.

Beside him, Jason doesn’t move.

They ride back to Blüdhaven together, one man and a ghost.

And it’s almost enough.

Chapter Text

Tim keeps his walls up with code and caffeine.

He hasn’t slept in two nights. Not really. There are fragments — short crashes on the couch, jolting awake to maps of Gotham and Red Hood sightings pulled up on five different monitors. He’s logged every sighting. Every possible pattern. Every inconsistency. But none of it matters.

Dick still won’t talk to him.

Bruce still won’t talk to anyone.

And Jason — Jason is everywhere. Except real.

Tim slams his laptop shut and rubs his eyes hard enough to see stars.

The Cave elevator chimes. He doesn’t look up.

“Thought you could use a break.”

Kon’s voice cuts through the silence like light through a storm cloud.

Tim blinks. “What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Kon says, walking toward him. “Kid Genius I care about is spiraling. I took a shot.”

“You came from Smallville for that shot?”

“I’d come from Mars.”

Tim doesn’t smile.

"You know that means less coming from a space alien right?"

"Half space alien," Kon corrects with a small smile. "And maybe I just wanted to see you? If that's okay with you, Boy Wonder."

Tim gives him half a smile at that, a small, "Thanks Clone Boy," passing his lips.

Kon walks closer, slow, like Tim might bolt.

“I brought donuts,” he offers, holding up a white paper bag like it’s a peace treaty. “Three kinds. Sugar, sprinkle, and that weird lemon thing you like.”

Tim doesn’t take the bag.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he mutters, not harshly. “I’m busy.”

“I know.”

Tim frowns. “No, I mean it. I’m busy. I have to figure this out—this Red Hood guy, the connection to the drug shipments, the Black Mask angle. Bruce isn’t himself. Dick is…” He trails off. “Everything is—wrong. And I’m the only one still trying.”

Kon watches him quietly. Then says, “You don’t have to fix all of it.”

Tim barks a laugh. “If I don’t, who will?”

“I didn’t say it doesn’t need fixing. Just that it doesn’t have to be you. Not all the time. Not alone.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tim snaps. “You’re not living in the shadow of someone who won’t stay dead.”

Silence.

Kon sets the bag down. “You’re right.”

Tim stiffens.

“You’re right,” Kon repeats. “I don’t know what it’s like. To have a ghost for a brother, to stand in for someone people never really stopped mourning. I’m not gonna pretend I get that. But I do know you.”

Tim looks away. “You know the version I let you see.”

“I know the one who ran six simulations to figure out how to tell me he liked me without ‘jeopardizing the team dynamic.’”

Tim groans and hides his face in his hands. “Don’t remind me.”

“I know the one who counts steps when he’s anxious and pretends he’s not scared when people leave.” Kon’s voice softens. “The one who puts the whole world on his shoulders and calls it logic.”

Tim doesn’t speak.

Kon takes a step closer. “You don’t have to be perfect for me.”

Tim finally looks up. His voice cracks. “But what if I can’t stop trying?”

Kon just shrugs, smiling gently. “Then I’ll still be right here.”

The words shouldn’t land like they do. But they hit Tim square in the chest. He looks at Kon — really looks at him — like maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to stop holding his breath for a second.

“I’m not okay,” Tim whispers. “None of this is okay.”

Kon nods. “Good. Then we can start from something real.”

Tim moves to speak, but Kon just pulls him into a hug. One hand at the back of his neck, grounding. Warm.

Tim doesn't hug him back at first.

But then he does.

And for a moment, he lets himself just breathe.

Chapter Text

It’s quiet now.

Too quiet.

The pills work. Leslie said they would.

He swallows them like clockwork, same time every morning, every night. He follows the protocol. He does the work. He goes to the sessions. He’s trying.

And Jason is gone.

At first, he thought it was a fluke. Just a break in the pattern. A day without the weight of fifteen-year-old limbs dangling beside him on rooftops. No laughter in his ear. No running commentary on Gotham's criminals, on Tim, on Bruce.

Just silence.

He kept waiting for him to come back.

He didn’t.

It’s been three weeks.

Three weeks of stillness. Three weeks of lukewarm peace, of dreamless sleep, of standing in his Blüdhaven apartment at 2 a.m. and not feeling anything at all.

He doesn't miss the hallucinations.

He misses Jason.

He misses the way it felt to feel.

Even if it was fractured. Even if it was wrong.

Even if it was killing him.

Now he wakes up and everything is… dull. Dim. Steady.

There’s no storm anymore. But there’s no sky either. No air. No light.

Just gray.

He patrols and he smiles at the right moments and he gives Tim updates and he doesn’t snap at Bruce. He remembers to eat. He sleeps when he should.

He’s the model of recovery.

He’s also empty.

He tries to explain it to Leslie.

“I know this is what I wanted,” he says, sitting on the edge of the exam table, bouncing his foot anxiously. “I know this is what I asked for. To not feel like I was unraveling. But…”

Leslie looks up from her clipboard, soft and calm. “But?”

He shrugs. “I don’t feel like anything at all.”

She’s quiet a moment. Then: “Do you want to adjust your meds?”

“No,” he says too quickly. Then, quieter: “I’m scared if I stop, I’ll see him again.”

She nods. “That makes sense.”

“But I’m also scared I won’t.”

His voice cracks on the last word.

Leslie sets the clipboard down. “It’s okay to grieve the loss of something that hurt you.”

Dick nods, hands clasped tight in his lap. “I used to talk to him. I’d hear him laugh. I’d hear him breathe. He was with me.”

“And now he’s not.”

Dick’s throat tightens.

“I miss him. Even the broken version of him my brain made up. Even the fights. Even the guilt. At least then, I still had something.”

Leslie puts a hand on his shoulder. “You still do. But it takes time.”

Time.

He’s drowning in it.

***

That night, he goes on patrol.

It’s clear and cold, the way Gotham sometimes gets when the clouds pull back and you can pretend, for a second, the stars exist here.

He’s perched on a rooftop, overlooking Crime Alley. His breath fogs in the air. His comms are off.

He whispers, “Hey, Jay.”

No one answers.

There’s no flash of red. No shadow slipping into place beside him. No snide comment about how Tim’s cape is too long or how Bruce hasn’t changed.

Just quiet.

Just Dick.

Alone.

He closes his eyes. Leans forward on the edge of the roof. Feels the wind rush against his skin.

He doesn’t jump.

But for the first time in weeks, he feels the want to.

He sits back. Exhales. Tells himself it’s the wind. The altitude. The ghosts in the gutters of this city.

He tells himself he’s fine.

He has to.

***

Dick doesn’t dump the pills at first.

He just thinks about it.

He holds the bottle in his palm some nights, rolling it between his fingers. He reads the label. He runs his thumb over the cap. He doesn't open it.

He doesn't take them anymore, either.

It’s stupid. He knows it’s stupid. But the silence is unbearable. The numbness. The flattening of the world.

He wants Jason. He wants that voice back in his ear. He wants the biting remarks, the eye-rolls, the sudden weight of a body landing beside him on the rooftop. The half-solved banter and ghost-sharp grin.

He doesn’t want to know it's fake.

He just wants to feel something real.

That night, he walks into his apartment after patrol, peels the suit off, drags his fingers through sweat-damp hair. He doesn’t turn the lights on. The moon’s enough. It always is.

He kicks off his boots, stumbles into the kitchen—

—and stops cold.

There’s someone there.

Leaning against the counter. Arms crossed. Helmet glinting red in the moonlight.

Dick blinks.

Jason. Jason in the helmet.

Jason as the Red Hood.

“Oh,” Dick breathes, voice soft. “Just when I thought the pills were working.”

The figure doesn’t move.

Dick smiles, soft and almost broken. “You came back.”

The Red Hood doesn’t answer. Doesn’t speak. But he doesn’t vanish either.

“You don’t have to wear that,” Dick says. “You never did with me.”

Silence.

“I missed you,” Dick admits, stepping closer, voice raw. “You have no idea how quiet it’s been.”

Still, no response.

Then, quietly: “You eat anything since patrol?”

Dick blinks again. “What?”

Jason steps past him, toward the stove. “You always forget to eat when you’re spiraling.”

He sounds real.

Dick feels real.

The clatter of a pan. The low hum of a stove burner clicking to life. Jason moving through the kitchen like he knows it, like he's done this a hundred times. Like it’s not strange that he’s here.

Dick stands frozen, watching the Red Hood crack eggs into a pan like a ghost conjured domesticity from thin air.

It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible.

It’s also the first time Dick has felt warm in weeks.

He sits down slowly at the kitchen table.

“Did you really break into my apartment just to make me eggs?” he asks, voice too thick to be casual.

“You weren’t going to feed yourself,” Jason mutters.

There’s something gentle in it. Familiar.

When Jason brings over two plates, Dick hesitates. “You’re not real,” he says softly.

Jason shrugs. “Eat anyway.”

Dick eats.

It tastes real.

They talk. Or maybe Dick talks. Jason listens. Helmet still on. Voice low, sometimes—distant. But he's there. As much as Dick needs him to be.

And Dick clings to that. To the illusion or the dream or the miracle.

Somewhere between the laughter and the tired silence, Dick stands, walks behind him, reaches out a hand—

“Jay,” he says gently. “Can I see you?”

Jason flinches.

He ducks away like the touch might burn. Like the helmet is armor in more ways than one.

Dick doesn’t press. Just sits back down and says, “Stay.”

Jason does.

They stay up until 4 a.m., the city murmuring outside.

Eventually, Dick’s head droops. His words slur. Jason’s voice softens like a lullaby.

Dick falls asleep on the couch.

***

He wakes up sore, still in jeans, shirt wrinkled from where he passed out curled on a throw pillow.

Sunlight spills through the cracked blinds. The apartment smells faintly of eggs and ash.

And there are dishes in the sink.

Two plates.

Two forks.

A pan left to soak.

Dick stares at them for a long, breathless moment.

Then—

“You eat like a pig,” a fifteen-year-old voice mutters from the armrest above him.

Dick turns.

Jason. Young again. Swinging his legs, arms crossed, grinning like this is any other morning.

Like he never left.

Dick laughs—quiet, cracked, full of something close to relief.

He smiles.

Because hallucination or not, medication or not, he’s back.

And Dick isn’t ready to let him go.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

Dinner is Tim’s idea.

He calls it a family reset, even though Bruce raises an eyebrow at the word “family” and Alfred says nothing, which for Alfred is basically a dissertation on disappointment. But Kon’s already halfway to Gotham by the time Tim pitches it, and Dick says yes with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, so it’s happening.

The manor is quieter than it used to be. The chairs still scrape the same way against the dining room tile. The silverware is still polished. The food smells amazing—Alfred never disappoints—but the air feels thinner than it used to. Like they’re all trying too hard to hold something together that’s already cracked.

Tim lights candles.

Bruce doesn’t object.

Dick shows up dressed like it matters, wearing a navy button-down and slacks, hair pushed back, eyes shadowed like he hasn’t slept in a week.

He looks better. Sort of.

Tim wants it to be enough.

Kon shows up with a bottle of wine for Alfred and his winningest smile for everyone else. He squeezes Tim’s hand under the table when they sit.

“So,” Kon says, after Alfred serves the roast, “what are we celebrating?”

“Dick’s still alive,” Tim says lightly.

Dick smiles faintly. “That’s what I was going to say.”

It almost works.

The conversation is fine. Stilted, but functional. Bruce talks about WayneTech in carefully edited snippets. Tim tries to fill in the awkward silences. Kon cracks jokes and charms everyone. Alfred pours the wine and glides through it all like he’s hosting a gala instead of a group therapy session in disguise.

Dick doesn’t say much, but he’s there. He listens. He nods.

He doesn’t look over his shoulder.

He doesn’t talk to empty air.

Tim starts to think, maybe this is it. Maybe the pills are working. Maybe Leslie was right. Maybe it’s all coming back together.

And then—

“I’m just saying,” Dick says mid-laugh, “Jason would’ve hated this dinner.”

Silence.

Kon looks up. Tim freezes.

Dick’s fork hovers halfway to his mouth. His smile falters.

Tim hears the clink of Bruce setting his glass down.

“What?” Kon says slowly.

Dick’s eyes shift to his right—just for a second.

Then he blinks.

And whatever mask he’s been wearing slips.

“Jason,” Dick repeats softly. “He’s sitting right—”

He stops himself. Jaw locking. Chest rising with a sudden breath like the world just tilted off-axis.

“Dick,” Bruce says quietly. Warning. Or maybe plea.

“Sorry,” Dick mumbles. He rubs a hand over his mouth. “Just—slip of the tongue.”

But he’s looking again. Not at any of them. To the empty chair beside him.

And Tim knows.

He sees it in Dick’s eyes.

Jason’s there.

For him, Jason’s always there.

The illusion of normalcy cracks like glass underfoot.

Tim pushes back his chair.

“Excuse me.”

He doesn’t look at anyone as he walks out of the room. Kon follows, concern written all over his face.

Inside the dining room, silence stretches until Dick tries again.

“He was making fun of the napkins,” Dick says to no one, smiling in a way that breaks Bruce’s heart.

“I heard him.”

Bruce closes his eyes.

The door shuts behind Tim and Kon, and Dick doesn’t move.

He just keeps staring at the chair to his right.

The empty one.

Bruce doesn’t speak at first. He takes a long breath. Quiet. Grounded. The kind of breath that should bring him calm.

It doesn’t.

“He’s not here,” Bruce says, finally.

Dick doesn’t look at him.

“He never was,” Bruce continues, gently. “Not at that dinner. Not this past week. Not when you were talking to him on the comms—”

“Don’t,” Dick says.

“—and not in your apartment when you said he made you pancakes. That was you, Dick. All of it was you.”

“Don’t do this,” Dick repeats, sharper this time.

Bruce’s voice stays steady. Too steady.

“You’re not seeing him. You’re remembering him.”

Dick finally turns to face him. “You think I don’t know the difference?”

“I think you’re drowning in the difference.”

There’s a silence. A still, sharp kind. The kind that feels dangerous.

Dick rises from his chair slowly, napkin falling from his lap to the floor.

“Do you know what it’s like,” Dick says, quiet but shaking, “to wake up and hear him breathing?”

Bruce flinches.

“To laugh with him. Argue with him. Fight crime with him. And then realize you’re alone? Again?” Dick’s voice cracks. “He’s more real to me than you are sometimes.”

“Because you want him to be,” Bruce says.

“Because he is,” Dick snaps. “He’s there when I need him. When everything else falls apart. He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t left.”

“He’s gone, Dick.” Bruce’s voice is low. Measured. But this time, it cracks at the edges. “He’s been gone for years.”

Dick breathes like he’s been punched.

Bruce swallows hard, trying to hold it together. “We lost him. You and me both. And I know—I know—I failed him. But this? This isn’t bringing him back.”

“Don’t talk about failing him,” Dick growls. “You buried him and moved on like he was a mission report. You put him in the ground and never said his name again.”

“I said it every night,” Bruce says. “In the quiet. When no one could hear.”

“Then you should’ve let me!” Dick’s voice rises, sharp and raw. “You should’ve let me grieve him instead of pretending he was never there!”

Bruce goes still.

And that silence returns—hollow now. Grieving.

Dick drags a shaking hand through his hair, and then down over his face. His mouth twists.

“He’s the only thing that makes sense anymore,” Dick says, brokenly. “He’s the only one who doesn’t lie to me.”

“He’s not real,” Bruce says again.

Dick doesn’t respond. He just stares through Bruce—like he’s listening to someone else. Someone only he can see.

Chapter Text

“No,” Dick said, backing away from Bruce, “You have absolutely no idea how I feel so don’t even pretend for a second like you do. I am up night and day protecting people, trying and praying that I don’t have to watch any of them meet the same fate he did. And then, when I do finally get a moment to rest it is like the whole world crashes down around me and I am being crushed and I cannot move, it is an effort to breathe, to get out of bed, to talk to people like the thought of going outside doesn’t make me want to throw up. I got into a car accident the other day because I thought I saw him crawl out of the ground and I swung out to avoid him. So yes Bruce, I see my dead brother sometimes and yes I talk to him because god forbid I have one vice, one mode of comfort, instead of suffocating once again in the cavern of your grief and your insincerity.”

Dick huffed out a shaky breath with his last words, staring Bruce down with an intensity the man thought had been lost to his eldest son. Dick’s eyes flicked between Bruce and an empty space in the doorway where two Jason’s stood, a 15 year old boy in his Robin costume staring scared at the two arguing, and the man, still young, but face scarred and pale, looking on at the argument in shock and pity.

Bruce took a tentative step forward, the weight of his own loss settling over him like a shroud. “I know, Dick,” he says quietly. “I’ve lived it too.”

“No,” Dick snaps, his eyes burning with unshed tears. “You lost a soldier. I lost him. The brother who used to laugh at my stupid jokes, who I used to hold when he was scared, who—who was there.”

Bruce’s voice breaks on the next words. “I’m trying to help you. But you’re shutting me out.”

Dick laughs, bitter and hollow. “Help? You think this is about help? You think you know what I need? You think you’re the only one hurting?”

The tension in the room snaps like a brittle thread. Bruce’s jaw tightens, eyes darkening with frustration and sorrow.

“I’m scared,” he admits, voice low. “I’m scared of losing you, too.”

Dick’s anger softens, replaced by something rawer—fear, grief, desperation.

“I don’t want to be lost,” he whispers. “I don’t want to be forgotten.”

Bruce takes a step closer, hesitating before placing a hand on Dick’s shoulder. It’s a fragile touch, weighted with years of pain and unsaid apologies.

“You’re not alone,” Bruce says. “I’m here. I’m with you.”

Dick’s voice cracks as tears spill free. “I don’t want to be fixed. I don’t want to be saved. I just want him back.”

Bruce swallows hard. “I want that too.”

They stand like that for a long moment, caught between the past and the present, between what was lost and what still remains.

Then Dick pulls away, pacing the room as if trying to outrun the ghosts.

“No one gets it,” he mutters. “No one ever will.”

Bruce’s eyes follow him, haunted and tired.

“Maybe not,” he says, voice soft but steady. “But I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Dick stops pacing, turns to face Bruce fully.

“You’re here, but you don’t see me. You see the broken boy, the pain, the hallucinations. But you don’t see me.”

Bruce’s voice is gentle. “I see you, and I see him sometimes too.”

At that, the older Jason moves forward, cautious and slow, like an animal preparing to run at the first sign of danger. Dick thinks for a moment as he watches, thinks he sees Bruce’s hand twitch with the need to reach out, then he does. He does it in a way as though he’s trying not to be too obvious, but Dick can see Jason too, can see him reaching out to meet his father and then flinching back like he had been burned before they could even touch and Dick scoffed, leering at Bruce once more.

Dick huffs, bitter. “Go on, then. Reach for your ghost. Pretend that’s enough.”

Jason’s jaw clenches. He doesn't speak. Doesn’t correct them. Doesn’t say I’m real. Just turns away, eyes glassy with too many years gone and no home left to come back to. He walks out silently, his footsteps soft and final. Not vanishing like a phantom—just leaving.

The room is emptier now. Somehow even more hollow.

Dick’s voice wavers. “You see what’s left. The part that’s hurting, the part that’s afraid. But I’m more than that. I’m the kid who used to jump off rooftops with you. Who believed we could save the world.”

Bruce swallows. “You still can.”

Dick laughs, rough and bitter. “Can I? When I’m drowning in all this?”

Bruce moves closer. “You’re not drowning. You’re fighting.”

Dick’s mask cracks. “What if I lose?”

Bruce’s voice thickens. “Then I’ll be here to catch you.”

The fight bleeds out of Dick’s body all at once. He looks smaller now. Younger. “I’m scared to let go of him.”

Bruce’s hand lands on his shoulder. Solid. Grounding. “You don’t have to. Not yet.”

“But I have to start,” Dick whispers. “Or I’ll lose everything.”

Bruce holds on, not just to Dick—but to the moment. “I lost two sons that day.”

Dick jerks like he’s been slapped.

Bruce doesn’t flinch. “Jason... and then you. You slipped through my fingers.”

Dick’s voice is hoarse. “You think I don’t feel it? I live in that silence. You retreat, and I’m just—left. I can’t lose you too.”

Bruce’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I’m scared too. Scared every day. Of standing here with one son gone, and the other fading.”

Dick’s eyes snap to his, searching. Desperate. “Then what am I supposed to do with all this? The chaos in my head, the shadows that don’t go away?”

Bruce squeezes his shoulder. “Fight it. For us.”

Dick lets out a hollow laugh. “You can’t win a war inside your own head. Not when the only thing keeping you breathing is a ghost.”

Bruce’s voice softens. “Then don’t let go all at once. But don’t let it take you either.”

Dick wipes his face. “He was my brother.”

“And you’re my son,” Bruce says, voice cracking. “I love you both.”

The silence is deep now. Heavy.

“I’m scared to lose you too,” Dick says, barely audible, his voice cracks open, raw and vulnerable. “What if this is too much?”

Bruce steps forward, voice breaking. “Then I’ll be here to catch you.”

The room softens around them. The fight drains away, leaving two broken men trying to find a way forward.

Dick’s voice is barely a whisper. “I’m scared to let go of him.”

Bruce’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “You don’t have to. Not yet.”

A bitter laugh escapes Dick, hollow and full of pain. “You don’t get it.”

Bruce’s voice lowers, haunted and tender. “I don’t understand everything, maybe I never will. But I know this—you’re not alone.”

The vulnerability in Dick’s eyes breaks through his defenses. “I’m drowning, Bruce. And sometimes, the only way I can breathe is by holding onto him—even if it’s just a ghost.”

Bruce’s fingers squeeze his shoulder gently, desperately trying to transfer some small comfort. “You don’t have to let go all at once. But holding on to something that isn’t here... it’s killing you.”

Dick’s jaw clenches. His voice trembles with something deeper than anger. “What’s worse? Dying with him… or living without him?”

Bruce doesn’t answer right away. He can’t. The silence stretches long and raw between them, the kind that aches with things unsaid.

Finally, Bruce says, “I ask myself that every day.”

Dick turns away, wrapping his arms around himself like he’s trying to hold his body together, like the grief might tear it apart if he doesn’t. “He talks to me, you know. Not always out loud. Sometimes it’s just a glance. A memory. I look in the mirror and he’s behind me. Or beside me. Or—I don’t know. Inside me.”

Bruce’s voice is careful. “What does he say?”

Dick’s throat works around the lump forming there. “He says he’s cold. That he wants to come home. That he never wanted it to end like that.”

Something twists in Bruce’s chest, sharp and deep. “Neither did I.”

Dick shakes his head, turning slowly back toward him. “He was just a kid.”

“I know.”

“You made him feel like he needed to go out there.”

“I know.”

Dick’s voice rises, cracking open with fury. “And then you just buried him him and moved on.”

They stand there again, facing the same impossible chasm. Different edges. Same drop.

Bruce’s voice is tight. “He was mine to protect.”

“No,” Dick growls, stepping forward. “He was ours. You don’t get to carry this alone and shut the rest of us out like we don’t bleed the same.”

Bruce’s mask slips then. Not Batman. Not the unshakable, stoic man the world sees. Just a father. A broken one.

“I didn’t know how to let you in,” he says, ashamed.

Dick looks at him like he wants to hate him. But he’s too tired. Too heartsick.

“I needed you,” he says. “I needed you and you disappeared.”

“I’m here now.”

“It’s not enough.”

Bruce closes the distance and this time, his hand doesn’t stop at the shoulder. He pulls Dick into a full embrace, and for a moment, Dick doesn’t move.

Then he collapses into it, like a wave finally giving in to shore.

They stay there, both shaking—grief quaking through their limbs like aftershocks. The kind that come years after the disaster, long after everyone else thinks you should be over it.

“I don’t know how to live with it,” Dick murmurs into Bruce’s shoulder. “The hole.”

“You don’t live with it,” Bruce whispers back. “You live around it.”

Dick’s fingers curl in Bruce’s cape like he’s still trying to hold something together. “What if he never forgives me?”

“He would,” Bruce says, steady. “He would because you never stopped loving him. And I think he knows that.”

There’s a long pause. Then:

“I think he’s in pain,” Dick admits. “Wherever he is. It’s like I feel it.”

Bruce nods slowly. “Me too.”

Dick pulls back slightly, eyes red but clearer now. “Then maybe we don’t let go yet. But we don’t chase him either.”

Bruce gives the faintest smile. “We let him rest. And we try to do the same.”

Dick’s laugh is shaky. “I don’t even know what rest looks like anymore.”

Bruce places a hand against the side of his face, grounding. “Maybe we figure it out. Together.”

From the hallway, something shifts—just faint enough to miss if you weren’t paying attention. But they both look. The air is still, but warmer. Like something has passed through.

Not gone. Just… moved on.

Dick wipes his eyes. “He would’ve made fun of me for crying this much.”

Bruce lets out a breath. Almost a laugh. “He cried watching Babe.”

Dick snorts, quiet and fond. “That’ll do, pig.”

Bruce’s hand stays on his back as they walk from the room. The hallway behind them is quiet.

Empty. But not hollow.

Chapter Text

Wayne Manor is choking on silence — the kind that follows screaming, thick and suffocating.

Tim sits on the floor of his childhood bedroom, surrounded by open case files and glowing screens that have long gone idle. They’re not distractions anymore. They’re graves. Half-dug, half-ignored.

Downstairs, the voices start again.

Bruce.

Dick.

Again.

Tim doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t bother. His jaw clenches like a trap waiting to snap.

They sit side by side on the edge of the bed. Voices still echo from below — louder now. Ugly.

Tim balls his hands into fists. “It’s always him. Every fight. Every fucking time. Jason.”

Kon’s quiet, waiting.

Tim stands. He paces. The air in the room sparks around him.

“He’s been dead longer than he was alive, and he still takes up more space than me. Than any of us. I could disappear tomorrow and Bruce wouldn’t even notice — not unless the mission started to fall apart.”

“Tim…”

“No. Don’t.” Tim spins to face him, face flushed, eyes burning. “Don’t say he’s not replacing me. Don’t lie. He doesn’t have to replace me, Kon. He’s already won.”

His voice rises, sharp and raw. “He got the tragedy. The sainthood. The story. Died a bloody death, came back wrong — and somehow that makes him the golden boy. The broken martyr everyone worships.”

Kon’s gaze drops. Tim steps closer.

“I’m the one who’s still fucking here. I’m the one rebuilding the network and cleaning up Bruce’s messes while Dick screams at ghosts. But all anyone sees is Jason.”

He laughs — high, hysterical. “I could cure cancer and they’d still say, ‘You know who would’ve been better? Jason.’”

He looks Kon dead in the eye. “Do you know what it’s like to be the consolation prize for a corpse?”

Kon stands, uncertain. “Tim—”

“Dick tries,” Tim bites, voice fraying. “I know he tries. He smiles like it hurts, and he checks in on me like it’s a chore, and he says all the right things but it’s like he’s playing house with a ghost. Like I’m the echo of something he couldn’t save.”

His voice cracks. “I don’t want to be a fucking echo.”

Silence. Just the hum of old walls.

Kon closes the gap between them. “You’re not invisible.”

Tim pulls away. “You saying that doesn’t fix it.”

“I see you.”

“Yeah? Then why does it still feel like I’m screaming underwater?”

Kon reaches out again. Tim lets himself be pulled in — not because he wants to, but because he’s so goddamn tired. Tired of being angry. Tired of being second.

“You don’t get it,” Tim murmurs against his shoulder. “You never had to compete with a ghost.”

***

Later, after Kon’s gone — after the hug dissolves like sugar in water — Tim moves like smoke down the hallway, drawn toward the aftershock.

Dick’s door is open. Just like always. Just like he wants to be caught.

Tim steps inside.

Dick is perched on the edge of the bed, his suit half-off, his shoulders slumped. The air around him buzzes with guilt.

“I heard you,” Tim says.

Dick doesn’t look up.

“I always hear you.”

Still nothing.

“I know he talks to you. I know you think he’s watching. That you feel him when it’s quiet.”

Dick flinches.

Tim steps closer. “But you don’t get to shut me out and pretend he’s still here. Not anymore.”

Dick looks up. His eyes are red. “Tim…”

“No.” Tim’s voice is sharp, dangerous. “No. You don’t get to Tim me. Not after everything.”

He’s trembling. But it’s the trembling of a live wire.

“I’m not just some try-again version of the boy you couldn’t save. I’m not a fucking do-over.”

“I never said—”

“You didn’t have to!” Tim explodes. “Every time you look at me, it’s like you’re waiting for me to turn into him. But I won’t. I can’t. I’m not Jason, and I’m done bleeding myself dry trying to become him for you.”

Dick’s face crumples.

Tim’s voice softens — not out of mercy, but exhaustion.

“I love you. I do. I always have. But you only ever loved me in reflection. Like I was just close enough to the ghost to keep around.”

“I see you,” Dick whispers.

“No, you see through me.” Tim steps back, breathing hard. “And I’m not going to vanish just because you won’t admit that.”

He walks to the door, calm again — the eye of his own storm.

“I’m not Jason,” he says one last time. “And if you can’t love me without pretending I am, then maybe you never loved me at all.”

He shuts the door behind him.

Inside, Dick collapses onto the bed, hands over his face.

Behind him, Jason’s ghost stands silent in the shadows.

But this time —

He says nothing.

***

The city is quieter than it should be.

Tim walks without direction, the Gotham chill slicing through his hoodie like he forgot to bring a skin. His boots scuff the cracked pavement. Smoke drifts up from a manhole a few steps ahead. The streets are wet from a forgotten rain. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wails—mournful, like the city itself is keening.

He hasn’t slept. Again.

Three nights now? Maybe four.

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Not really.

He rounds a corner and stops short.

Jason’s there. Leaning against the mouth of an alley, arms crossed, posture lazy and sharp all at once. He’s not in the Red Hood getup—just a leather jacket, black tee, hands bare in the cold. His expression is unreadable, but his eyes gleam beneath the streetlamp like they belong to someone half here and half not.

Tim blinks. Exhales.

“Great,” he mutters. “I don’t sleep for three days and now I’m hallucinating you, too.”

Jason pushes off the wall. “Could be worse. Could’ve conjured Bruce.”

Tim snorts, caught off guard by the dry sarcasm. “Okay, that’s fair.”

They fall into step like they didn’t plan it—Jason beside him, one pace off, like muscle memory. Like they’ve done this a hundred times before. They haven’t. But it feels that way.

“I hated you,” Jason says suddenly.

Tim blinks. “You have such a way with words.”

Jason glances over, mouth quirking. “Nah, I mean it. For a while. When I first saw you in the suit. Thought I’d kill you.”

Tim lets out a short, humorless laugh. “Does this count as suicidal ideation if my hallucination wants me dead?”

Jason actually laughs at that. “Shit. You’re funnier than I was too.”

They walk in silence for a block. A cat darts across the road. Somewhere, glass shatters.

“You know Bruce and Dick used to fight all the time when I was Robin?” Jason says eventually. “Like—really fight. Not yelling. Not verbal disagreements. I mean fists, bruises, busted ribs. I walked in on it more than once.”

Tim swallows. “They pretend like it’s just me hearing them now.”

“They’ve always been broken,” Jason says softly. “You’re just the one who stayed long enough to see it.”

Tim’s chest pulls tight. He doesn’t say anything.

“You’re good, you know,” Jason adds. “Scary good. Smart, driven. Better detective than I ever was. More focused. More disciplined.”

Tim looks over, almost startled. “What, no self-deprecating joke?”

Jason grins faintly. “Trying a new thing. Telling the truth.”

They stop at a red light. A few cars idle in the distance, headlights ghosting over empty sidewalks.

“I’m proud of you,” Jason says.

Tim looks away. His throat works. “You’re not real.”

Jason’s voice stays gentle. “I know.”

And for a second—just a second—he looks like he’s going to reach out. His hand twitches like it remembers how to be warm. Tim watches it, breath catching, caught in the space between flinch and lean.

But Jason doesn’t touch him.

Instead, he shoves his hands back in his pockets and takes a step back, shadows rising to meet him.

“Don’t let them erase you,” he says, voice low. “Make noise. Make them see.”

Tim blinks, and Jason’s already halfway gone.

He vanishes into the fog, into the kind of night that only keeps the dead warm.

Tim stands there for a long time. Long after the light turns green.

Then he turns and walks home.

Not faster.

But heavier.

Seen.

Chapter Text

The walls of Leslie’s office were soft and warm in color, padded with years of comfort and quiet intention. The ticking clock on the shelf matched the gentle rhythm of the rain tapping at the windows. It was peaceful here—too peaceful. It made Dick feel like his brain was too loud.

He sat hunched on the couch, one knee bouncing restlessly, hands knotted in his lap. His mouth was set in a line. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.

Leslie watched him with the kind of patience that only came from a lifetime of watching people lie to themselves.

“How have things been since we last spoke?”

Dick gave a tired smile. “Fine. Just… Blüdhaven’s always a mess, you know how it is.”

“Nightmares?”

“Sometimes.”

“Have you still been seeing Jason?”

Dick hesitated. Just for a second. But she saw it.

“I—yeah,” he said softly. “Not all the time. Not as much. It’s manageable.”

“Are you still taking the medication?”

There it was again: hesitation. This one longer. His tongue pressed to the inside of his cheek. “Yeah,” he lied.

She didn’t call him on it. Not directly.

“Dick,” she said gently, “you know hallucinations like this—especially ones tied to trauma—they don’t just disappear because you’re strong. They don’t go away because you want them to.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “I know.”

“You’re doing what you can, and that matters. But if he’s still there, if you’re still seeing him... there may be better options. We could try increasing the dosage. Or a different medication.”

He shook his head before she even finished the sentence.

“I’m not ready for that,” he said. Then, a beat later, he added under his breath, “It’s just... he’s not hurting anyone. I can’t—he’s just there. And when he’s there, I’m not alone.”

The room went quiet. Leslie sat back in her chair, her gaze softening.

“I understand,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s real. And if he’s not hurting anyone now... that doesn’t mean he won’t hurt you eventually.”

Dick didn’t respond. He stood instead, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair.

“I’ll think about it,” he offered, already halfway to the door.

Leslie didn’t push. “Just be careful.”

He nodded and stepped into the hallway.

The lights above flickered, just for a second, and Dick blinked. The hum of fluorescent bulbs stuttered before catching again—and when he looked up, Jason was there.

Fifteen years old, in his bright red tunic and green gloves, black hair a tousled halo around a smug grin. He matched Dick’s stride easily, falling into step beside him as if they’d never been apart.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy, big brother,” Jason said, bumping his shoulder against Dick’s.

Dick didn’t smile.

But he didn’t pull away, either.

***

The city breathed beneath him—muggy, heavy, alive. Blüdhaven’s skyline shimmered under the streetlamps, warped by heat rising off the asphalt. Nightwing crouched on the ledge of a rooftop, pulse hammering in his throat.

He saw the flash of red first. Just a blur—barely a whisper of movement—before the figure landed on the adjacent rooftop with a muted thud.

Red Hood.

Dick was moving before he even thought about it, boots slamming against concrete as he chased across the rooftops. “Jason,” he whispered under his breath, voice swallowed by the wind.

By the time he caught up, the Red Hood was standing still—half-shrouded in shadow, the gleaming red helmet turned toward him.

Nightwing landed hard, skidding across gravel. His chest rose and fell in sharp bursts. The world rang in his ears.

“You’re not being careful anymore,” Dick said, panting, staring across the rooftop at the figure who had haunted him for months—years, maybe.

The Red Hood didn’t move. His head tilted slightly, studying Dick. Silent. Unreadable.

Then, finally, a voice—muffled through the helmet, careful, neutral.

“You called me Jason last time.”

Dick didn’t flinch. “That’s your name.”

A pause.

“And what if I said it really is me?” the Red Hood asked. His voice was gentler now. Less armored. Almost… tentative.

Dick laughed softly, bitter and brittle. “You’d say anything to mess with my head.”

The wind curled around them, rustling tarps and wires.

“Jason’s dead,” Dick said quietly. “I saw him die. We buried him. I talk to him sometimes. I know he’s not real.”

“You really think I’m not?” the Red Hood pressed.

Dick gave him a long, tired look. The kind you give ghosts. “You called me Dick.”

The Red Hood hesitated. Then: “That’s your name.”

Something in Dick’s face twisted—pain, maybe, or fondness. He looked at the Red Hood like he wanted to reach out and touch him, like maybe if he just got close enough, it would all come into focus. He wanted to believe. God, he wanted to believe.

But the pieces didn’t fit.

“Jason never made it past fifteen,” Dick said. “You’re taller than me.”

The Red Hood didn’t respond.

Dick took a step forward. “I don’t know what you are. A ghost, a lie… But he wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t be this.”

“I didn’t get a choice,” the Red Hood said, voice low. “None of us did.”

Something dark flashed through his tone. Grief masked in fury. But Dick heard only static. Only the echoes of a voice that didn’t belong to the boy he remembered.

He looked away first.

“Stay out of Blüdhaven,” Dick muttered. “I don’t have room for another hallucination.”

The rooftop hums with the echo of their last words, but Dick doesn’t move.

Wind curls around him. He stands there, breathing hard, watching the Red Hood vanish into shadow. Just a smear of crimson in the dark.

Then—

“I’m alive,” a voice whispers, close behind him. 

Dick stiffens.

He doesn’t have to turn around. He knows that voice better than his own heartbeat. It dances along the edge of memory and madness, too young and too alive to be real.

Dick squeezes his eyes shut. “Not now. Please, not—”

Hallucination-Jason steps into view, barefoot on the rooftop, wearing that stupid domino mask and ragged cape like it still fits. He’s fifteen again—forever fifteen—radiating restless energy like heat waves off asphalt. He spins in a lazy circle, arms wide, grinning like he knows every terrible thing in Dick’s heart and loves him for it anyway.

“You don’t get to shut me out,” Jason says brightly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dick looks past him. Sees the rooftop, the night sky. The real Red Hood long gone. Or maybe not. He doesn’t know anymore.

“You left,” Dick mutters. “You died.”

“I came back,” the hallucination says, stepping forward, voice hardening. “You made sure of that.”

He leans in close. Too close.

“You kept me. You let me live here,” Jason says, tapping his own temple. “In this fucked-up head of yours. You need me.”

Dick swallows hard. His mouth tastes like ash. “I needed you to stop hurting.”

Jason smirks. “I’m not the one hurting.”

He steps around Dick now, pacing in a circle, vibrant and golden and wrong. “You don’t get to forget me. You won’t. The world tried. Bruce tried. But you—”

He jabs a finger into Dick’s chest.

“You remembered.”

“You’re not real,” Dick whispers.

“Don’t care.” Jason shrugs. “You built me. I’m everything you lost. Everything they wouldn’t say. I’m the blood on Bruce’s hands, and the guilt you carry like a second cape. And I’ll keep showing up—every day, every night—because you want me to.”

The world seems to tilt. Dick grips the edge of the rooftop, knuckles white.

Behind him, Hallucination-Jason smiles—sharp and sad. “I’ll never leave you, Dick. Not again. You wouldn’t let me.”

And somewhere—distant, nearly forgotten—Dick hears a voice. Not the hallucination’s. Deeper. Older. The Red Hood’s, lingering from moments ago:

"What if I said it really is me?"

Dick sways on his feet.

His head hurts.

His heart hurts more.

Jason laughs, soft and razor-edged. “You don’t even know which one I am anymore, do you?”

He leans in one last time, close enough for Dick to feel the phantom warmth of him.

“I’m alive,” he says again, quieter this time. “I’m alive. And you’ll never be rid of me.”

And then he vanishes, fading into moonlight and memory. Leaving Dick alone on the rooftop, eyes wide, breath thin, and the night far too quiet.

The rooftop is empty.

But Dick doesn’t move.

His fists are clenched, jaw tight, lungs struggling for air that won’t stay in. He feels watched, even though he knows he’s alone.

Except—he isn’t.

Not quite.

Boots crunch softly behind him. Not the hallucination’s weightless silence, but something real. Heavy. Grounded. The scrape of Kevlar. The weight of a body that breathes and bleeds.

He turns, and the Red Hood is there again.

“I thought you left,” Dick says, voice hoarse.

Jason doesn’t answer right away. He just stands there, helmet gleaming under the pale glow of the city. His silhouette is sharp, dangerous—so different from the fifteen-year-old ghost who haunts Dick’s thoughts. But the voice, when it finally comes, is soft.

“You really don’t see it, do you?”

Dick blinks. “See what?”

Jason steps closer. The distance between them is barely a breath now. His hand lifts—hesitates—fingers hovering at the edge of his helmet like he’s about to show Dick what he means. Like maybe if he peels it off, the truth will finally be clear.

Dick watches him, eyes wide and shining.

Jason’s fingers twitch. Then drop.

He can’t.

Not yet.

Dick doesn’t even notice. He’s already shaking his head. “You’re not him,” he says, too quickly. “You just—you remind me of him. You even sound like him sometimes. But Jason’s dead.”

He says it like a prayer he’s been reciting too long. A truth he built a house around.

Jason’s shoulders drop a little, barely perceptible beneath the weight of armor. His voice is quiet when he speaks again.

“Take care of yourself, Dick.”

He turns. Doesn’t wait for an answer.

And then he’s gone—leaping into the night, disappearing over the rooftops before Dick can stop him.

Before Dick can ask, then why do I feel like I’m losing him all over again?

The wind picks up, brushing cold across Dick’s face as the city swallows the Red Hood’s silhouette.

He exhales, long and slow.

Then—

Clap. Clap. Clap.

A slow, deliberate rhythm cuts through the stillness. Sarcastic. Smug.

Dick flinches.

The hallucination sits on the ledge above him, swinging his legs like a child, looking every bit the fifteen-year-old he’d lost. His domino mask gleams in the dark. His smile is crooked, too sharp for his soft face.

“Well, that was almost awkward,” he drawls, eyes shining with mischief. “He almost had you, huh? Would’ve been a shame if he wasn’t me. Imagine the look on your face.”

Dick turns away, jaw clenched. “You’re not him either.”

The hallucination shrugs like it doesn’t matter. Like it’s never mattered.

“Maybe not,” he says easily, hopping down beside Dick. “But I’m the only one who stays.”

Dick doesn’t respond. He can’t.

The hallucination steps closer. His expression softens, just a little, like maybe he can sense the crack in Dick’s armor. Like maybe he knows Dick won’t push him away tonight.

“I’m the one who remembers everything,” he murmurs. “The dumb jokes. The way you used to sing in the car when you thought no one could hear. The time you broke your wrist falling off the chandelier and made me take the blame.”

He grins. “I’m the only one who gives a damn.”

Dick looks down at his hands. They're trembling.

“I miss you,” he whispers.

The hallucination doesn't say anything at first. Then he leans in, resting his chin on Dick’s shoulder with all the easy affection of a memory that won’t let go.

“I know.”

A beat of silence.

Then, quieter, more intimate:

“Lucky for you… I’m not going anywhere.”

***

Jason’s boots hit the gravel hard. He didn’t stop running until the skyline shifted and the wind stung his face sharp enough to remind him he was real.

He was real.

He had to be.

The rooftops blurred past—steel and shadow and memory. Every step sent gravel scattering, his chest burning from more than exertion. He wanted to rip the helmet off. Scream. Shake someone. Shake Dick.

He skidded to a halt on the edge of a warehouse roof, breath ripping out of him like it was being dragged from his lungs. The city opened up below—loud and filthy and alive, so much more alive than he ever got to be.

Jason yanked the helmet off and flung it. It hit a vent with a brutal clang and spun, wobbling, before rolling to a stop near the edge.

His hair was damp with sweat. His hands trembled.

“He doesn’t see me,” Jason said aloud, to no one. To the empty air that seemed just as unwilling to believe he existed.

He swallowed. Gritted his teeth. “I was right there.”

It was easier when they thought he was a ghost. Or a myth. Easier to be feared than forgotten.

But Dick—Dick—was supposed to be different. Dick had held him. Had buried him. Had talked to the damn hallucination version of him for years like it meant something. Like he mattered.

But the moment Jason actually stood in front of him, flesh and blood, armor and scars—

He hesitated.

“He thought I was a hallucination,” Jason whispered, voice thick with disbelief. “He thought I was less real than the version of me in his head.”

His laugh came out brittle. It cracked in the night like something breaking open.

“You want a ghost? You want the fifteen-year-old you couldn’t save?” Jason spat at the rooftop. “Then maybe I should’ve stayed dead!”

He kicked the vent. Metal screamed. A nearby pipe clattered loose and fell three stories.

No one looked up.

Jason stood there, chest heaving. His hands curled into fists. The stars blinked above, indifferent.

He closed his eyes.

Tried to remember the coffin. The cold. The taste of dirt in his mouth. The clawing. The rage.

He had died.

And he came back anyway.

Every day since then, he’d dragged himself through fire to stay above ground. To matter. To prove it hadn’t all been for nothing.

“I’m real,” he said, louder now, daring the skyline to argue.

The wind whispered through broken glass and rusted metal. Somewhere, a siren wailed.

Jason pressed his palms against his face. Sighed. Then sat down hard, back against a rusted chimney. He looked up at the sky like it might give him answers. Or maybe permission.

“I’m alive,” he said again, quieter.

And then again—stronger.

“I’m alive.”

He let the words echo. Let them settle into the bones of the city.

Because he was. Every scar, every breath, every fucking step—he was here. Not an echo. Not a memory.

Not a hallucination.

And maybe Dick couldn’t see it yet. Maybe none of them could. But Jason refused to disappear again.

He wouldn’t fade.

He wouldn’t be the dream they kept locked behind grief and guilt.

He would haunt them not as a ghost, but as a boy who came back wrong, came back angry, came back loud.

He would make them see him.

Even if it killed him all over again.

Jason leaned his head back against the brick and let his heartbeat thunder in his ears.

It was still going.

So was he.

He sat there until the sweat cooled on his skin and the trembling stopped. Until his pulse wasn’t trying to claw its way out of his throat.

But the silence didn’t comfort him. It accused.

Jason stood again, pacing the rooftop like a caged animal.

“They’ve all seen me,” he muttered, voice thick, rough-edged. “Every single one of them.”

He ticked them off like tally marks carved into his own ribs.

“Tim saw me in Crime Alley. I watched him freeze, like I was a fucking horror movie. He didn’t even fight back.”

A bitter laugh escaped.

The wind picked up again, tugging at his jacket like it wanted to drag him back to the past. But he wouldn’t go. He was here.

“Bruce…” His voice faltered.

Jason stared out at the city again. His city. The one he bled for.

“Bruce looked right at me. In the manor. In the warehouse. He knew. He had to know. And still—he left me. Again.”

His voice cracked. He hated that. Hated how much of that pain still lived under his skin like shrapnel.

“I put the helmet on. I built the arsenal. I carved out a name in blood and fire and they still look through me.”

Like he wasn’t their mistake come back to haunt them.

Like if they ignored him long enough, he’d just disappear again.

Jason turned and kicked the vent again. This time, it dented. Screamed.

“I’m not your fever dream,” he snapped, louder now. “I’m not your guilt. I’m not your lesson. I’m not the goddamn moral of the story.”

His voice echoed over the rooftops. A dog barked in the distance.

“I’m not a symbol. I’m not some ghost you can mourn in comfort while pretending he didn’t come back angry.”

His breath shook. He tried to suck it in slow. Didn’t work.

“They all keep talking about me like I’m still dead,” he whispered. “Like I’m some fixed point in their fucking tragedy.”

The kid who died.

The hero they lost.

The one Bruce couldn’t save.

“But I’m not a tragedy. I’m the aftermath. I’m the body that got up. I’m the story you don’t know how to tell because it doesn’t end neat.”

He swallowed.

“You don’t get to write me out because I don’t fit the script.”

He looked down at his hands—scarred, calloused, stained. Then at the gauntlets. At the red bat symbol on his chest. Burned over the armor like a dare.

“I’m not what you wanted,” he said quietly. “I know that.”

“I’m not what you mourned.”

But he was here.

He was still here.

And maybe that was the worst part. The unbearable, unspeakable thing none of them wanted to face:

That Jason Todd had clawed his way back from the grave and kept walking anyway. That he refused to be their memory. That he refused to go away.

They could call him dangerous.

Call him unstable.

Call him broken.

But they’d never call him by his name. Not like it meant something.

Not like he still meant something.

Jason’s mouth twisted. A smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Fine,” he said, breathing out. “Don’t see me. Don’t say it.”

“I’ll carve my name into this city until it bleeds. I’ll light up the sky in red until it’s the only color you see.”

He turned, picked up the helmet, and slid it back on. The HUD flickered to life. His breath hissed through the rebreather.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said through the modulator.

And then he leapt off the rooftop and into the night.

Let them look away.

Let them choke on silence.

He was done being buried.

He was alive.

And he would not let them forget it.

Chapter Text

Dick woke in the dark, the edges of the room blurring, the silence pierced by a voice only he could hear.

“Still with me, Dickwing?”

The words slid through the quiet like a whisper, but it was no dream. Jason was there—vivid, impossible to ignore. The hallucination’s presence filled the room, solid as breathing, impossible to push away.

“Choose me,” the voice teased, low and dangerous. “Or lose everything that’s left.”

Dick’s chest tightened. His hands clenched the sheets as the ghost of Jason stepped closer, a smirk playing on his lips. The energy was intoxicating—fierce, chaotic, the pull of a past he wasn’t ready to let go.

“Don’t be afraid,” Jason said, voice smooth like silk but sharp beneath. “Give in. You know you want to.”

But Dick hesitated.

To accept this was to surrender to the madness that clawed at his mind. To refuse meant losing the last thread tying him to his brother’s memory.

He swallowed hard, torn between the desperate need to hold on and the fear of losing what little was real.

“I’m not ready,” Dick whispered, voice cracking. “Not yet.”

The ghost of Jason leaned in, eyes glittering with both menace and something like love.

“Then don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The room around Dick dissolved into darkness, shadows lengthening and twisting like smoke, pulling him away from the present. The hallucination’s voice was a low murmur, seductive and relentless, dragging him deep into a labyrinth of memories.

“Remember this?” Jason’s tone was teasing, yet heavy with something unspoken.

Suddenly, Dick found himself standing on a rain-slick rooftop, the cold Gotham night wrapping around him like a shroud. Below, the city lights flickered, distant and indifferent. Beside him, Jason was real — or as real as he could ever be — the familiar weight of his presence both comforting and devastating.

They were running. Side by side. The sharp slap of their boots against stone echoed in the silence, heartbeats pounding in sync. Jason’s laughter sliced through the night air — reckless, wild, free. It was the sound of a brother alive, fierce, and untamed. The kind of laughter that had once filled Dick with hope, made him believe they could outrun the darkness, that they were invincible together.

Dick saw himself reaching out, catching Jason’s hand as he nearly slipped on the wet ledge. Jason grinned, that crooked smile filled with danger and defiance — the smile that had always drawn Dick back from the edge. They shared a brief, fierce glance, silent but saying everything: I’ve got you.

Then came the mission: a blur of action, adrenaline, and chaos. The flash of weapons, the sharp scent of gunpowder. Dick remembered how Jason had pushed him forward, dragged him into danger without a second thought. That reckless courage that terrified and awed him. They fought as one, their movements fluid and deadly, a perfect team.

But beneath the bravado was the boy Jason had been — fragile, aching to be seen beyond the mask. Dick recalled the nights they spent perched on the Batcave’s edge, sharing stolen moments of laughter and secrets. Jason’s voice softer then, almost vulnerable as he confided fears no one else heard.

Dick’s throat tightened. The memory was sharp and raw, the echo of his words still haunting him.

And then, the fracture. The fall.

The memories twisted, shadows creeping in. That last night — before Dick went away, before Jason died, a promise to take him out for burgers when he returned, only to come home to a casket already buried in the ground and Bruce refusing to talk about it, leaving Dick alone to grieve in silence.

The laughter became hollow. The warmth curdled into ice. Every stolen smile turned to ash. The boy who had once been his brother was gone, replaced by a ghost that refused to leave.

Jason’s hallucination whispered, weaving through the fragments, “You see how close we were? How much you still need me? You can’t let go, not really.”

Dick’s chest constricted. The past, once a refuge, now felt like chains — binding him to a grief that threatened to drown him. The memories suffocated, beautiful and painful all at once.

“Why won’t you choose?” Jason’s voice was both a taunt and a plea, “Me, or nothing.”

Dick’s fingers trembled as he clenched his fists, torn between the ghost of what was and the fragile thread of what might still be. The past held him prisoner, but letting go felt like losing the only part of Jason left in his world.

***

The city was alive with restless noises — distant sirens, the hum of traffic, a stray dog barking somewhere down a dark alley. But atop a cold, weathered rooftop, the real Red Hood sat in stillness, watching.

His eyes never left Nightwing as Dick moved through the shadow-streaked streets below. From this distance, Jason’s expression was guarded, unreadable — a mask hardened by years of pain and survival. Yet beneath it, something fragile trembled. Guilt, longing, and a profound sense of loss all tangled in the lines of his jaw and the set of his shoulders.

He had followed Dick tonight, not out of duty or mission, but because he couldn’t turn away. Because somewhere deep inside, beneath the anger and the silence, Jason wanted to reach his brother — wanted to undo the years of silence and misunderstanding.

But he stayed hidden. Because stepping forward risked breaking the fragile peace — the thin thread of control Dick clung to. Jason knew better than anyone that the line between healing and breaking was razor thin.

Down below, Dick’s figure moved with a haunted grace. The weight of grief clung to him like a second skin, visible in the slight slump of his shoulders, the tension in his hands as he spoke softly to the empty air. Jason could almost hear the words — half-pleas, half-pleasures — spoken to a ghost no one else could see.

The ghost was him.

Jason.

Not the resurrected man perched in the shadows now, armor cold against his skin, breath fogging in the chilled Gotham air. No — the ghost Dick spoke to was the boy in the photograph. The one with too-bright eyes and scraped knuckles. The one who died and never quite came back the way they needed him to.

Jason crouched lower, the edge of the roof biting into his calves, but he didn’t move. Didn’t blink. His gaze stayed pinned to Dick like a tether — one he didn’t dare pull.

He watched Dick pause at a rooftop’s edge, scanning the city with that old practiced poise, but his shoulders still sagged, too burdened by grief to fully stand straight. He was talking again, low and quiet, words Jason couldn’t hear but could almost feel — like phantom hands around his throat.

He wondered what Dick said.

Was it “I miss you” or “I’m sorry”?

“Why didn’t you come back?”

Or worse —

“Why did you come back like this?”

Jason’s hand tightened on the edge of the ledge. His gloves creaked from the strain.

He wanted to scream. To drop down, grab Dick’s shoulders and shake him and make him look. Make him see.

Not the ghost. Not the echo. Him.

“I’m not dead,” he whispered to no one. “I’m not the memory you keep feeding with your guilt.”

But Dick didn’t hear. He just walked again, down into another alley, moving like a man haunted — talking to the air like it still listened.

Jason followed.

From rooftop to fire escape to ledge. Silent as breath. He didn’t know what he was doing, only that he couldn’t let Dick go. Not like this. Not back into the night to grieve a brother still breathing.

They all did it. Every damn one of them.

Mourning a corpse that still bled.

Building altars to a boy while ignoring the man he’d become.

Calling him the ghost — when they were the ones haunting him.

He slowed when Dick stopped. Watched as he leaned against a brick wall, head bowed, mask off. Just Dick now — not Nightwing, not the first son, not the golden boy.

Just a man trying to mourn someone who wouldn’t stay dead.

Jason swallowed thickly.

He had imagined this moment a hundred ways. Sometimes he stormed down, ripped the grief out of Dick’s hands like a stolen thing and shouted I’m right here. Sometimes he broke down, dropped to his knees and cried with him, begged him to understand.

Tonight he just stood there.

“Would it even matter?” he murmured. “If I showed you?”

Would it make a difference? Or would Dick flinch again, step back, eyes wide with hurt and horror and that unbearable thing — disappointment.

Jason could still hear his voice from earlier, raw and cracked: “You’re not him.”

It echoed now, louder than the sirens.

Louder than the heartbeat in Jason’s ears.

“I’m not,” he said. “I know that.”

He didn’t know what he was anymore.

Not the dead boy. Not the good soldier. Not the brother they wanted back.

But he was here.

Watching. Wanting. Bleeding from wounds no one would name.

Dick pushed away from the wall and started moving again. Jason followed, slower now. Distant. His steps no longer fueled by urgency, just inevitability.

He’d keep following. Not to haunt. Not to hurt.

But because this — this distance, this silence — was all they had left.

And maybe, just maybe, if he stayed close enough, someday Dick would turn around.

Someday, he’d stop speaking to the ghost.

And start speaking to him.

Until then…

Jason moved through the night like a shadow that remembered the sun.

Like a ghost refusing to fade.

Alive.

And still waiting to be seen.

***

The hallucination of Jason danced just beyond reach, teasing, coaxing, tormenting — but the real Jason was silent, watching. The distance between them was more than physical; it was a chasm carved by trauma, silence, and years spent apart.

Dick’s mind, clouded and unsteady, blurred the lines between reality and memory. At times, the ghostly image of the fifteen-year-old Robin appeared — wild-eyed, reckless, filled with laughter and youthful bravado. Dick saw him running beside himself, a carefree shadow from a time long gone.

At other moments, the older, battle-worn Red Hood — helmet down, stoic and impenetrable — emerged from the shadows, a figure of quiet menace and sorrow. Dick couldn’t tell where memory ended and hallucination began, nor which of these versions was truly real.

In the alley behind a row of crumbling brick buildings, Dick caught a flash of that familiar red helmet — a sudden heartbeat of hope and pain. His breath hitched, heart pounding in his chest, but when he blinked, the figure vanished like smoke caught in the wind.

In the cavernous silence of the Batcave, Dick thought he heard Jason’s voice — soft, unmistakable — calling his name with a tenderness that ripped through the numbness. The sound hung in the air, fleeting and intangible.

These glimpses were both balm and poison. They tethered Dick to a past he desperately wanted to hold on to, but also dragged him deeper into confusion and sorrow.

Jason watched all of it, silent and conflicted. He knew that one wrong move — one step too close — might shatter what little stability Dick had left. And yet, every moment spent on the sidelines was a quiet torment, a reminder of the brother he once was and the man he could never quite reach again.

Tonight, the air was thick with things unsaid — the weight of memories, the ache of absence, and the fragile hope that maybe, somehow, the real Jason could find a way back into the fractured pieces of Dick’s world.

But for now, he remained a shadow in the distance — watching, waiting, and aching to be seen.

***

The small, dim room felt suffocating, walls closing in as Dick’s breath came fast and shallow. His hands trembled, fingers clenched into fists against the weight in his chest. The ghost of Jason hovered at his side, shifting like smoke — sometimes soft, sometimes sharp — a constant, maddening presence.

“Let me go,” Dick whispered to the empty air, voice cracking. “Please... I can’t lose you.”

The hallucination grinned, but the smile was both cruel and tender, eyes flickering with impossible warmth and biting sarcasm. “Lose me? I’m the only one who’s really here, Dick. The rest? They don’t see you. They can’t.”

Tears welled, blurring his vision, and he dropped onto the couch, face buried in his hands. The past and present collided — memories of laughter and broken promises, of the brother he loved and the ghost he couldn’t escape.

A knock at the door pulled him back. Tim’s cautious voice slipped through the crack, “Dick, can we talk?”

He shook his head fiercely. “No. Not now. Go away.”

Another knock, firmer this time. “We’re here for you. Bruce and I. We want to help.”

Dick’s heartbeat thundered — a frantic drum of fear and resistance. If he let them in, if he opened up... it would mean facing the unbearable truth: Jason was gone. The hallucination wasn’t real.

“I’m fine!” he snapped, voice raw. “I don’t need help. You don’t understand — none of you do.”

Outside, footsteps hesitated. Bruce’s voice, low and steady: “I lost him too, Dick. I’m trying. We all are.”

Dick’s breath caught, fury and grief crashing inside him. “You don’t get to tell me how to grieve. I’m not ready to move on.”

The hallucination leaned in, voice silky, “See? They don’t get it. They never did. But me? I listen. I stay.”

Dick reached out instinctively, fingers brushing the phantom’s face, and flinched at the emptiness.

“Hold on to me,” the hallucination whispered, “Because once I’m gone, you’re truly alone.”

He closed his eyes, the line between comfort and torment razor-thin. Somewhere, beyond the walls and voices, the real Jason watched — silent, conflicted, aching for a way to reach him.

And Dick sat there, caught between love and loss, between what was real and what was needed, fighting the hardest battle of all: letting go without losing himself.

The room grew colder, shadows stretching long and sharp as the hallucination stepped closer, eyes blazing with impossible intensity.

“Choose, Dick,” the voice was velvet and steel. “You can’t have me and keep the rest. You know that. This half-me, this ghost — I’m all that’s left of him. Let me in fully, or I disappear forever.”

Dick’s heart pounded violently against his ribs, each beat a desperate warning. “Please... just give me more time,” he whispered, voice breaking. “I’m falling... but I can’t— I can’t decide yet.”

The hallucination’s smile twisted, not cruel now, but tragic. “You think I’m a choice? A ‘maybe’ on your list? I’m the last tether to him, to us. Refuse me, and you lose more than me — the memories, the love, everything that made him yours.”

Panic welled in Dick’s chest, thick and suffocating. He collapsed to his knees, eyes wide and wet, reaching out to nothing. “I don’t want to lose him. Not again.”

“Then choose.” The voice softened, slipping beneath his skin, “Or watch it all slip through your fingers — and me with it.”

Time stretched, fragile and unbearable. The silence between them screamed louder than words.

Dick’s breath hitched. The world blurred — the faces of Bruce, Tim, Jason flickering like broken film — and he hung there, suspended in agony.

Not knowing if he could ever say yes, or live with the cost of saying no.

Chapter Text

Dick sat hunched over a rooftop ledge, the city stretched out before him like a graveyard of ghosts. The hallucination appeared again — younger Jason, the Robin he remembered too well. His smile was sharper now, almost cruel, like a blade honed in secret.

“You’re slipping,” the ghost whispered, crouching beside him, chin perched on his knee like they were still brothers, still boys. “But it’s okay, Dickie. I’ll catch you when you fall. Shame you couldn’t do the same for me, isn’t it?”

Dick didn’t respond. He stared at his hands, watching them shake.

“You thought you saw him again,” Jason said, voice laced with dark amusement. “Red Hood. Huh. Almost makes you believe, doesn’t it?”

Dick’s breath caught.

“You’re not real,” he muttered.

“Oh, I’m real enough.” Jason’s eyes glinted, feral now, something broken masquerading as playful. “Real enough to know you’d rather keep me this way — young, dead, perfect. You wouldn’t know what to do if I came back angry.”

Dick turned, glaring. “You are angry.”

The hallucination’s smile widened, no warmth in it now — only teeth.

“No, Dick. He’s angry. The one you won’t look at. The one you keep calling a lie.” He leaned in closer, breath cold against Dick’s ear. “You’re the one burying him all over again.”

Dick flinched, the words landing like strikes. “Stop.”

But the hallucination didn’t.

“You’re slipping, and you like it,” Jason hissed. “You need me. Because if I’m gone, you’ll have to face what’s left.”

“I don’t—” Dick’s voice cracked.

“You do.” Jason’s hand reached out — a phantom touch, cold and impossible. “You know it’s true. You don’t want to let go. Letting go means admitting you didn’t save me. That Bruce didn’t. That none of you did.”

Dick gasped, staggering backward as if the words had weight. “You’re not him.”

Jason’s grin turned wolfish.

“No,” he said. “I’m the part of him you buried with your guilt. And I’m not going anywhere.”

***

Jason wasn’t hiding. Not really. He was testing them. Testing him. How long before Nightwing caught on to more than just a ghost? How long before Bruce stormed in with demands and accusations?

How long before Dick finally realized the ghost wasn’t the only one watching?

Back in the safehouse, Jason peeled off his helmet, fingers trembling. He saw it sometimes — the same vision Dick did. The boy he used to be. The laughter. The rooftop. The crowbar. The clown. The warehouse. The laughter that rang in his ears, mangled and sick, like a dog being choked.

And worse — he could feel it now, like a tether pulling taut.

Dick was breaking.

Jason leaned forward, head in his hands. He wanted to scream, to punch a wall, to run. But he didn’t. He breathed. Waited. Listened.

Somewhere, in the cracks of the city, Dick was crying into the night — for him, because of him.

And Jason… Jason was starting to believe that maybe this wasn’t just about grief anymore.

Maybe it was war.

Not between brothers. Between the ghost and the man.

***

Dick sat alone in the cramped apartment they called a safehouse, the weight of the night pressing down on him like a vise. The city outside flickered with distant sirens and restless shadows, but all Dick could see was the darkness inside his own mind.

A sudden noise — the subtle creak of the door — made him snap his head up.

Jason.

Real, not ghost. The man stood there, helmet off, eyes burning with the same fire Dick remembered too well. But now, Dick wasn’t sure if this Jason was real or just another cruel trick of his breaking mind.

“You’re not real,” Dick spat, voice raw, trembling with anger and exhaustion. “You’re just like him — a hallucination. I can’t— I won’t — I can’t have this. Stay dead. Just… go away.”

Jason’s jaw tightened, eyes flashing with hurt and rage. “Why? Why do you keep pushing me away? Why did none of you ever care? Why is the Joker still out there, laughing? Still alive? Did you even try?”

Dick’s breath hitched. The walls he’d built crumbled all at once.

“We tried.” His voice cracked, breaking down in the harsh silence. “Bruce tried. We all tried. But Superman stopped him — stopped Batman from finishing it. I… I killed the Joker once, in a blind rage. But Bruce… he brought him back. Brought him back like he was some damn joke.”

Tears spilled down Dick’s face, heavy and unforgiving. “We cared. We always cared. I’m sorry. But I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.”

Jason stared, still burning with anger, but something softer flickered in his eyes — confusion, maybe even pain. He was furious at Bruce — more than ever now, for reviving the Joker. A little mad at Superman, too, for stepping in.

He flinched back slightly, torn as he watched the man he once called brother unravel right in front of him.

Without a word, Jason reached out, hesitating for a heartbeat — then wrapped his arms around Dick in a fierce, desperate hug.

The city hummed on, indifferent.

But for one broken night, the war paused between the ghost and the man.

Dick gripped the back of Jason’s jacket like he might fall through the floor if he let go. His breath came in stutters, quiet sobs muffled against the younger man’s shoulder. Jason held him, tense at first, then more solid. Steady. Real.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Dick rasped. “You have no idea how—how many times I wished… prayed… begged…”

Jason shut his eyes. “I know.” His voice was low. Rough. “I missed you too, Dick. Even when I hated you… I missed you.”

Dick pulled back enough to look at him, scanning Jason’s face like he could memorize every line before it vanished again. “You’re really here?”

Jason nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching in something between a smile and a wince. “Yeah. I’m real. You’re not crazy.”

Dick exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for years.

“I thought you were just… in my head again.” His voice trembled. “I didn’t know what was real anymore.”

“I know,” Jason said gently. “That’s why I came. To prove it. I’m here, Dick. Flesh and blood. No more ghosts.”

He stepped back, slowly, like detaching a bandage. “But I have to go. For now.”

“What? No—Jason, wait—”

“Not forever.” Jason’s expression softened. “Just… let me figure things out. You’ll see me again. I promise.”

And then he was gone.

***

Dick didn’t stop to think. He barely registered the rooftops under his boots or the sting of wind in his eyes. He ran like his life depended on it — straight to the only place that had ever felt solid beneath his feet.

The Batcave loomed ahead, sterile and silent. Tim looked up from the computer. Bruce turned, arms crossed, every inch of him taut.

“He’s alive!” Dick shouted before he’d even fully entered. “Jason. I saw him. I talked to him—I hugged him.”

They stared.

“I’m not losing it,” Dick said, louder now, desperate. “I know what the hallucinations feel like — this wasn’t that. He was real. He’s alive and he was right there.”

Bruce took a slow step forward. “Dick…”

“No.” Dick’s voice broke. “Don’t Dick me. Don’t talk to me like I’m unstable. He’s alive and he came to me. He said he missed me. I—he held me, Bruce!”

Tim frowned, a subtle shift in posture. “You’re sure?”

“I know my own damn brother, Tim!” Dick’s hands were shaking now, tears welling again. “He said he was real. I believed him. I believe him.”

But Bruce’s silence was heavy. Tim glanced at the monitor, then back at Dick like he was calculating how gently he needed to tread.

“You think I’m making it up,” Dick whispered. “You think I finally broke.”

“No one’s saying that,” Tim offered, softly.

“You don’t have to. I see it on your faces.” Dick’s voice was wrecked now, chest heaving. “He was here. And now you’re looking at me like I should be in a straitjacket.”

Bruce moved closer, slowly. “You’ve been under a lot of stress. The hallucinations—”

“They weren’t him,” Dick snapped. “This was different. He was real. Why won’t you believe me?”

But Bruce said nothing.

And that silence — more than anything — cracked something deep inside Dick Grayson.

Because Jason had come back.

And no one believed him.

Bruce’s hand landed gently on Dick’s shoulder, too gentle, like Dick was a live wire that might shatter if touched wrong. He didn’t shrug it off. Couldn’t. His body was too wrung out, lungs tight, eyes burning.

“Come on,” Bruce said quietly. “Let’s go to the med bay. Just to check you out. Make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” Dick rasped, stepping back. “I don’t need a damn psych eval—”

“It’s just protocol,” Tim added, trying for calm. “We’d do the same for any of us, you know that.”

But Dick wasn’t stupid. He saw it — the way they didn’t meet his eyes, the pity in their voices. Like he was glass that had finally cracked and they were sweeping up the pieces before he noticed.

He let them guide him, anyway.

The med bay smelled like antiseptic and betrayal.

Leslie arrived not long after, her coat still half-buttoned, a tablet clutched in one hand. Her face was gentle. Too gentle. That tone — the one people used with trauma patients and dying animals — made Dick’s skin crawl.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from his face. “Tim told me what happened. Why don’t you sit down and talk me through it?”

“I already did,” Dick said hoarsely. “Jason came to me. Tonight. He talked to me. He held me.”

Leslie gave Bruce a quick glance over her shoulder. Her sigh was soft. Practiced.

“Dick…” she said, and he hated the way she said his name, full of sorrow. “I know how real it feels. Hallucinations can be vivid, especially under prolonged stress. You’ve been pushing yourself hard, and your mind is—”

“No.” His voice cracked. “Don’t do this. Don’t tell me it was all in my head. It wasn’t. He was warm. He smelled like smoke and old leather and that god-awful cologne he used to steal from Bruce. He laughed. He cried. He told me he missed me.”

Leslie reached for his hand, and Dick pulled it away like it burned.

“I know what I saw,” he said, louder now, desperate. “You think I don’t know the difference by now? The hallucinations — they mock me. They whisper. They hurt me. But Jason—he held me. I could feel his heartbeat. He said he was real.”

Tim was standing stiffly in the corner, arms crossed too tightly, like he was holding himself together. Bruce stood like stone — impassive, unmoved, unreachable. Dick’s voice broke against him like waves on a cliff.

“Say something,” Dick begged. “Please. Say you believe me.”

But Bruce didn’t. Not with his silence. Not with the sorrow in his eyes.

Leslie’s voice was the soft crunch of snow underfoot. “Dick… Jason’s gone. You know that. We buried him. We mourned him. I was there.”

“No,” Dick said again, but his voice was trembling now. A child’s denial. “No. He’s alive. He came back. He found me. He hugged me. He told me he missed me, and—and I—”

He broke.

The sob tore from his chest, raw and jagged. He curled forward on the med bay cot, gripping his head, because he couldn’t bear to see their faces anymore.

Tim came forward, hesitated, then knelt beside him. “We believe that you believe it,” he said gently. “We just want to help you feel safe again.”

Dick looked up at him, eyes red-rimmed and wild.

“I was safe,” he whispered. “For the first time in years. Because he was there. And now you’re all trying to rip it away from me.”

No one had an answer for that.

So Dick sobbed into his palms while Bruce stood like a statue, while Leslie prepped a sedative she didn’t want to use, and while Tim turned his face away and blinked hard.

And not a single one of them could say what they were all thinking:

What if he was right?

But what if he wasn’t?

And so, Dick Grayson sat in a sterile room surrounded by people who loved him — and had never felt more alone.

***

The sky was overcast. Of course it was.

It was always overcast on the days they decided to break him.

Bruce said nothing as he drove. Didn’t explain. Didn’t need to. Dick knew the route by heart — had driven it in a storm once, heart hammering, eyes burning, windshield wipers screaming. He hadn’t made it all the way, not that time. He’d pulled over halfway and cried into the steering wheel, gasping like he was drowning in air.

This time, Bruce drove them all the way.

Jason’s grave was exactly where it always was — tucked under the lean shadow of a tree that lost its leaves too early every fall. The tombstone was modest, like Jason would’ve wanted. He’d always hated sentiment. The name was cleanly etched. Jason Peter Todd. Beloved Son. Beloved Brother.

Dick stared at it like it might blink. Like it might split in half and reveal a secret, a trick, a punchline.

But it didn’t.

Bruce stepped back, giving him space.

Dick moved like his limbs weren’t his. Like he was underwater, too slow, too heavy. He stood in front of the grave and folded. Just… folded. Knees in the dirt, fingers clawing at the grass like it might offer proof, like he could dig through and find Jason instead of wood and rot.

“He’s not here,” Dick whispered, voice shaking. “He’s not here, Bruce. He’s out there. He hugged me.”

He turned, eyes wide and wet and feral. “He hugged me. He told me I wasn’t alone. He said he missed me, and I could feel his heartbeat, Bruce, I swear—”

Bruce didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just watched, eyes glassy, jaw tight.

“Say something!” Dick screamed. “Please, say you believe me! Just once, fucking say it!”

But Bruce didn’t.

So Dick turned back to the stone and broke.

He pressed his forehead against it, hands splayed like he could reach through. Like the cold surface would let him feel the warmth of the brother who should’ve never been left alone in that goddamn warehouse.

His voice cracked open like a wound.

“The permanency of death is such an odd concept,” he whispered. “In a world where nothing is permanent. Not cities, not countries. Borders rise and fall, mountains crumble, people come back from the dead all the time in our world. But Jason…”

His hand curled into a fist against the granite.

“I used to drive to his school every afternoon. Even after. Just… on autopilot. Thought I was going to pick him up. I guess I always figured the routine would break when he went to college. Not… not like this.”

The words were coming faster now, desperate, unfiltered.

“He wasn’t supposed to leave. He was supposed to grow up. To get into trouble. To maybe become someone better than all of us. I had all these pictures in my head — him at my wedding, him teasing me about being old, him being Jason. That’s what I miss. That stupid smirk. That stupid voice calling me Dickie like it wasn’t annoying. And now…”

He sucked in a breath, choked.

“Every big moment in my life is hollow now. Birthdays, missions, holidays. Empty chairs. There’s no one left who remembers the stuff he remembered. The dumb fights. The nights we slept on the manor roof. Nobody else gets it. My friends—they didn’t know me like he did. They didn’t love me like he did, like family does.”

His fists were trembling. Voice nearly gone.

“And now everyone looks at me like I’m crazy. Like I’m the problem. But I grieved. I’ve grieved him for four years. Four years of trying to live with the silence he left behind. He died fifteen, Bruce. Fifteen. A kid. And I’m supposed to just move on?”

He turned again, face streaked with tears, eyes blazing.

“You- you gave me a purpose, Bruce, when my world had fallen apart you gave me a reason to keep going. And then you took it from me and I was angry, I was so mad at you, I still am, I think, in a way I always will be. There’s this deep frustration and hatred for you that lies within me, it eats at me, because what you did wasn’t fair, the way you treated me sometimes wasn’t fair, and I know parenting is hard and I know with me it wasn’t easy to toe the line and I truly do forgive you for all of it but that doesn’t erase the hurt. When I cooled off, when I actually talked to him I had a reason all over again, I had someone who believed in me and would love me no matter what, someone who looked up to me and who I could teach and who I could make sure was better. He had been through so much and seen so much and he looked at both of us like he thought we were invincible, I wanted to give him the world.”

Dick let out a shaky breath. “And then my reason was taken from me again, he was there one day and gone the next. Is this how a parent feels? To have someone and know that at all costs and no matter what you do wrong, the one thing you have to do right is to keep them safe? All I wanted was to keep him safe, that was my one job, no matter what I failed at as long as he was safe it would be one thing I managed to do right. But he isn’t safe. I couldn’t do the one thing I had sworn to do, the one job I had. And I carry that with me every single day, knowing I failed, knowing that feeling will never go away, that this will never get better because how could it? I saw him, I have a second chance, you have a second chance, I can’t fail him twice.”

“Why is it too much when I grieve? Why is it crazy when I feel like this? Why does everyone act like my pain is a burden? You think it’s hard to watch? Imagine feeling it. Imagine carrying it every goddamn day and being told it’s too heavy for the people around you. I lost him too. Not just you. Me. And it hurts. I am allowed to hurt!”

Bruce looked away, jaw locked. His silence was a kind of cruelty. A refusal to feel out loud.

Dick crumbled back to the ground, forehead pressed to the cold stone. He whispered now, hoarse and cracked.

“He hugged me,” he said again. “He was real. He was real. Please… someone just listen.”

But the grave stayed still. The wind didn’t answer.

And in a world full of resurrections, gods, and miracles — the only thing that remained permanent was a stone in the ground and the sound of a brother breaking.

Chapter Text

The med bay was quiet.

Too quiet.

Too clean, too white, too sterile, like a morgue masquerading as a hospital. The kind of silence that didn’t soothe but suffocated. It pressed in around Dick’s chest like a vice, coiled inside his throat like smoke. The overhead light flickered — once, twice — and then held steady.

He’d stopped crying hours ago, but only because his body had nothing left to give.

They locked the door. He heard it click. Not the soft, sympathetic kind of lock, either. Not an “I’m giving you privacy” kind of lock. No — it was the “you’re scaring us” kind. The “we think you’re going to hurt yourself” kind.

They were right.

He lay curled on the cot, eyes open but unfocused. Every breath felt like breathing through static. His lips were cracked. His hands trembled without reason. His body wouldn’t regulate. He was stuck in freefall, untethered and burning up on reentry.

Jason was dead.

Jason was alive.

Jason was dead again.

Jason was—

The light flickered again. And this time, it stayed flickering.

Soft footsteps echoed on the tile.

Dick didn’t move.

He didn’t have to look. He knew what shape the shadow would take. What voice would come next. What face would wreck him all over again.

“Hi, Dickie.”

Fifteen-year-old Jason stood at the foot of the cot, just as ruined as the day he died.

Blood soaked his costume, blooming out from his ribs in a slow, seeping pool. His lip was split. His brow was caked with dust and ash and red, and his eye was already darkening with bruises. He looked like the explosion had happened minutes ago. Like he'd just crawled out of that crumbling warehouse and found his way here, to him.

Dick shook his head slowly. “You’re not real.”

Jason’s voice was gentle. “You said I was. Yesterday. You hugged me, remember?”

Dick’s breath hitched.

Jason moved closer.

“God, you look awful,” he said softly, crouching down beside the cot. “You always used to tell me to sleep. To drink water. You’d check my forehead when I had a fever. Remember that? You used to hum when you were scared. You were always humming in the Cave, under your breath like you thought I couldn’t hear.”

Dick stared straight ahead, eyes glassy. “Stop.”

But Jason didn’t.

He sat down beside him on the cot, one knee pulled up. The blood from his jacket soaked into the sheets, but it didn’t seem to matter.

“You know what the worst part is?” Jason said quietly. “You knew. All this time, even when everyone told you I was gone, some part of you knew I wasn’t. You felt it. That’s what love is, isn’t it? Knowing someone so well their absence still leaves fingerprints. That’s why it hurts.”

Dick whimpered — not a word, not a sound with shape, just a noise wrenched from deep inside his throat.

Jason leaned closer.

“But it doesn’t have to hurt anymore,” he said gently. “You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to be here. We could be together. I miss you so much, Dickie. I don’t want to be alone anymore. Don’t you want that too?”

Dick turned away, trembling. “You’re not real.”

“I am more real than this pain,” Jason whispered. “More real than Bruce’s silence. Than Tim’s careful distance. More real than the way they treat you like you’re broken. You’re not broken, Dick. You’re just tired. So tired. And I can fix it. We can fix it.”

The room dimmed, as if the lights had grown weary too.

Jason’s voice was almost a lullaby.

“There’s a world where we’re okay. Where we still sit on rooftops and race home through the Narrows and argue about who gets the last slice of pizza. There’s a world where I didn’t die and you didn’t break. And we could go there, Dickie. Together. All you have to do is close your eyes. Just let go.”

“No,” Dick rasped, tears sliding again.

Jason brushed his fingers over Dick’s hair.

“Come with me,” he said, soft and pleading. “It’s better than this. Better than screaming in the Cave while they look at you like you’re insane. Better than being told your grief is too loud. Better than the ache. The guilt. The silence.”

He leaned close enough for Dick to smell the blood.

“Don’t you want to come home?”

And for a moment, he did.

God, he did.

To rest. To be held. To see that crooked, reckless smile one more time and feel like something made sense. To be a brother again. Not this grieving thing. Not this shell that wakes up every morning and counts how many times he’s imagined putting a bullet in his own head.

He reached out.

Fingers shook as they hovered above Jason’s, just an inch from touch.

“I want—” His voice cracked. “I want you to be real so badly.”

“I am,” Jason whispered. “I’m waiting for you.”

“Then why do you look like the night you died?”

Jason smiled, soft. Sad.

“Because that’s how you’ve never let me go.”

And then he vanished.

The cot was soaked in blood that wasn’t there. The air was still. The door was still locked.

Dick curled in on himself, arms around his stomach, sobbing soundlessly into the crook of his elbow. No strength left to scream.

***

The med bay lights hummed overhead.

A single flickering panel buzzed in the corner, a monotonous, insect-like whine that drilled into Dick’s skull until he barely noticed it anymore. The cot beneath him was stiff. The blanket was scratchy. His mouth tasted like metal and ash. He hadn’t moved in hours.

Maybe days.

It didn’t matter.

His thoughts came in waves — thick, dark, and slow — and then all at once. Slamming against the back of his teeth. Hurling themselves into his chest like they could batter their way out. He was drowning and there wasn’t even water.

He thought about dying a lot lately.

Not in the messy, dramatic way. Not crying on rooftops or standing on ledges waiting for a gust of wind. Not even with a gun. That was too loud, too final. He didn’t want it to be loud. He wanted it to be quiet. Gentle. Like falling asleep during a late movie or slipping beneath a warm bath and forgetting to come up.

A switch.

That’s all it would take.

If there were a button, a cord to unplug, a way to just stop—he wouldn’t hesitate. Not out of hatred for life. Not even grief, really. Just exhaustion. Bone-deep, marrow-soaked exhaustion. He was tired. And if the world would just let him stop, he would.

Would they even care?

Would anyone notice?

Tim would. He was too observant for his own good. He’d be the first to find the silence suspicious, the first to hack the med bay cameras, to override the lock, to come running.

Dick could almost see it. Tim bursting through the door, panicked and breathless, only to stop. Stare. Go still.

Would he scream?

Would he shake him?

Would he collapse to his knees like Dick did at Jason’s death, clinging to the casket like maybe grief was a currency and if he offered enough of it, someone would trade him back?

Or would he just… sigh?

Would he go silent, lips trembling, and press a hand to Dick’s forehead, like Dick used to do for him, and whisper, “I knew it”?

Would Bruce?

Bruce hadn’t visited today. Hadn’t visited yesterday, either. Or maybe he had. Dick wasn’t sure. He didn’t remember the last time he looked his father in the eye. But he remembered the lock. The firm set of Bruce’s mouth. The way he’d said “You’re not well.” Like it was a diagnosis. Like it was a curse.

Did Bruce expect this?

Did he already prepare a spot beside Jason?

Was he sitting in his office right now, going over the protocol for another bat funeral? Would he pace the manor halls afterward, wondering which of his sons would be next, like a king with too many war fronts and not enough heirs? Would he cry?

He didn’t cry for Jason. Not in front of anyone. Not even at the burial. He just stood there with his fists clenched and jaw locked, rain running off his cowl like it could disguise the silence.

Dick remembered thinking, Do I have to die to make you talk?

And now? Now he wondered if he’d made it happen. If grieving Jason so loudly had made it worse. If reminding them — he was here, he mattered, I loved him, I miss him — had just pressed the bruise deeper.

Would Alfred cry?

That hurt the most.

Alfred had buried too many sons.

Would he look down at Dick and remember all the scraped knees and burned pancakes and teenage tantrums about curfew and think, not this one too? Would he clean the blood, tuck the hair back, fold the sheet gently over Dick’s face like he was tucking him in one last time?

Would he whisper “Goodnight, Master Richard” with that small, broken tremble in his voice like he used after Dick’s nightmares?

Would his friends show up?

Wally?

Roy?

Babs?

Would they wear black? Would they speak?

Would they cry for him, or for themselves?

Would they say, He was so bright. So kind. He had a laugh that made you feel safe — all the things they never said while he was alive?

Would the world stop?

He already knew the answer.

It didn’t stop for Jason. Not really.

The sun rose the next day like it always had. The papers printed. The sirens screamed. Crime didn’t pause. The world didn’t mourn.

Dick did.

Every single day. In every breath.

And yet — traffic still ran. Kids still went to school. The moon still rose.

The world spun on without him, and it would do it again.

He was not gravity. He was not the sun.

He was not even Jason.

And somehow that was worse.

Jason had weight. His death pulled the air out of rooms. His death left craters in their lives. They fought about him. They broke over him. They rebuilt themselves in the wake of him.

What would his death do?

Would they whisper, we saw it coming?

Would they shrug, he was never the same after Jason?

Would they say, he lost himself, and then he lost the fight?

Would they say, he was always a little too much — too emotional, too sensitive, too loud with his grief, too much?

He squeezed his eyes shut.

He didn’t want to die.

But he didn’t want to stay.

He wanted it to end. He wanted peace. Not the kind that came from time or healing or talking to Dr. Thompkins. He wanted the finality. The silence. The off switch.

He curled tighter under the blanket.

If there was a world where Jason lived, he’d go there.

If there was a world where they were still whole, he’d crawl through fire to reach it.

But there wasn’t.

There was just this one.

This aching, endless world where he existed in the negative space of other people’s lives. Where he loved too hard and lost too deeply and nobody could look him in the eye long enough to say, “It’s okay to still be grieving.”

Where he was too sad to help and too loud to ignore and too broken to fix.

Where they locked the door, and left him with the ghosts.

Where all he had was the echo of a boy who died too young, and the suffocating silence he left behind.

And if he never woke up from this haze — well.

At least he’d finally be resting.

Chapter Text

Bruce stood in the cave long after the lights dimmed.

Long after Alfred had slipped away to prepare tea he wouldn’t drink, long after Tim had gone back upstairs with tired eyes and hunched shoulders.

Long after the lock on the med bay door engaged with a final, cold click.

He stood alone.

He did that a lot lately.

He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe too loudly.

Just listened to the echo of the waterfall, the drip of condensation, the hum of a thousand computers that couldn’t tell him how to fix this.

There was a time when he would’ve known what to do.

A time when he was young enough to believe grief could be solved.

That pain could be patched. That being Batman meant control.

But that time was long gone.

He stared at the wall of suits — each one empty, each one preserved like a monument. Jason’s case was still there, sealed behind glass, his old Robin costume faded now from too many years under harsh lights.

Bruce had never turned the light off.

Not after Jason died.

Even now, with everything spiraling, it glowed like a wound that wouldn’t close.

He hadn’t updated the plaque.

There was no date of resurrection. No “Returned to Us.” No closure. Just a death.

Just a name and a death.

And now—Dick.

His first son.

His only light in the dark.

Cracking.

Breaking.

Gone behind the eyes in a way Bruce hadn’t seen since the night the Flying Graysons fell.

And Bruce had stood there—helpless then, helpless now—as a child stared at the ruin of his family and screamed.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth, breathing in the silence.

I've been here, he thought, eyes tracing the edge of the med bay door from where he stood across the cave. I’ve been exactly where he is.

He remembered the nights after Jason’s body came home in pieces.

Alfred had pieced together what was left.

Bruce had pieced together the lie.

The lie that he could endure it.

That he could take another orphan, throw a cape on him, and it would be okay. That this one wouldn’t die.

That if he just kept moving, the grief wouldn’t catch him.

But it always caught him.

He sat down at the Batcomputer, not to work. Not to track.

He just needed to sit.

To breathe in the same cave where they’d trained.

Where Dick had laughed for the first time in months, face painted with yellow grease and oil. Where Jason had perched on railings like a gargoyle, flipping knives between his fingers.

Where Tim had stood and said, “You need a Robin. Batman doesn’t work without one.”

Bruce had broken every one of them.

He didn’t mean to.

But he had.

And now Dick was unraveling at the seams, and it was Jason all over again.

Except worse.

Because this time, Jason wasn’t dead.

Not exactly. Not in the way that mattered.

This time, Bruce had watched his son shatter in real time, trapped in the memory of a brother he’d never stopped loving.

“He hugged me.”

“He’s real.”

“I’m not crazy.”

Bruce had told him no. Told him to stop. Locked the door. Called Leslie. Took him to the grave.

I made him kneel in front of a tombstone just to prove he was wrong.

And still Dick had cried: “You don’t understand! He was there!”

Bruce gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles ached.

He thought of that boy — not the man Dick had become, but the little boy who had stood in his study twenty years ago, arms crossed and defiant, saying, “You don’t scare me.”

He hadn’t. Not then.

But he did now.

Bruce scared everyone now.

Especially the ones he loved.

He closed his eyes. Pressed his palms together.

Swallowed the lump in his throat that never went away anymore.

"I’ve been," he whispered into the dark, "a father. I’ve been a general. I’ve been a shadow. A storm. A savior."

"I’ve been everything but good enough."

He wanted to take Dick in his arms and promise him it would be okay.

That the world wouldn’t take another from him.

That this time, he’d listen.

That he’d believe.

But the words stuck.

Because he didn’t believe it himself.

Because believing meant admitting what he hadn’t done.

He hadn’t saved Jason.

He hadn’t stopped the Joker.

He hadn’t told Dick it was okay to cry, to grieve, to remember.

He had built a grave, locked the memories behind glass, and called it moving on.

And now his oldest son was bleeding at the seams because Bruce couldn’t make room for the ghosts.

He stared at Jason’s suit again.

And for the first time in years, he reached out.

Pressed his fingers against the glass.

It was cold.

He imagined what it felt like for Dick to see this every day.

To see Jason's last uniform, frozen in amber. A museum of failure.

A reminder.

He leaned his forehead against the glass and whispered: "Please. Come back to us."

He wasn’t sure who he was talking to anymore.

Jason. Dick. Himself.

Maybe all of them.

Maybe none of them.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

He stayed there a long time, alone in the cave, in the silence.

Wondering if love — real, broken, human love — was enough to save someone this time.

Wondering if it was already too late.

The first step Bruce took toward the Batcomputer felt like surrender.

Not the kind of surrender that came from defeat.

No, it was the kind that came from exhaustion. From watching too many sons fall, too many lives slip through his fingers like ash.

It was the kind of surrender that whispered: If I don’t do something now, I’ll lose him forever.

He sat down and turned on the terminal.

The familiar whirr of the machine was oddly comforting.

Like the cave was waking up with him.

He hesitated.

Then typed: RED HOOD.

The file was sparse. What little intel they had was cobbled together from rumors, shaky surveillance, secondhand whisperings from the criminal underworld. A red helmet. A rough build. Unmatched tactical precision. Favors no one. Hits hard. Vanishes faster. Operates with codes only he knows.

And always—always—one step ahead.

Tim had flagged a few incidents. A warehouse fire in Blüdhaven. A disrupted weapons shipment in Gotham’s docks. A gang of child smugglers killed execution-style in the Narrows.

Bruce had ignored the early signs.

Had told himself no.

Jason is dead. Jason is gone. This is someone else.

A ghost wearing his son’s skin.

But now—after everything with Dick—he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He at least owed it to his son to check, because that was what he did, he gathered evidence and he tested theories and he ran scenarios in his mind and he needed to know.

He opened footage from a month ago. A rooftop. Low-res. Foggy.

The camera caught just a glimpse of the helmet.

Red. Smooth. Silent.

But beneath the armor—

The body language. The way he held his gun.

Even the hesitation, right before he leapt from the roof—

Bruce’s hand trembled slightly as he hit pause.

He closed his eyes.

He remembered teaching Jason to hold a batarang, to steady his breathing before a leap, to pull his punches only when it mattered.

He remembered Jason’s laugh—rare, rich, impossible—and the sheer stubbornness in his eyes that matched Bruce’s too well.

Jason had been angry. Too angry for someone so young.

But he had also been gentle. Quick to protect strays. Even quicker to defend Dick.

That boy had loved fiercely. Loyalty burned in him like fire.

And that same fire—that same unrelenting need to protect, to punish—was in the Red Hood’s every movement.

Bruce sat back in his chair.

His lungs felt tight. His hands cold.

He opened a new tab.

Cross-referenced the known locations of Red Hood’s sightings with past cases. Patterns emerged. Quiet ones. Too quiet.

Targeted crime. Minimal civilian damage. Ruthless precision.

This wasn’t a mindless killer.

This was someone angry.

Someone hurt.

Someone trying to be better but not knowing how.

Someone who looked at a world that let the Joker live and said: I’ll make it fair.

Bruce felt something break loose in his chest. A knot uncoiling.

Grief, yes. But also guilt. And relief. And hope.

He leaned forward.

The echo of Dick’s voice rang in his ears, raw and pleading: “He was here. He hugged me. He’s real. Please, believe me.”

Maybe it had taken too long.

Maybe Dick would never forgive him.

But Bruce would try.

***

Tim knew the lock on Dick’s apartment would take approximately four seconds to pick.

He’d designed it, after all.

It felt wrong, standing in the hallway of Dick’s building in the middle of the night. But he wasn’t here to betray trust—he was here to prove something. To make sense of this nightmare. To protect Dick.

From what, exactly?

Tim wasn’t sure anymore.

The lock clicked open with barely a whisper. He slipped inside.

The apartment was dark. Empty. Still.

It didn’t feel like Dick anymore.

There was always something about Dick’s place—wherever he lived—that felt alive.

Light streaming through windows. Unfolded laundry. Open books stacked in impossible places. Half-drunk mugs of coffee. A forgotten towel slung over a chair.

Now, everything was too neat.

As if Dick had cleaned it for a guest.

Or maybe just to feel in control.

Tim turned on his flashlight and swept the beam across the living room.

Couch. Pillows. Blanket, rumpled.

He crouched down. Faint indentations in the cushion. Like someone had been sitting there recently. The other side looked less used. Opposite ends.

Two people.

Or maybe Dick, pacing. Doubting. Re-sitting in the same place, again and again.

It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean Jason was here.

He moved to the kitchen. Dishes in the sink. One mug. Two.

Again, maybe nothing.

Maybe everything.

He found the bathroom door ajar. Towels still damp. Razor missing. A toothbrush on the counter.

He pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

He checked the trash. Coffee grounds. A granola bar wrapper. A receipt from the corner store—two chocolate bars and a Red Bull.

He checked the fridge next. Leftovers. Cold pizza. And then—

A Tupperware of arroz con pollo.

Tim just stared at it.

Jason’s favorite meal. Tim remembered Dick telling him that once as they had both made a pitiful attempt to cook the dish, had whispered to him that he preferred the way Jason had made it over the way Alfred cooked it, had laughed with him about it and then stared sadly into the distance, how they had eaten in silence after.

Tim opened the lid.

Still warm.

He swallowed and put it back.

No fingerprints. Nothing that would stand up in a case.

But his gut twisted. This wasn’t hallucination. This was contact.

He moved into the bedroom. Bed untouched. Dick had been sleeping in the med bay for days now. Sheets still tucked. No one here.

Then something glinted under the dresser.

Tim dropped to his knees.

It was a bullet.

A 9mm shell casing, matte black. Custom engraved. 

No one Dick was having over had a gun, it wasn’t from a case they were working and definitely not his.

His breath caught.

He reached out, picked it up carefully. Held it to the light. His hand trembled.

Jason.

Jason had been here.

Jason was here.

He sat back on the floor, the casing clutched in his hand like a lifeline. Like a confession.

The room felt colder now.

He wasn’t sure what scared him more—the fact that Jason might be alive… or the fact that they had all dismissed Dick, let him scream in grief, sob in isolation, and treated him like a madman.

He opened his messages.

Started typing to Bruce. Deleted it.

He wasn’t ready. Not yet.

Instead, he curled his fingers tight around the casing and whispered into the dark, a promise to no one: “I’ll prove it.”

He would.

He had to.

Because Dick had never deserved this.

Because Jason had been failed once before.

And if they were both still here—hurting, broken, alone—

Tim wasn’t going to let that happen again.

***

The safehouse was quiet.

Too quiet.

Jason stared at the wall like it might blink first. Like if he stared hard enough, it might peel back and show him what he was supposed to do. What he was meant to be.

There was a plan.

Always had been. Clean. Ruthless. Precise.

Make them see.

Make them feel it.

Make him pay.

Let the city remember the name Jason Todd not as a casualty but as a reckoning.

And yet—he hadn’t moved in hours.

The duffel bag full of gear still sat unzipped by the door. The helmet gleamed from its perch on the table. The gun was cleaned. Loaded. Ready.

He wasn’t.

Because now, every time he closed his eyes, it wasn’t the Joker’s face that haunted him.

It was Dick’s.

Red-rimmed, pleading. Arms wrapped around him like he might disappear. A heartbeat pounding in Jason’s ears that wasn’t his own but he could feel it. Feel it like a tether.

Like maybe, for the first time in years, someone had actually seen him.

It was supposed to be simple.

Come back. Make noise. Send a message.

But now the message wasn’t clear anymore.

Now it all felt so—

Wrong.

He curled in on himself on the couch, hoodie sleeves pushed over scarred knuckles, fingertips twitching like a trigger without a purpose.

He had wandered the city like a myth for months. A ghost with guns and vengeance in his throat. But the moment he stepped into the manor—

It hit him.

He’d always been a ghost.

Not just since he died.

Even before.

A mouthy street kid picked up off the pavement. Trained into something lethal. Loved, maybe, but never like the others. Not like Dick. Not like Tim.

He’d spent years haunting those halls.

Watching Bruce talk about “the mission” like it was more important than the kids who kept bleeding for it.

Watching Dick’s smile fracture when Bruce wasn’t looking.

Watching Alfred keep the whole damn thing running with shaking hands and quiet sighs.

Jason had died, but he had never left.

He had lived in their nightmares. Their grief. Their silences.

He had existed more in absence than presence.

He had become the hollow between words when they said “Robin” and couldn’t meet each other’s eyes.

He wasn’t a person anymore. He was a what if.

A should have.

A shouldn’t have.

And it had made him angry.

So fucking angry.

Why hadn’t they come? Why had he been left to rot in that grave while the Joker laughed himself hoarse?

Why had Bruce stopped looking?

Why had Dick never saved him?

Why had Tim taken his name and worn his colors like a legacy, like it hadn’t been ripped off a corpse?

Jason slammed his fist into the wall and didn’t stop until the drywall cracked.

His knuckles split open again. He didn’t care.

He breathed hard. Head swimming. The pain didn’t ground him. It just made him float harder.

He sat back down. Shaking.

And all he could see was the way Dick had held him.

Like he couldn’t breathe without him. Like the pain was a physical weight being lifted.

Jason had thought Dick forgot.

But he hadn’t. He’d remembered everything. And it had destroyed him.

And Tim—fucking Tim—who was supposed to be his replacement, had looked at him with wide eyes like he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or watching a nightmare come to life.

That wasn’t indifference.

That was shock.

Hope.

Jason curled his knees to his chest, forehead pressing to them.

What the fuck was he doing?

What did he want?

Revenge?

Validation?

To be seen?

To be loved?

He didn’t know anymore.

He’d painted this path in blood and rage and told himself it was righteous, that it was necessary.

But now, all he could think about was how small Dick had looked wrapped around him. How quiet Bruce’s voice had sounded at the grave. How tired Tim had looked, like he was holding a family together with duct tape and detective work.

They were all broken.

And Jason wasn’t sure if finishing his plan would put them back together… or shatter them completely.

And god—

For a second—

A second—

He didn’t want to be the reason they shattered anymore.

He didn’t want to be the weapon. The ghost. The symbol of what went wrong.

He wanted to be someone again.

Just Jason.

Just a brother.

Just a kid who died and came back and didn’t know where to fit anymore.

His breath hitched. His hands trembled.

He didn’t move to stop the tears this time.

He let them fall.

And somewhere beneath the sound of rain hitting the window, he whispered a truth he hadn’t let himself say since the day he clawed his way out of that grave: “I just wanted to come home.”

Chapter Text

Dick stared at the ceiling of the medbay like it might answer him.

They’d finally let him out of the metaphorical straitjacket, finally let him rest, and he had bitten through every word they tried to feed him.

Jason was dead.

Jason wasn’t real.

Jason was a symptom.

Jason was grief in the shape of memory.

He wasn’t real.

But Dick felt him. Held him. Smelled blood and oil on his jacket and felt the press of his chest, the tremble in his breath, the beat of his heart. It was real.

And now?

Now he was here. In this sterile white room. Fluorescent lights like interrogation. Four padded walls and no windows. He may as well have been in Arkham.

They’d stopped calling it an observation. They were just calling it a hold now.

He’d told Bruce. Screamed at him. Begged.

And Bruce had looked at him like he was dying. Like he was already gone.

Like Jason had been.

Dick sat up. Pressed the heel of his palm into his eye until black spots bloomed behind his lids.

He couldn’t breathe in here. He couldn’t think.

He remembered the headline.

BOY WONDER BLOWN TO BITS.

He remembered getting the news, the numbness, the anger, the grief.

He remembered the way the world kept turning anyway.

He remembered going back to Titans Tower two days later.

He remembered pretending.

He remembered pretending so well he started to believe it. Believed that moving forward was what Jason would have wanted.

He told himself there was nothing he could have done.

He was on a mission. He couldn’t have known. He wasn’t there.

He told himself that a dozen times a day.

But he should’ve been.

He could have been at the manor.

He could have come home more.

He could have told Bruce not to push so hard. Told Jason not to listen.

He could have made him laugh. Jason always softened when Dick made him laugh. Like he forgot for a second who he was trying so hard to be.

He could have shielded him.

He could have saved him.

Every missed call. Every text he didn’t send. Every time he let his own discomfort get in the way of checking in. Every time he told himself Jason was fine because the alternative was too heavy to carry.

He let it happen.

He let Jason die.

And now—now he sat here and whispered I’m sorry into sterile silence and thought about all the ways he failed him.

Then a thought hit him so violently he choked on air: Tim.

He lurched forward, body folding in half like he'd been punched. His breath came in shallow bursts, thin and useless, like air couldn’t find room in his lungs with all the guilt already in there.

Tim.

He hadn’t seen him in—God, how long? A day? Two? He remembered Tim’s face in flashes: tired, pinched, the bags under his eyes like bruises. Remembered the way his mouth tightened when Bruce spoke over him. Remembered how still he was when Dick snapped—when Dick turned away, again, because he couldn’t handle the weight of someone else needing him.

Jason died, and Dick ran.

Tim was drowning, and Dick looked away.

“Oh god,” he breathed.

He stumbled to his feet. The medbay swayed. His knees buckled, but he caught himself on the edge of the gurney. White walls blurred in his vision. His pulse was a siren in his ears.

He’s doing it again.

History wasn’t repeating—it was rhyming, sick and cruel.

Jason had been angry, volatile, begging for someone to take him seriously. And Tim—Tim was quiet in his grief, but no less hollowed out. Always trying to prove himself. Always one step behind a legacy that never felt like his. The good soldier. The perfect soldier.

He could hear Tim now. The way he spoke of Jason, always careful, like navigating a minefield of ghosts.

And still—Dick had kept his distance. Had let Bruce set the tone. Had convinced himself that Tim was okay.

He pressed his forehead to the cold wall.

You told yourself that about Jason too.

What was it he'd said to Bruce the day he found out? “He was just a kid.”

And now Tim was just a kid too.

A kid trying to pick up the shattered pieces of a family that only ever asked more of him.

Dick slid to the floor, back against the wall, hands tangled in his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again.

Not to the air this time.

To Tim.

He didn’t even know if Tim would hear it. If he could.

The last time they spoke, Dick was half in a daze, half trying not to spiral, and Tim had stood there, silent, watching him the way you'd watch a building on fire.

He hadn’t said a word when Dick turned away.

He didn’t ask for anything.

Jason hadn’t either, not really.

Not until it was too late.

Dick shoved himself upright. Staggered to the door. Fumbled with the panel. His hands were shaking, slick with sweat.

“Open the door,” he barked.

The medbay AI was silent.

“I said open the goddamn door!”

No response.

He slammed his fist into the panel. Then again. And again. Until the pain bloomed in his knuckles and the wall ran red.

He leaned against it, panting.

“You don’t understand,” he hissed. “You don’t get it. I have to find him. I have to fix this.”

Because someone always died at the end, didn’t they?

And if he didn’t move now—if he didn’t do something—

It was going to be Tim.

And he couldn’t survive losing another brother.

He wouldn’t.

***

Tim dropped down into the alley with a muffled thud.

He crouched for a second longer than necessary, eyes adjusting. Breath steady. Listening.

The city groaned around him, low and wide, like it was breathing through the cracks in its own foundation. Somewhere far off, glass shattered. A dog barked once. Then silence.

Crime Alley smelled like rust and wet ash. It clung to him. In his throat. In his hair. A phantom weight.

He didn’t flinch.

He’d been out too long. The kind of long that made the sky bruise violet and the streetlights hum like warning sirens. The kind of long that blurred the line between obsession and mission.

Tim told himself this wasn’t obsession. It was necessary.

Jason was out here.

He had to be.

Every lead Bruce dismissed, every file Dick skipped over, Tim had catalogued and revisited. Cross-checked, analyzed, color-coded. And every arrow, every flicker of smoke or blood or whispered name came back to here. These blocks. These rooftops. This rot.

And maybe it was hope, or maybe it was madness, but Tim had started to feel it.

That weight. That watching.

Like the city itself had eyes.

He adjusted his mask. Moved deeper into the alley.

Buildings leaned inward. Brick like ribs, broken glass like teeth. Graffiti stretched in long, ugly veins. The air got heavier the deeper he went, like the shadows were made of something thicker than dark.

Tim paused at a chain-link fence that had been sheared open at the bottom. Someone had gone through here. Recently.

He ducked under, cape catching for a moment on the wire.

A scrap of fabric hung from one of the sharp ends.

Red.

It wasn’t a cape.

It wasn’t a flag.

Just a corner. Torn. Jagged.

Jason.

Tim’s heart kicked up.

But when he looked around—nothing.

No sound. No movement. Just the slow, wet drip of something overhead.

He told himself it was water.

He kept walking.

A boarded-up drug clinic on his right. A crumbling tenement on his left. Gotham’s forgotten places. The kind of places you only found if you were looking for something lost.

Or if something lost was looking for you.

Tim didn’t look over his shoulder.

Didn’t acknowledge the flicker of motion just at the edge of his peripheral vision.

Didn’t admit that the air had shifted. Grown colder.

That he could hear—no, feel—his own name, whispered in silence.

The next alley narrowed. Walls close. Windows shattered. Pigeons nested above in broken AC units and watched him with glassy, human eyes.

Something about this part of the city didn’t feel right.

The pattern was wrong.

Every step echoed just a little too loud.

Every shadow leaned a little too long.

Every doorway gaped like a mouth.

He pulled out his tracker. The custom algorithm he’d designed for Jason’s movements—based on sightings, timestamps, proximity to known safehouses. It should’ve been pinging.

It wasn’t.

The screen blinked.

Then glitched.

Then died.

Static.

Tim frowned. Hit it. Nothing.

He tried his comm.

Dead.

No signal.

He was alone.

And not.

There was a sound behind him.

Not a footstep.

Not a breath.

Just… a shift. Like a held breath being exhaled very slowly.

He spun.

Nothing.

Just a crumpled newspaper twitching in the wind.

He stared at it.

The headline caught his eye.

“Joker Massacre: 23 Dead in Warehouse Raid.”

It was two years old.

He’d read that story a hundred times.

But this copy hadn’t been here a minute ago.

He was sure of it.

Tim backed up a step.

Then another.

His boot hit something solid.

He turned.

It was a doll.

Head cracked. Eyes scratched out. Dressed in red. A mockery of a uniform.

It hadn’t been there before.

He drew a batarang.

And didn’t notice the smear of red paint on the wall behind him until the wind shifted and brought the copper sting of blood.

The symbol was fresh.

The bat.

Drawn in dripping red.

Paint, he told himself.

It’s paint.

It smelled wrong.

The silence was unbearable now. Alive.

Like the city was holding its breath, watching him. Waiting.

Something moved on the rooftop above.

A flicker. A flutter of a cape, maybe. Or a shadow. Or a ghost.

Tim backed into the wall.

He turned slowly, batarang raised.

But there was no one there.

Just the alley.

Just the red mark.

Just the eyes of the city.

Watching.

Waiting.

And somewhere, beyond all this quiet—somewhere just out of reach—

He could feel Jason breathing.

Like a pressure behind glass.

Like a storm building heat in the bones of the world.

He should leave.

He should.

But his feet didn’t move.

Because something terrible was going to happen.

He could feel it, cold and deep, settling under his skin.

And it was too late to stop it.

It had already begun.

Chapter Text

The door wouldn’t open.

He’d thrown himself at it until his shoulder went numb. Screamed himself hoarse. Kicked, clawed, beat at the seams until his knuckles split open and bled in long rivulets down the pristine white wall.

The medbay didn’t care.

No alarms. No footsteps. Just silence.

The lock stayed shut.

Dick stood in the wreckage of his own making—bloody, breathless, twitching. His fists hung limp at his sides, split and mangled, two trembling ruins of bone and muscle. His face was streaked with sweat and red. Eyes ringed in black. Lips torn from biting back screams.

He looked down.

The doorframe was smeared in red, like finger paint.

His blood.

His fault.

“You’re pathetic.”

The voice came from behind him.

Too young.

Too familiar.

He didn’t want to turn around, but he did.

And there he was.

Jason.

Fifteen.

Wearing his old Robin costume—torn at the collar, ripped across the ribs, half his cape missing, one eye swollen shut. His skin was grayish. Rot blooming at his throat like a garrote bruise. One shoe gone. Blood soaked through the yellow of his tunic like rust on silk.

He leaned against the wall with all the lazy, slouching arrogance he used to have in life. Except now his smile was too wide, too sharp. A jackal grin. A dead boy’s grin.

“Really?” Jason said. “This is your big hero comeback? Bleeding on the floor like a drunk in an alley?”

Dick didn’t answer.

He turned back to the door.

Braced himself.

And slammed his shoulder into it again.

And again.

And again.

Until something cracked. He didn’t know if it was the door or his bone.

Probably his bone.

The pain was a white-hot needle under his skin.

Jason laughed behind him. “God, you’re so predictable.”

“Shut up.”

“You can’t break out, Dickie. They don’t want you out.”

Dick hit the door with his palm. Blood smeared again.

“Tim’s out there,” he whispered.

Jason tilted his head. “Oh, now you care?”

“I always cared.”

“Sure,” Jason said, stepping forward. His boots left faint red footprints. “You cared real hard from fucking space. Cared so much you couldn’t be bothered to go to my funeral.”

“I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t ask.” Jason’s voice cracked with venom. “You never ask. You just assume everything’s fine. Because that’s easier, right?”

Dick’s breathing hitched.

“Easier to pretend we’re fine,” Jason snarled, circling now. “Easier to play house with your new team. Easier to move on.”

Dick turned fast—blood dripping from his hands—and swung.

His fist passed through Jason like smoke.

He stumbled forward and slammed to his knees.

“You let me rot,” Jason whispered beside him. “You let me die.”

Dick slammed his head forward against the wall.

He felt the crack through his skull.

Stars exploded behind his eyes.

Still not enough.

“Tim’s gonna die too,” Jason said softly. “You’re doing it again. You know that, right?”

“No—”

“Losing the kid. Dropping the ball. Too late to stop it. Too early to bury him.”

“Shut up—”

“You think Bruce’ll cry at that funeral? Or will it be like mine—quiet. Cold. Just another failure we don’t talk about?”

“Shut up!”

Dick threw himself at the wall, pounding it until the sound of flesh against steel drowned everything out. Blood splattered in thick red blooms. His vision doubled. Tripled.

Jason leaned down, crouching behind him.

His dead hand rested lightly on the back of Dick’s neck.

“You always think you’re the good one.”

Dick let out a sob. Or maybe a scream. His throat didn’t know the difference anymore.

“You’re not,” Jason whispered. “You’re just the one who survived.”

The lights buzzed. The floor tilted.

Jason stepped back into the shadows.

Gone.

No sign he'd ever been there.

Just the blood.

And the cracked knuckles.

And the sickening realization curling like smoke in Dick’s chest:

He wasn’t getting out.

He wasn’t saving anyone.

Not this time.

Maybe not ever.

***

Jason had been following him for hours.

Not close enough to spook him. Not close enough to be seen. Just... close enough to know.

Robin—Tim—was out alone.

No Batman. No Nightwing. No backup.

Just the red-and-black silhouette darting across rooftops like a thread unraveling. A flicker. A shadow. His cape sometimes too slow to catch up with him, like even it didn’t want to be here.

It wasn’t patrol. Jason could tell.

This was hunting.

And Jason—Red Hood—was hunting him.

He stayed above, kept the high ground. Slipped through the rain-slick night like smoke. Watched Tim pause at a gargoyle, check a datapad, lift his head toward the skyline like he knew someone was watching.

But he didn’t stop.

He never stopped.

Not even when he should have.

Jason clenched his jaw behind the helmet. His hand flexed over the grip of his pistol—not to shoot. Just to ground himself. Just to feel something other than this crawling sick dread tightening in his gut like a vice.

He knew what this looked like.

What it felt like.

A Robin going rogue. Reckless. Obsessed.

Just like before.

Jason’s eyes flicked down again—tracking. Measuring. Memorizing.

Tim was thinner than before. Paler. Like he hadn’t slept in days.

No more dead Robins.

That was the rule. That was his line now.

No more dead kids in domino masks.

No more dead Robins.

No more graves.

No more him.

Jason quickened his pace, tried to get closer. Just a little. Just enough to say something—call out, maybe. Not to start a fight. Just to talk.

He turned the corner.

And the rooftop was empty.

Gone.

Vanished. Like smoke in the wind.

Jason’s breath caught.

He scanned the shadows. Heat vision. Night vision. Movement sensors. Nothing.

Just the stillness of the Gotham skyline.

And rain beginning to fall.

Harder now.

Cold.

He took a step back, heart thundering.

“Shit,” he whispered.

His own voice sounded too loud in the silence.

He tried to trace the path back. Leap by leap. Step by step.

No sign.

He’s gone.

Jason stood in the rain long after the trail went cold, eyes burning behind the helmet, that feeling curling deep and low in his gut again—like bile, like guilt.

No more dead Robins.

Please.

***

The Cave was quiet.

Screens blinked in low light. Data scrolled endlessly down one monitor, tracking patrol routes, incident reports, weather patterns.

Bruce stood alone.

Still wearing the cowl, gauntlets stripped off. He stared at the city map.

Tim’s tracker had pinged two hours ago.

Hadn’t moved since.

He hadn’t said where he was going.

He hadn’t asked.

Bruce reached for the comms.

Paused.

Fist clenched.

The silence was loud.

Then—

ALERT: ARKHAM SECURITY BREACH.

ALERT: CELL BLOCK C.

SUBJECT 0801: JOKER.

STATUS: ESCAPED.

A high-pitched whine pierced the Cave—alarm klaxons kicking to life like a warning too late.

Bruce turned toward the screen.

The Joker's mugshot stared back at him.

Grinning.

And Bruce—for one sickening moment—couldn’t breathe.

The screen flickered.

And then it was dark.

Chapter Text

The Joker was gone.

Tim was gone.

And Bruce—he was moving. Calculating. Executing protocols with surgical precision. He barked orders to Oracle. Pulled satellite feeds. Deployed drones.

He was the Batman.

He was always the Batman.

But something in him had slipped.

Some tether stretched too thin, now fraying.

The Cave was noise and static and red alarms, and it didn’t matter how many screens he watched or how many alleyways he searched—he couldn’t find his son.

Not again.

Not this one.

Not this time.

“Robin’s last known location?” he asked, voice flat.

Oracle answered. Something about GPS dead zones. Something about interference. Something about nothing.

Bruce nodded.

Moved.

He took the Batmobile like he was stepping into a memory. Like time had rewound, and he was hunting Jason’s heartbeat again, following cold trails and dead ends while the clock bled out.

Gotham blinked past the windshield in shades of gray.

He barely noticed.

He kept seeing Tim’s face. Not the mask. The face. The last time he looked at him—really looked—and it was like seeing through glass. Something trapped inside, screaming silently, while Bruce nodded and turned away.

He should’ve heard him.

Should’ve seen.

He drove through Crime Alley. Lights off. Silent mode.

The same path he’d taken the night he brought Jason home.

The same shadows.

The same rot in the air.

It felt like ghosts pressing in on all sides.

And still—nothing.

No sign of him.

Only the Joker’s laughter echoing down from memory like rot.

“He’s probably already dead, Batsy.”

Bruce flinched.

Gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white.

Because he remembered the last time someone said that.

He remembered dirt and blood and an empty casket.

He remembered the feel of Jason’s jacket in his hands when Alfred brought it out of storage. The way he couldn’t hold it. Couldn’t look at it.

He remembered screaming when he thought no one could hear.

And now—

Tim.

Where are you?

His mind flickered.

Not visions. Not dreams. Just... echoes.

Dick in the medbay, eyes wild and broken, fists bloodied against the door.

Jason in a casket.

And Tim—Tim walking deeper into the city like he didn’t care if he came back.

Bruce slammed the brakes.

The Batmobile skidded to a halt in an empty street, soaked in moonlight and garbage steam.

And for a moment—

He just sat there.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t speak.

He just stared out into nothing and felt his breath catch in his throat.

I’m trying to be here.

I want to be here.

Why can’t I ever be here when it matters?

His hands dropped from the wheel.

For once, he didn’t feel like Batman.

Didn’t feel like a father either.

Just a man.

A man too late.

A man with too many graves and too many ghosts.

The comm crackled.

A voice.

Static.

Oracle again.

“Bruce—Batman—new report. Joker spotted. Near the docks. It’s... it’s bad.”

And Bruce—

Bruce drove.

Faster this time.

But even with the city flying past him in a blur, he couldn’t shake the thought—

That he might already be too late.

Again.

***

The warehouse was quiet.

Too quiet.

Jason moved like smoke—silent, swift. The docks stretched out like an autopsy table beneath a dying sky, and the stink of rust and sea rot thickened in his lungs.

He knew this place.

Knew this setup.

He’d lived it.

And died for it.

Not this time.

The intel had been thin. An Arkham breakout, Joker unchained, radio silence from the Cave. Then the sighting—Robin, alone, tailing a lead. And then…nothing.

Jason found the trail where Batman hadn’t.

Because Jason knew what it looked like when the Joker played his old games.

And the Joker never played them once.

Inside, the air was heavier.

He didn’t hear Tim. Didn’t need to.

The silence said everything.

His boots crunched glass.

And then he saw it.

Red, yellow, blood.

Tim, slumped against a support beam, a gash painting his temple, bruises blossoming down his jaw, his cape torn like paper, limbs askew like a puppet cut loose from strings.

And beside him—Jason’s breath caught.

A crowbar.

Old. Bent. Rust-stained.

Jason didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink.

His body moved before thought caught up.

He dropped to his knees beside Tim. Checked his pulse. Still there—thready but strong.

“Hey. Kid.” His voice cracked. “C’mon. Don’t do this.”

Tim didn’t respond.

Didn’t even twitch.

Jason hauled him up with arms that trembled more than he wanted to admit. Blood smeared across his jacket. Something inside him cracked.

He’s just a kid.

And this was never supposed to happen again.

The bomb started ticking.

He heard it—low, mechanical. A whisper counting down.

Jason gritted his teeth, threw Tim over his shoulder, and ran.

The building exploded behind them, fire licking at his back, glass and steel screaming into the night. His helmet dulled the sound, but not enough.

The ringing was back.

Just like last time.

He hit the alley pavement hard, knees jarring, clutching Tim like he could hold him inside his chest. Like he could protect him now, the way no one had protected him.

Then he heard it.

The roar of the Batmobile.

Distant.

Getting closer.

Jason’s heart slammed against his ribs.

And for a second—

Just a second—

He almost stayed.

Almost waited.

Almost handed Tim off and said something like he needs a medic, like he’s alive, like this one didn’t die.

But then the anger came back.

White-hot.

Cutting.

Burning through the static in his brain.

Because of course Batman was here now.

Now.

When the warehouse was already ash. When Tim was already broken. When the crowbar had already kissed his ribs and split his scalp.

Now. Always now.

Jason’s hands curled into fists. His fingers were shaking.

He looked down at Tim, unconscious in the alley.

Then back at the corner where headlights grew.

He knelt.

Laid Robin down on the concrete like a prayer.

Like an accusation.

And stood.

One last glance.

Then he was gone—vanished into the smoke and the dark and the reek of salt and fire.

He didn’t look back.

Because this time, Bruce could be the one to find the body.

He’d had enough of playing corpse.

Enough of being replaced.

Enough of being late.

Let Batman hold the weight of this one.

Let him wonder how close it came.

Let it eat him alive.

Jason wasn’t done.

Not yet.

Not by a long shot.

Chapter Text

The smoke curled through the night like ghosts with purpose. Bitter, thick, and familiar. A trail of burning rubber and blackened timber, the charred scent of industrial rot and gasoline poisoning the air. Bruce stood at the edge of the alley, where the world opened just enough to offer another failure to cradle in his arms.

The warehouse behind him was gone. A husk. A graveyard in waiting. The fire brigade would be too late. The GCPD wouldn't arrive for another ten minutes. The Joker was already gone. 

Robin.

The boy in the cape. The child in the mask.

Sprawled in the street like an offering.

Like a warning.

And Bruce had never run so fast in his life.

His knees hit the pavement hard, the suit groaning with the impact. His gauntlets scraped against the concrete as he reached out, trembling hands cupping Tim’s head like he was made of porcelain and dreams. His face—Jesus, his face—was split at the temple, bruises flaring beneath his eye, dried blood crusting at the corner of his mouth. One leg twisted wrong. The armor scorched. His cape half-gone. A child dressed for war and broken by it.

Still breathing.

Still warm.

Still here.

But it didn’t matter, did it?

Because it could’ve been otherwise.

It had been otherwise.

The Joker never changed his methods. He just picked a new name, a new target, a new Robin to rend from Bruce’s ribcage.

He was doing it again. History cycling like clockwork, like a song repeating over and over, each time the verse louder, crueler, more jagged than before.

Bruce’s fingers hovered over Tim’s chest, as if to confirm the heartbeat wasn’t imagined.

Thump.

Still there.

Thump.

But so was the sound of a crowbar against bone. The scream in the dark. The silence that came after. The years of aching quiet that no mission, no patrol, no reinvention of himself could ever drown.

He’s alive, Bruce told himself.

But he had said that before, too.

Jason had still died.

Jason had died because Bruce wasn’t there.

And now Tim—

Tim had nearly died because Bruce was still the same.

He knelt there, next to the child he'd sworn to protect, and felt the weight of his cowl like a shroud. Felt his body shake as if rage and grief and helplessness were trying to rip him apart from the inside out. He wasn’t a man in control. He wasn’t the Bat. He was a gravekeeper.

He had locked Dick in a room and told himself it was mercy.

He had ignored Tim’s quiet pain and told himself the boy was strong enough to handle it.

He had taught them to fight his war and told himself it was theirs to believe in.

He had taken children and made them soldiers.

And when they cracked—when they bled—he watched them fall like stars from the sky and stood at the crash site, wondering if they had ever really belonged to him at all.

Bruce bent lower, pressing his forehead to Tim’s hair, breathing him in. Fire behind him, ashes ahead. He tasted the soot on his tongue like penance. Like punishment.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so—”

But sorry wasn’t enough.

It was never enough.

Because sorrow came after. And Bruce always arrived too late for the before.

His gloves smeared blood as he lifted Tim into his arms, cradling him like something sacred. Like something holy. Like something breakable and already broken.

The Batmobile was waiting, engine still humming, the only sound besides the soft crackle of flames consuming what was left of the night. He carried Tim across scorched earth like he was carrying his own heart.

And in the quiet hum of motion—Gotham racing past in shadow and blur—Bruce closed his eyes.

He didn’t see the fire.

He saw Jason, thirteen, laughing. Jason, fourteen, training. Jason, fifteen, dead in his arms.

And now Tim.

Now Dick.

They were all ghosts walking beside him. Each of them still breathing, still living, still within reach—and still lost.

Grief never left.

It only changed names.

And Bruce—Bruce had built a life on forgetting.

But forgetting never saved anyone.

Not Jason.

Not Tim.

Not himself.

***

It was quiet now.

Not the kind of quiet that comes when the screaming stops.

The kind that seeps in after.

Thick, humming quiet. The kind that folds around you like wet cloth, clings to your skin, soaks through the cracks. It tasted like antiseptic and iron. Like dust collecting in the corners of the world. Like everything you forgot to say before the door closed and the lights went out.

Dick sat cross-legged on the floor. His knuckles were split open, a map of scabs and blood running jagged across the backs of his hands, down the soft insides of his wrists. He didn’t remember punching the walls anymore. Just the ache. The rawness in his throat that wasn’t from shouting, just from being.

The lights above him buzzed.

The walls were padded, but they still pressed in like coffins.

He hadn’t spoken in—how long?

They stopped trying to get through to him. Or maybe he stopped hearing. The world on the other side of the locked door was a tunnel away. Muffled. Muted.

And then—like always—it came back.

The door didn’t open. It never did.

But the boy appeared anyway.

Right in front of him.

Jason.

Robin.

The hallucination stood across the room. Red and green torn to ribbons, his domino mask shattered like glass, one boot missing, one sock soaked in blood that dripped endlessly from nowhere. His cape was scorched. His chest heaved like he was still dying.

But this time—

This time he had no face.

Static pulsed where his eyes should be. Not white noise—just a smear. Just blur. Like a memory recorded over too many times. A VHS tape left in the sun. A dream slipping through fingers he couldn’t move fast enough.

Dick’s breath caught.

He tried to look—really look—but the features wouldn’t come into focus. Just that flickering static. Those eyes.

They’d been green. Right?

No.

Blue.

Blue like his.

Blue like Bruce’s.

But no—no, hadn’t they been darker? Sharper?

Or, maybe they’d been green all along, the smallest tint of emerald amidst a stormy ocean.

He tried to remember the pitch of Jason’s voice. That half-growl when he got mad. That hitch when he laughed like he didn’t want to admit it felt good.

But the sound wouldn’t come.

Silence.

Just static.

He searched his mind, desperate now, frantic—but slow. Everything inside him moved like molasses. Like decay.

Did Jason have freckles?

He thought maybe.

Or maybe he was thinking of himself.

Did Jason’s eyes pinch closed when he smiled?

Did he smile?

What color was his hair in the sun?

What did his voice sound like at three a.m. on the manor steps when the mission was done and they were too wired to sleep?

What did it sound like the last time he said his name?

The boy in the middle of the room tilted his head. No expression. No accusation. No comfort.

Just a child who died too young.

And Dick—

Dick couldn’t remember him anymore.

He hadn’t remembered him for a long time, had he?

Not really.

Just an outline. A placeholder. A cautionary tale.

Jason Todd wasn’t a boy. Not anymore.

He was a symbol. A warning. A grave in the garden. A bat-shaped wound that never healed, just scabbed over and bled again and again and again.

Dick covered his face with his hands and curled forward on the floor.

It wasn’t grief anymore. It was something worse.

It was the forgetting.

The slow erosion of everything Jason had ever been. Not taken by death, but by time, by trauma, by him.

And now there was nothing left.

Not even a memory of a boy.

Just a ghost made of guilt.

Just failure dressed in red and green.

Just hope—hope—and the sound it makes when you let it die.

And Dick stayed like that.

On the floor. Breathing shallow.

Waiting for a voice he couldn’t remember to speak.

But it didn’t.

It never did.

And maybe it never had.

Time didn’t pass. It settled.

Like dust, like rot, like the way grief nests in your bones when you stop fighting it.

Dick stayed on the floor.

His limbs were too heavy to move. His head lolled forward, chin brushing his collarbone, sweat drying in cold streaks down the back of his neck. The light above him buzzed in time with his heartbeat. He counted the pulses until he forgot what number he was on.

And then started again.

Across the room, the thing that used to be Jason stood with its head cocked sideways—just slightly. Like it was listening.

To him.

To his thoughts.

To the way his memories scratched hollow circles inside his skull like moths trying to get out.

Dick dragged in a breath through his nose. Shaky. Thin.

“Do something,” he whispered.

The hallucination didn’t move.

“Say something,” he begged.

But there was nothing left to say.

Because what voice could it use?

He didn’t remember it anymore.

The sound was gone. The cadence. The sharp New Jersey vowels. The muttered sarcasm, the way Jason used to say “whatever” when he meant thank you, the tremor in his throat when he asked Dick not to go.

He couldn’t hear it.

He pressed his fists against his ears, hard enough that his pulse throbbed in his skull.

But all that came was the buzz of the light.

And behind it—the sound of something moving.

Not out loud.

Inside.

Inside his head.

The boy shifted again. Still not walking. Still not blinking. Just a presence, wrong in the air, like pressure before a storm, like the moment a scream gets caught in your throat.

And then the static where the eyes should’ve been began to drip.

Not tears.

Ink. Black. Thick. Coating the chin and throat of the faceless boy as it dripped down the torn edges of the Robin suit. Down the “R” insignia. Down the cracked ribs and bruised knees.

It pooled beneath him. Spread toward Dick like a shadow growing in reverse.

“Stop,” Dick croaked. He didn’t recognize his own voice.

“Please stop.”

The thing that used to be Jason knelt in front of him.

Soundless. Still.

Dripping.

It leaned close.

Where there should’ve been a face, there was just a smear. A wet distortion. Like someone had erased him with a fist full of gasoline.

But somehow, Dick still felt him.

Felt heat.

Anger.

Disappointment.

Or maybe that was his own.

Maybe it always had been.

“You let me die,” the voice said—but not Jason’s voice. It wasn’t real. It came from inside Dick’s own skull, scraping against the base of it like rusted wire. Too deep, too soft. Familiar. His voice. Saying things he refused to say out loud.

“I was a kid,” it said. “I was your brother. And you left. You left and you forgot.”

“No,” Dick whispered, clutching his skull, pressing his forehead to the floor.

“I tried to remember. I swear I—”

“You buried me so deep you don’t even know what I looked like anymore.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You moved on. You let the next one wear the costume. Like I was never there. Like I was just another soldier. Another mistake.”

The static flared. Crackled. He felt it, rather than heard it. A buzzing just behind his eyes, blooming sharp as lightning.

“You let me die,” it said again. “And now you can’t even picture my face.”

The boy stood. The ink pulled back. Crawled away.

The door to the medbay remained sealed.

Dick stared at it through bloodshot eyes.

His lips parted. His voice came out brittle.

“I don’t deserve to leave.”

And that was the truth, wasn’t it?

Not that he couldn’t get out.

But that he wouldn’t.

Because what would be left of him if he did?

Who would he be, once there was no one left to remember the boy who died in his arms, in his mind, in his guilt?

If he walked through that door now, the ghost wouldn’t follow.

The ghost would stay.

And maybe—just maybe—he needed it to.

Because if the ghost stayed, then maybe some part of Jason did too.

Even if it wasn’t real.

Even if it had no face.

Even if it had already forgotten him back.

So Dick stayed there, on the cold floor of a room no one had opened in days, beneath the flickering light, with the static humming behind his eyes and the memory of a boy who once smiled like the sun.

But not anymore.

Not now.

Now there was only the echo.

And the echo was empty.

***

He hit the throttle hard.

The roar of the engine swallowed the city’s screams.

It didn’t matter where he was going. He just had to move. Fast enough. Loud enough. Violent enough that he could outrun the weight rising in his chest like bile.

The Joker was out.

The Joker was out.

The Joker is out.

Jason gripped the handles of his bike so tight the leather of his gloves creaked. His fingers ached. The veins in his arms stood out, sharp and sick with fury.

He couldn’t breathe.

Not really.

Not through the way it gripped his lungs—panic, thick and wet and familiar. It sank into his ribs, then wrapped around his heart, cold fingers tightening. He choked on it. Gagged on it. Coughed until his helmet fogged up and his breath came in strained, panicked gasps.

He veered hard down an alley, gravel spitting under the tires. Didn't care where he ended up. He just needed—needed—to do something.

He needed Bruce to feel it.

He needed Bruce to see.

Because the Joker was out, and Tim almost died, and Dick was driven mad by guilt like he was the problem, like they were all the problem except for the man who caused it all.

And Bruce still hadn't done anything.

Jason gritted his teeth so hard his jaw clicked. The image of Tim, bloodied and unconscious, curled near the scattered teeth of a crowbar, wouldn't leave his mind. It replaced the old image. His image. The bloodied boy on cracked tiles. The warehouse. The fire. The laughter.

No more dead Robins.

And yet—

He slammed his fist into the dashboard. The HUD blinked in and out. He didn’t care.

The world hadn't stopped turning.

It hadn’t even slowed down.

How was that possible?

He died. His ribs crushed in, lungs punctured, skin blistered, brain bruised and blood pooling in his mouth—and when he opened his eyes again, months later, the sky was still blue. The birds still sang. Gotham still stank of piss and cheap perfume and rain on asphalt.

How dare it?

How dare it?

How could the world keep existing in full colour, in blinding noise, when he came back to nothing?

No grave with flowers.

No vigil.

Just silence.

Just Bruce with a new Robin, like he hadn’t been ripped to pieces. Like his body hadn't blackened in the fire. Like he was a suit in a case instead of a boy in a coffin.

“I’ll be back,” he’d told Dick. Voice trembling. Voice hopeful.

He meant it.

God, he meant it.

He’d come back. He wanted to. They could be happy. They could be brothers again.

But Bruce had to prove it.

He needed to know that Bruce’s world ended when his heart stopped. That Bruce felt it. That Bruce broke the day Jason died and hadn’t healed since.

Because otherwise—what was it all for?

What did it mean?

Jason’s helmet felt too tight. His throat too dry.

The wind slapped against his armor, the night whipping past in a blur. Lights. Sirens. Movement.

But inside?

Stillness.

The kind that screams.

He pulled into a stop beneath an overpass, yanked off his helmet, and leaned over the handlebars, choking on air like it was smoke. Every breath was razors. Every second he didn't act was another chance for the Joker to win.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

And whispered to the night.

“Please. Please just—care. Just this once.”

His voice cracked.

“I just need you to care.”

The words vanished into the dark.

And the city did what it always did.

It kept moving.

It didn’t look back.

But Jason did.

And somewhere, in the wreckage of what was, a boy who never got to grow up clenched his fists and whispered the same words again, softer now, broken.

“Don’t forget me.”

He gunned the engine.

And rode into the fire.

Chapter Text

The hiss of decompressing hydraulics echoed low and sharp as the medbay door slid open.

Bruce stood there in the stale, humming silence—one hand gripping the control panel so hard his knuckles blanched, the other clenched at his side like he was still trying to control the room by sheer force of will.

He looked older than Dick remembered.

Grayer at the temples. Jaw slack with exhaustion. A faint tremble in the corner of his mouth. A man breaking down from the inside, rusted joints giving way after years of pressure.

“I’m letting you out,” Bruce said.

Dick didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

The restraints had already been undone hours ago—by Alfred, presumably, when they’d finally stopped treating Dick like a danger to the cause and started seeing him as a person again. But Dick hadn’t left. He just sat there, bones hollow, brain fogged, hands trembling and still too bloodied to be his alone.

“I shouldn’t have locked you in here,” Bruce continued, quieter now. “You were right. About all of it.”

Dick still didn’t move.

Until Bruce crossed the room and put his arms around him.

And for a second—a long, fragile second—Dick let him. Let himself fall into the warmth of that embrace, forehead resting against Bruce’s collarbone like he was twenty again and falling apart after a mission gone wrong. Like Bruce was still someone he trusted to hold him up instead of hold him down.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said into his hair. “For not listening. For hurting you.”

Dick’s arms hovered, uncertain.

He almost forgave him.

Almost.

Until his gaze drifted past Bruce’s shoulder.

There—on the other side of the cave, just barely visible through the reinforced glass wall—lay Tim.

A hospital cot. Monitors glowing soft green. IV dripping. Bruises blooming like ink stains across his cheek and jaw. His lip was split. One arm bandaged, the other hooked to saline and sedatives.

He looked small.

So fucking small.

And just like him.

The scream tore out of Dick’s throat before he realized it had even started.

He shoved Bruce off him. Hard. Bruce stumbled, startled, but didn’t raise a hand to stop him.

“What the fuck, Bruce?!”

“Dick—”

“What happened?!”

“Tim’s stable now. He’s—”

“Don’t you fucking dare give me that!” Dick’s voice cracked like a whip. “How could you let this happen?! How could you save him but not—” His fists curled at his sides. “How were you on time this time? Why wasn’t he enough?”

The silence that followed was so complete it rang in his ears.

Bruce opened his mouth. Closed it. Then—slowly, like every word was a shard of glass—he said: “I wasn’t.”

Dick stared at him.

Bruce’s eyes didn’t leave the floor.

“I wasn’t on time. Not this time either.” A pause. “Someone else got there first. Got Tim out. Left him on the pavement. Then vanished.”

Dick’s stomach dropped like a trapdoor opened under him.

Same story.

Same old story.

The broken one saves the younger one because the man who was supposed to was too busy making war on the people who needed him.

Bruce’s voice was ragged now.

“I should’ve listened to you. I should’ve seen the signs. I shouldn’t have locked you up. Should’ve paid more attention to Tim. To all of you.”

He took a step closer.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve failed you. I know. But I need you now. The Red Hood’s still out there. And with Joker—”

Dick laughed.

Sharp. Cruel. Barking.

“You need me?”

He laughed again. This time, it almost broke him.

“Of course you do,” he said. “You always need us. Until we break. Then we’re just liabilities.”

Bruce looked stricken.

Dick stepped forward, eyes blazing, every ounce of heat that had frozen solid in the medbay returning with a vengeance.

“You think I’m gonna play lieutenant again? March into battle behind you? Watch another kid bleed out while you whisper that ‘they knew the risks’?”

Bruce said nothing.

Dick jerked his chin toward the room beyond the glass.

“I’ll stay until he wakes up. And then I’m gone.”

Bruce’s breath hitched. “Dick…”

“You’re lucky,” Dick snapped. “You’re so fucking lucky if I don’t take him with me when I go.”

He turned.

Walked away from Bruce.

Walked toward Tim.

***

The Batcave was so quiet, it felt like a mausoleum.

Dick sat at Tim’s bedside, the harsh LED lighting turning both their skin pallid and hollow. Monitors beeped steadily, too bright and too loud in the stillness. The smell of antiseptic clung to the air like guilt.

Bruce was gone. Vanished into whatever shadow swallowed him whenever things cracked too close to the core.

Alfred had gone upstairs hours ago after checking Tim’s vitals and brushing a hand against Dick’s shoulder like he wanted to say something but didn’t know how. Maybe he knew better than to say anything at all.

Dick hadn’t moved.

He just sat there, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, as if staying perfectly still would stop the collapse pressing in around the edges.

Then—soft. A cough.

Another. Wet this time. Wrong.

Dick shot up.

“Tim?”

Tim’s eyes fluttered open, lashes caked with sweat and grime. He gagged on air before coughing again, red flecking his lip.

“Hey, hey—” Dick scrambled for the cup of water beside the bed. “Easy. Just breathe. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Tim blinked up at him, pupils blown wide, panic slithering behind his eyes.

“Dick—” His voice was barely a whisper. “Dick, he—Jason—he was there. He saved me.”

“I know you think that,” Dick said, brushing Tim’s damp hair from his forehead. “I know, kid. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”

“I believe you,” Tim rasped. “You were right. I didn’t want to—but you were right. Jason, he’s—he’s real. He—”

“Shh.” Dick hushed him gently, voice trembling. “We can talk about that later. When you’re stronger. You don’t have to worry about anything right now.”

Tim’s hand clutched his wrist.

“I want to help,” he croaked. “We should look for him. He’s out there alone.”

Dick felt something deep in his chest snap.

“It’s okay Tim, I’m better now, I know it wasn’t real,” he whispered. “We’ll talk about it all properly. I promise. But first, you need to rest.”

Tim’s eyes glistened, glassy with exhaustion and confusion. “Why don’t you believe me?”

And that—that—was what finally broke him.

Dick sank to his knees beside the cot, forehead pressed to Tim’s hand, and he broke.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “God, Tim. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Tim’s fingers twitched against his cheek.

“I wasn’t there. And I should’ve been. I let this happen. I let you get hurt. Because I was too busy—” His throat choked off.

He forced himself to keep going. “I’ve been treating you like I treated Jason. Like you were a replacement. Like you were already gone. And I told myself I was protecting you. But I wasn’t. I was protecting me. Because I couldn’t stand the thought of watching it happen again.”

Tim’s lips parted slightly. He didn’t speak. Just looked at him. Too tired to nod, too brave to look away.

“I’m sorry I’ve been awful to you,” Dick said, voice shattering into pieces. “I’m sorry it took this for me to see it. And I know—I know—that sorry doesn’t mean anything to you right now. Not after everything.”

He drew in a shaky breath.

“But I need to go. Not forever—just...for a while.”

Tim’s brow creased faintly, but he didn’t protest. Maybe he understood. Maybe he just couldn’t fight anymore.

“I can’t be near Bruce right now,” Dick admitted. “Not when I don’t know if I can forgive him. Not after this. Not after you.”

He squeezed Tim’s hand gently.

“But I’ll be back. I swear to you, Tim. I’ll be back. You’re not alone in this. You’ll never be alone again.”

Tim’s eyes started to drift shut again, the sedatives pulling him back under.

And before they closed completely, Dick leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple.

“I love you, little brother.”

Then he stood.

And he walked away, heart in ruins, guilt bleeding from every step—but for the first time in weeks, he was walking on his own.

***

The lock clicked behind him.

Dick stepped into the apartment like a man walking back into a grave. The air inside was cold, still, and unfamiliar in its silence. He'd left this place in chaos, but now everything had been put back in place—like someone had been trying to restore it to some former shape. Like someone had tried to make it livable again.

That was the first warning sign.

The second was the boy standing by the couch.

Jason.

Older than the last time Dick had seen him, yet still somehow frozen in time. He stood awkwardly in the center of the room, hands at his sides, a bruise darkening his jaw. No helmet, no guns, no mask. Just Jason. Unmistakably real.

Dick’s breath hitched—but only for a second.

Then he blinked, looked away, and exhaled slowly. "Not again," he muttered under his breath, eyes sliding past Jason like he wasn’t there. "I’m not doing this again."

Jason shifted. “Dick.”

The voice was raw. Not angry. Just... tired. Like gravel dragged across pavement. “It’s really me.”

Dick moved into the kitchen.

Jason followed. “Hey—hey, look at me, would you?”

Dick yanked open a cabinet. Stared into it blankly. “You’re not real,” he said quietly. “You’re just like before. I’m tired. That’s all.”

“Dick, it’s me. I got Tim out. I—I saved him. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to pretend I’m not—”

The cabinet slammed shut.

“No,” Dick said, sharper this time. “No. You’re just part of it. I’m still recovering, still—” he laughed under his breath, breathless, empty. “Still broken. Still haunted. God, how many times do I have to do this?”

Jason moved closer. “I’m not a hallucination.”

“You always say that,” Dick whispered.

Jason's brow furrowed. “Dick, come on—”

He grabbed Dick’s wrist.

Dick ripped his hand away like it had burned him, backing into the counter so hard a mug rattled to the floor. “Don’t touch me,” he breathed.

Jason’s voice broke. “Please. Just look at me. Really look.”

Dick shook his head, eyes shut tight. “You’re not real,” he whispered, almost to himself. “You’re not. I made you up. You died. I held your damn body. I was there. You died. I saw you in the medbay already.”

Jason stood frozen.

Dick walked past him like he was mist.

He lay motionless on the couch, one arm slung across his eyes like he could block out the world with the press of his own skin. But the silence didn’t stay empty for long.

"Medbay?" Jason asked softly, like he was afraid to spook him. "What did you see?"

No answer.

"What happened to you?"

Dick didn’t move.

Jason came closer, stopping beside the couch, a careful distance between them. “Dick,” he said, voice firmer now. “Talk to me.”

Nothing.

“Damn it,” Jason snapped, the sharpness cutting through the still air. “You said the medbay. You said you saw me. What did you see?”

Dick exhaled slowly. “You know what I saw,” he murmured, not looking up. “You were there.”

Jason’s jaw flexed. “No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened to you—what do you mean medbay? Who put you there?”

Dick dropped his arm and turned his head, finally letting his eyes settle on him—not with recognition, but resignation.

“You were the only one who talked to me,” Dick said. “When I couldn’t scream anymore. When my throat gave out, and my fists were too swollen to punch the glass. You sat by the cot like a good ghost, and you didn’t judge me. Not really. You just... mirrored it all back.”

Jason’s mouth parted, but no words came out.

“You’re not real,” Dick said softly. “You never were. You’re just a projection. A shadow built from guilt and blood and regret and a fifteen-year-old corpse.”

Jason flinched like he’d been slapped.

“I know what you know because you only know what I know,” Dick went on. “That’s how this works. That’s what makes hallucinations so good at hurting you—they use your own thoughts.”

“Dick—”

“No.” Dick sat up, abrupt. “You don’t get to talk like that. Not with that voice. Not in his voice.”

Jason looked stricken, like the room had suddenly tilted under his feet.

“What do you mean locked up?” he asked, quieter now. “Who locked you in?”

Dick turned his back on him. Pulled his knees up to his chest. Rested his chin on them like a boy shrinking from a nightmare. “You’re not real,” he repeated.

Jason stepped closer. “Dick—what do you mean locked up? What did Bruce—”

But Dick didn’t answer.

He didn’t even flinch when Jason’s voice cracked.

Didn’t move when the frustration bubbled up and Jason’s boots scuffed across the floor in jagged, pacing lines.

Didn’t blink when Jason’s fists clenched and unclenched by his sides like he was holding back a scream.

Jason stared at him one last time. Breathing hard. Something flickering in his eyes that looked dangerously like heartbreak.

Then he turned.

Walked to the door.

Paused.

“I am real,” he said, one final time, just above a whisper.

And then the door slammed behind him.

Dick didn’t move.

Didn’t even breathe.

The silence returned like fog.

Heavy. Dull. Suffocating.

Just the way he deserved.

Chapter Text

The chair in front of the Batcomputer groaned under Bruce’s weight as he sank into it, still in the same suit from the night before. And the one before that. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d changed. Or slept. The mask had been ripped off hours ago, but the shadows under his eyes were so deep they may as well still be there.

The cave buzzed—machines humming, data scrolling, alerts pinging in the periphery of his vision. It all felt meaningless.

No trace of Joker.

He’d scoured every camera feed, traced every credit card charge, hacked every satellite connection and traffic light and drone route across Gotham’s grid—and found nothing. Not a single breadcrumb. Joker had simply disappeared.

So had Red Hood.

Like they’d been swallowed whole by the city.

And it was all his fault.

His fist clenched so tight his nails cut into his palm.

He had locked Dick in a room.

He had left Tim alone in the field.

He had pushed everyone away again. Again.

He’d built an empire of strategy, of control, of lines and rules and mission specs. But none of it had saved them. And now the walls of his war room were filled with silence where voices should’ve been. Empty chairs. Empty uniforms.

He pressed a few keys. Pulled up the last known coordinates of the Red Hood.

Nothing.

The last ping had been three nights ago—half an hour before the explosion on the docks. He’d found Tim bleeding in an alley an hour later. Alone. Abandoned. Saved by a ghost.

There was no trace of how Tim got out. No camera footage. No witnesses. Just blood, and the memory of arms cradling Tim’s unconscious body, and the sick realization that Bruce hadn’t made it in time. Not then. Not ever.

He leaned forward, elbows braced on the console, and let his head hang.

The Batcave, once the heart of his crusade, felt like a tomb.

Dick wouldn’t speak to him.

Tim couldn’t stand.

He glanced toward the medbay’s darkened windows.

Dick hadn’t come back down. Hadn’t said goodbye. Just walked away.

He didn’t blame him.

He didn’t blame any of them.

He deserved it.

Every shattered bond. Every scream. Every tear.

He had failed his sons. All of them.

And maybe—maybe he’d never deserved to have them in the first place.

The Joker was still out there. Somewhere. Laughing in the dark, with no fear, no urgency, no consequence. Dick was missing. Tim was barely breathing. And Bruce—Bruce was here, surrounded by a thousand blinking lights and none of them human.

He reached for the comms, hesitated.

Then lowered his hand.

What was the point?

There was no one left to answer.

***

It starts small.

Not the grief—that never started, never ended, just was. Like a lungful of smoke he forgot he’d breathed in, like hands he couldn’t unclench. But the forgetting? That started soft.

First it was the sound of Jason’s voice.

It used to live in his head, the cadence and crack of it—gravel and gunpowder, sharp enough to slice open the silence. He’d imagine it in old voicemails, half-formed memories. Come on, Goldie, keep up. But one day, Dick tried to replay it in his mind and it came out wrong. Too high. Too smooth. Someone else’s voice, some stranger pretending to be him. He laughed—choked on it, really—and shook his head like it would rattle things back into place.

It didn’t.

He forgot what Jason looked like in motion next. He remembered still frames—angles caught in photographs and security footage—but not how Jason moved. How he fought. How he walked. He remembered Tim’s step, remembered Bruce’s lumbering weight—but Jason? Jason was—

He couldn't finish the thought.

He went back through old footage. Watched him punch and kick and twist through rooftop brawls, but none of it sparked recognition. Just grainy, hollow film. A ghost wearing a body. He didn’t blink through any of it. Didn’t cry. Just stared, waiting for the part where his body would say Yes. That’s him. It never did.

Time became sludge. Events misplaced themselves. He couldn’t remember if Jason liked chili dogs or hated them. If his eyes were gray or blue or green or something in between. If he ever really wore the old leather jacket or if that was just another lie. If he ever really existed at all.

He stopped saying Jason’s name aloud.

Because sometimes when he said it, it sounded wrong. Like a name he made up. A name he found written somewhere and decided to make his own. Sometimes when he said it, his mind offered a dozen different faces. A blur of blood and bone and boots and broken teeth, none of them real, all of them almost.

And the more he tried to remember, the worse it got.

He found himself in the Cave at midnight after swearing he wouldn’t go back, fingers tracing dust on old cases. He stood before a display case that used to hold something—used to mean something—but all he saw was glass and nothing. No uniform. No blood. No plaque. Just a smear of air. He turned to Bruce, once, and asked who it was for.

Bruce didn’t answer.

He asked Alfred the same question the next morning. Got tea and silence. Then Alfred handed him a photo—old and yellowing, edges worn. He stared at the boy in the frame.

Something clenched.

The boy had a smile that curled too high, like he knew he wasn’t supposed to be smiling. Wild eyes. A bruise on his cheek. A scraped chin. He was holding a baseball bat and laughing.

Dick blinked at it until the picture blurred.

“What was his name again?” he whispered.

The teacup in Alfred’s hand trembled.

The name didn’t come.

He asked Tim, later. Asked him why there were three Robin suits in the memory banks, when there were only two Robins.

Tim flinched.

“There were three,” he said carefully. “You just… don’t remember him.”

Dick tried to understand. Tried to dig. But there was a wall now, thick and blank, between him and whatever lived back there. Every time he reached toward it, the memory dissolved like smoke. His mind rejected it. Like his brain had decided too much grief was a virus and cut it out before it could spread.

Sometimes he woke up gasping, cold sweat down his spine, with the echo of a name on his lips.

Jake? Jaylen? Jack?

It faded by morning.

He started forgetting other things, too. Not just him—him—but the shape of grief itself. Couldn’t remember why his chest always felt too tight. Why he hated crows now. Why the sound of laughter made his hands shake even when he was fine. Why the sight of Robin made him pause.

He walked through Gotham like it owed him answers.

He found none.

The streets were quieter now. The rooftops emptier. He didn’t talk to Bruce as much. Didn’t see Tim unless he had to. 

One night he sat on the roof of the manor, legs hanging over the edge, and stared at the moon. He tried to remember the name of the kid who used to throw rocks at him from the fire escape. The one who used to ride behind him on his motorbike. The one with the terrible jokes and the louder laugh.

The one who died.

Someone died, didn’t they?

Didn’t he love someone, once?

His hands were empty. His voice was gone. The past was a watercolor smudge on parchment. He closed his eyes and saw a boy smiling from a distance, just beyond reach, already half turned away.

Was he real?

He didn’t know anymore.

All he knew was the headstone. The one with no name. Just a date. Just a line etched in marble, something Tim kept fresh, something Bruce never visited.

He stood in front of it sometimes.

Waiting for the name to come.

It never did.

And Dick Grayson might’ve had a brother once, long ago in a dream—now just words etched onto stone of what could’ve been. A phantom ache behind his ribs, a vanishing echo in his chest. A forgotten name on a forgotten mouth, fading, fading, fading until all that remained was a boy-shaped emptiness, slipping through his fingers like dust. Smoke in the wind. A ghost who loved him once. Or maybe not. Maybe he just made that part up too.

***

Tim stops talking about Jason aloud.

He learned that lesson the hard way—first from Bruce, then Dick, and finally Alfred, who just gave him a sad look and said, “There are some ghosts we don’t summon here, Master Timothy.”

But Tim knows. He knows.

The evidence is inconsistent, but it’s there. Shaky Gotham sightings, security feeds with corrupted time stamps, weapons caches moved before Batfamily recovery teams arrive, black helmets ducking out of frame just before a feed cuts. A man in a red hood throwing a molotov at a child trafficker’s convoy on the East End. A shootout in Crime Alley with no bodies left behind—except for the ones who deserved it.

And then there’s the silence.

The eerie, calculated silences. No Joker. No word. No body. Just absence.

Bruce refuses to talk about it. Claims he’s “focused.” Focused on Joker. Focused on the big picture. Focused on Tim’s next training module. Anything but Jason.

“Jason is dead,” he says, with a flatness that scrapes Tim raw.

Dick doesn’t even pretend anymore. He smiles and laughs and fights and sometimes stares at the cave wall for hours like it might answer a question he can’t remember asking. His memory has gone foggy again. He looked Tim dead in the eyes the other night and asked, “What’s that room in the manor we always keep locked?”

Nobody else seems to remember.

So Tim keeps the files to himself. Draws lines between sightings. Tracks the rise of the Red Hood. Tracks the feel of Gotham when he's around. Some nights it smells like gunpowder and leather and salt. It smells like Jason.

But they bench him.

After the warehouse explosion. After he took a hit to the ribs that left hairline fractures in four places. After Bruce found out he went on patrol solo—again.

“You’re reckless,” Bruce says. “You’re benched.”

“You don’t care,” Tim answers.

And Bruce doesn't deny it.

So Tim stops asking permission.

He waits until the painkillers wear off. Waits until the bruising has gone from black to green. Waits until it hurts just enough to remind him that he’s real. Then he arms himself with trackers, tranquilizers, a spare comm in case everything goes to hell, and he heads out.

Because if nobody else will remember Jason, then Tim will.

If nobody else believes he's alive, Tim has to.

He starts where the most recent sighting was: a warehouse near the Tricorner docks. Smashed crates. A blood smear on the wall. Tim kneels and runs his fingers along it, just as a boot slams down behind him.

“Jesus Christ, you’re predictable.”

He spins, reaching for a weapon he doesn’t get to.

A hand catches his wrist. Another shoves his shoulder. And before he can do more than gasp, Tim is slammed up against a rusted support beam, wind knocked from his lungs.

And there he is.

Jason.

Jason.

Alive.

Breathing. Furious. Bigger than Tim remembers from the photos. Older. Angrier. Smudged in sweat and grime and fury, eyes sharp like flint, like he’s seen the whole world burn and decided to throw gasoline on what’s left.

“You trying to die, idiot?” Jason hisses. “Is that your new hobby?”

Tim can’t speak.

“I’ve been watching you. You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing? Tracking me? Leaving yourself open as bait? What’s your plan, huh? You get that Gotham’s full of sick freaks, right? That the second they know Robin’s out there limping like a wounded animal they’ll start circling?”

He keeps yelling, keeps spitting fire, but it starts to sound like static in Tim’s ears.

Jason’s alive.

Jason’s alive.

Not a ghost. Not a hallucination. Not a figment. Not an echo in the Cave that everyone else forgot.

He’s real.

Jason grabs his collar and shakes him once. “Are you even listening?”

And that’s when it hits Tim.

Everything.

The days spent thinking he was going just as crazy as he once thought Dick was. Bruce refusing to say the name. Dick forgetting the shape of the person who came before him. The grave. The nightmares. The doubt. The knowing.

The truth.

Jason is alive.

And he's been watching him. Protecting him. Making sure he didn’t get himself killed. 

Tim opens his mouth to say something—anything—but the words stick.

The adrenaline crashes. His knees give out. The world goes sideways. The pain in his ribs catches fire. And then darkness tugs at the edges of his vision, soft and sudden.

Jason’s voice, tinny now, far away: “Oh, fuck.”

And then Tim crumples in his arms, limp and weightless, finally letting go.

Chapter Text

Tim wakes up to the smell of eggs.

Eggs.

He blinks against the stale light bleeding through the blackout curtains, and for a second he thinks he’s home. The Manor. Or maybe Titans Tower, back before everything got so wrong.

Then the pain hits.

His ribs scream. His spine aches. There’s a pillow under his head, rough and overstuffed. A blanket’s been tossed over him, thin and too short. He shifts and lets out a groan, and that’s when he hears it: “Morning, princess. You fainted. Thought I’d let you sleep it off before the interrogation started.”

Jason.

Jason Todd.

Tim bolts upright so fast he nearly screams. His ribs protest. He protests. “You’re—! You— You—!”

Jason doesn’t even look up from the stovetop. He’s standing in an actual kitchen—well, a safehouse version of one, all chipped tile and mismatched utensils. He’s wearing a black tank top and sweatpants like this is just any other morning. Like he's not supposed to be dead.

“I’m making eggs,” Jason says flatly. “Want some?”

“WHAT?!”

Jason finally looks at him, one brow raised like you’re being dramatic. “You fainted. You looked like shit. I figured eggs were safe.”

“You were— you died! You were dead! There was a grave! A body! Bruce— Bruce buried you!”

Jason tilts his head. “Technically, he buried a corpse.”

Tim scrambles to his feet, wobbly and wild-eyed. “Who? Why? How?! What happened?! When—? WHAT?! You— You exploded! There were pieces!”

Jason shrugs, flips the eggs. “I woke up.”

Tim gapes. “People don’t just wake up from the dead Jason, you weren’t taking a nap you were—”

“Dead, yeah I know you’ve mentioned it a few times now. I don’t know how it happened one moment I was there, next I wasn’t, then I was again and I had to dig myself out of the ground, not very pleasant. Spent some time as a zombie, got picked up by Talia Al Ghul and whisked away. Don’t remember anything after that. Next thing I know I’m surrounded by green goo and filled with the urge to kill. Lazarus pit healed me. They dunked me like a goddamn biscuit. I came back different. Wrong. Took me a while to pull myself together.” Jason dumps the eggs on a chipped plate, plunks it down on the rickety table in front of Tim, and sits opposite him like this is a normal conversation. “Eat. You look like you haven’t in days.”

“I haven’t! I’ve been tracking you!”

Jason blinks. “Okay, well, congrats. You did it.”

Tim stares at the plate. Stares at Jason. “So. So you know about me.”

Jason sips coffee from a Batman mug—a Batman mug—with a grimace. “Been watching. Making sure you didn’t do anything too stupid. You do know you’re a terrible liar, right? I did a better job of sneaking out when I was your age than you did. So good in fact that they never found me. Not all of me anyway I’m sure.”

Tim ignores that. “So. You’re alive.”

“I think we covered that.”

Tim’s voice drops. Shaky. “So that time I saw you in the East End, it wasn’t a hallucination.”

“Nope.”

“And the warehouse that got cleared out just before we arrived—”

“Me.”

“And the guy in the red helmet—”

Jason gestures to the helmet resting on the counter. “Yeah.”

Tim's chest tightens. The room tilts.

“You’re alive.” He repeats it like a prayer, soft, stunned, like maybe saying it enough times will make it real.

Jason’s expression flickers. “Yeah. I am.”

“You have to come back.” The words are out before Tim can stop them. “Jason—Bruce—he’s—he’s not okay. And Dick’s worse. He’s—he’s forgetting you. I don’t think he remembers what your voice sounds like. Sometimes he forgets you existed at all.”

Jason flinches.

“And Bruce—he’s looking for Joker like he’s the only thing that matters. And me? I—I’ve been going crazy. Everyone looked at me like I was insane every time I said your name but I knew—I knew something was wrong. That you weren’t just—just—”

“Gone,” Jason says, quiet.

Tim nods, blinking hard. “You were never gone. Just hidden.”

Jason rubs a hand down his face. “I can’t come back. Not like that. Not to them. Not yet.”

“But why? Why not tell us?”

“Because Bruce let me die,” Jason says, sharp now, slicing through the fragile quiet. “Because he didn’t kill Joker after. Because the second I came back I realized everything I believed in—everything—was built on a lie. And because I’m not the person I was when I died. I don’t get to be Robin again. I don’t get to be your brother.”

“Yes, you do.” Tim’s voice is hoarse. “You still are. You never stopped. You’re right here.”

Jason looks at him like he wants to believe that. But he doesn’t say anything. Just drinks his coffee and stares down at the eggs, his jaw clenched like he’s holding back a scream.

Tim reaches across the table. Puts a hand on Jason’s.

“You’re alive. And I found you.”

Jason doesn’t pull away.

And Tim starts to cry.

Quiet, helpless tears—half relief, half grief, all tangled up in the chaos of everything he thought he lost and everything he just got back.

Jason says nothing, but his hand tightens.

And outside the window, Gotham goes on like it always does. Oblivious.

But inside, in this forgotten safehouse lit by flickering kitchen lights, the second Robin and the third just sit—broken, stitched-together pieces of something that once resembled a family.

***

The apartment is too quiet.

Not just normal, empty kind of quiet — not the absence of sound, but the weight of it. Like the silence is pressing in around the corners, blooming in the walls, thick and humming and alive. Dick stands in the doorway to the kitchen with a cup of tea gone cold in his hand and stares at the table.

There’s a second chair pulled out.

He doesn’t remember pulling it.

His throat is dry. He sets the cup down with shaking fingers and paces. One step. Two. Back. Again. Again.

The shadows twitch in the corners of his vision.

Sometimes he swears he hears breathing.

He hasn’t slept more than three hours a night in weeks. Not since… well. He can’t really remember what set it off. It’s not like there was a thing. A moment. It’s more like erosion — slow, insidious, like the ocean eating away at the shore. One day he woke up and realized there was something missing.

Someone.

A laugh he can’t quite hear.

A scowl he can’t place.

A name that burns his tongue.

He knows there was someone. Knows it the way he knows his own heartbeat. Knows it the way he knows Bruce is disappointed and Alfred makes tea when he’s hurting and Tim… Tim looks at him sometimes like he’s already grieving him.

Dick looks in the mirror and doesn’t recognize his own eyes. He traces the edges of photos, flips through old mission reports, watches recordings on loop, trying to see it — the missing piece, the fracture, the boy-shaped hole in the center of his chest.

But it’s like chasing smoke.

Like trying to sculpt someone out of fog and memory.

There’s a photo on his nightstand. He’s eighteen in it, grinning wide. Bruce stands behind him, one heavy hand on his shoulder. And next to him—there’s a blur. A shadow where someone should be. He squints at it every night. Touches the edge of it. Tries to remember.

But it won’t come.

He dreams of a boy in a domino mask with rage in his eyes. Dreams of a bloody crowbar and an empty cave and a voice screaming Jay! into the void, but he wakes up choking and doesn’t know what it means.

His fridge is empty. His sink is full. His voicemail’s overloaded with calls from Tim, and Babs, and Bruce, and he doesn’t answer any of them. Because what if they ask him if he’s okay, and he has to admit he doesn’t remember who died?

He knows someone did.

He’s sure someone did.

But the memories are like teeth slipping in blood.

He writes it down. Every time he dreams, he writes it down.

Sometimes, he finds notes he doesn’t remember writing.

Sometimes, they’re in someone else’s handwriting.

He hears things. Soft footfalls. The creak of boots across the floor. Someone humming low and out of tune in the living room. He catches movement in the corner of his eye. He whirls around with his escrima sticks out and there’s nothing there.

The guilt rots him from the inside. He doesn’t even know what for.

But he feels it. Like rust under his fingernails. Like blood in his teeth.

He sits on the floor of his bathroom at 3:47am and clutches a faded red helmet to his chest, and he doesn’t know where it came from, but he can’t throw it away.

He whispers into the dark: “Please come home.”

Even though he doesn’t know who he’s talking to.

Even though no one answers.

Even though the name won’t come.

Even though the ghost in the apartment has no face and no voice and no shadow.

And every night, he forgets a little more.

The sound of laughter.

The glint of a domino mask.

The feel of someone leaning on his shoulder, calling him something warm and stupid.

The echo of “I got your back, Dickie.”

Gone.

Gone.

Gone.

Until there’s nothing left but smoke and static and a howling, hollow ache that never quite leaves his chest.

***

The safehouse still smells like damp wood and gun oil. Jason’s making a point not to look at Tim. Hasn’t looked him in the eye since the kid woke up.

Tim sits stiffly on the ratty old couch, watching Jason pace like a caged animal, boots heavy on the floorboards. The silence between them is taut and fraying.

“You have to talk to him,” Tim says finally. Voice quiet but firm.

Jason snorts. “Tried that. Didn’t go well.”

“You said he—he didn’t believe you.”

Jason turns, slow and sharp, eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Looked me dead in the face and asked me who the hell I was. Like I was a fucking hallucination. Said he must’ve dreamed me.”

Tim swallows. “Then make him believe you.”

“Why? So he can stare through me again like I’m some ghost story they half-remember? So he can forget me again tomorrow?” Jason’s voice cracks, just once, buried in fury. “No thanks.”

Tim stands, aching, sore, but he stands. “You saved me.”

Jason’s eyes flare. “Yeah. So?”

“You saved me because you care. You were there, watching out for me. Even when no one else was.”

“I didn’t do it for them,” Jason growls, jaw tight. “I don’t owe anyone shit.”

“I didn’t say you did.” Tim steps closer, voice barely above a whisper. “But you did it. And that means you still give a damn. Even if you don’t want to.”

Jason turns away. Hands on his hips. Breathing hard.

“I don’t—” He stops. “You weren’t supposed to get caught in this. I just wanted you safe, no more dead robins.”

“Then help me fix it.”

Jason doesn’t move for a long time. The only sound is the hum of the shitty fridge and the far-off groan of the wind.

Finally, quietly: “…Fuck.”

***

Dick’s apartment is dark when they arrive. The hallway light flickers overhead, and Tim makes Jason stay back — just for a second. Just until he knows.

He pushes open the door.

“Dick?” he calls out.

There’s no answer.

Inside, the apartment looks ransacked but in a careful, obsessive way. Papers are scattered across the coffee table, photos curled at the corners, tape and scribbled notes trailing like vines up the walls. Names, dates, fragments.

At the center of it all, on the ground, Dick is sitting cross-legged, barefoot, in sweats and a hoodie that hangs off one shoulder. He’s holding a photograph in both hands, staring at it like it might bleed if he looked away.

“Dick?” Tim tries again, softer.

Dick lifts his head, slow and distant. His eyes are dull, glassy with exhaustion.

“…Tim, is it?” he says after a beat, like testing the shape of it in his mouth. “How old are you?”

Tim’s breath catches. His heart stutters.

“…Fifteen,” he answers, voice breaking. “Are you okay, Dick?”

Dick’s lips twitch into something like a smile, but it’s wrong. Too soft. Too sad.

“I’m fine. I—I’m fine. You just… reminded me of someone. That’s all.”

Tim nods. Swallows the lump in his throat.

“I know,” he says.

Then he turns, leaves the photo-heavy room behind, and opens the door to let Jason in.

He doesn’t look back.

Jason steps over the threshold.

And the door shuts softly behind him.

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t think it would hurt like this.

He’s faced death. He’s clawed his way out of it. He’s been shot, stabbed, broken bone by bone and rebuilt in pieces. But this? This is worse.

Dick doesn’t even flinch when Jason steps inside the apartment again.

The curtains are half-drawn, filtering the light in that hazy, yellowed way that makes everything look older than it is. The air smells stale. Like the ghosts that haunt this place have made themselves at home. Like Dick’s stopped noticing them.

He’s on the floor again. Same spot. Same posture. Legs folded, spine too straight, shoulders trembling like he’s holding up something too heavy. A photograph clutched in his hands. The edges are soft with age. Jason recognizes it — a mission from back then, before everything fell apart. He’s smiling in it, bloody lip and bruised cheek, arms slung around Dick’s neck, the both of them caught in a rare second of peace.

Dick stares at it like it’s someone else entirely.

Jason crouches down. Not too close.

“Dick.”

Nothing.

“It’s me.”

Still nothing.

Jason licks his lips. Swallows hard. “I know I don’t look the same. I know I—I sound different. Feel different. I am different. But I’m here. I’m real. I came back. I came back, Dick.”

Dick doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even look at him.

Jason’s voice tightens. “Say something. Please.”

Still. Silence.

“I know you’re in there.” He shifts, voice growing louder. “I know you are. You have to be. Because if you’re not—if there’s nothing left of you—then what the hell did I even come back for?”

He laughs bitterly, but there’s no humor in it. Just something cracked and bleeding.

“Was it easier? Is that what this is? Erasing me? Making me something clean and distant? A dream you can’t quite remember? Some name on a gravestone in a city you don’t visit anymore?”

Jason leans closer. “You were the first person who ever saw me. Not as some street rat. Not as a replacement. Not as Robin Two, a footnote between a golden boy and a prodigy. You saw me. You pulled me out of that hellhole and you gave me a chance.”

His throat is closing in on itself now, every word scraping its way out.

“I wanted to be like you. You were it for me. My goddamn hero.”

Jason’s eyes burn. He clenches his fists.

“I still remember the way you’d ruffle my hair even when I glared at you for it. The way you’d shove takeout containers at me after patrol like it was some kind of reward. The way you smiled at me, like I wasn’t broken. Like I was yours.”

Dick breathes in shallow. His fingers twitch.

“Please, Dick,” Jason whispers. “Say something. Say anything.”

Dick blinks.

That’s all.

Jason’s heart thuds painfully.

“You have to remember something. Just one thing. A joke. A mission. The way I used to yell at you for stealing my fries. That time we fell asleep watching those shitty kung fu movies. The way I used to follow you around like a damn shadow. You’d roll your eyes but you never told me to leave.”

He’s closer now. Kneeling fully. Desperate.

“I don’t need you to remember everything. I don’t need you to smile or hug me or even forgive me. Just—something. One word. One memory.”

Dick turns his head a fraction.

But there’s no recognition.

Just those empty, glassy eyes.

Jason’s voice finally cracks. “I’m your brother.”

He breathes in. Staggers back like he’s been punched.

“I died. I died and I came back and I’ve been crawling through the wreckage of who I used to be trying to find my way back to you and you don’t even know me—”

Jason drags a hand through his hair, pulling at it like he could tear the pain out by the root.

“I screamed for you when I was dying. Did you know that? In that warehouse. I was crying for you. Because you were the only one who ever made me feel like I had a goddamn family. And now you’re sitting here like I’m a stranger and I can’t—I can’t do this if you don’t remember me.”

Dick finally looks at him. Really looks.

His mouth parts slightly.

But there’s no flicker of understanding. No warmth. No name. No “Jay.”

Jason swallows.

“I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you punch me in the face or tell me I don’t deserve to be back. I just—I just want to know you know me. That I existed. That I mattered.”

The silence stretches.

Jason lowers his head.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he mutters. “This was a mistake.”

He starts to stand. Legs shaky.

And then—

“I remember a boy,” Dick says, faint. Far away.

Jason freezes.

Dick doesn’t look at him. Just stares at the photo in his hands. “I don’t remember his name. But he used to laugh like he thought he wasn’t allowed to. Like joy was something dangerous. I remember that laugh.”

Jason’s breath catches. “That was me.”

Dick doesn’t respond.

He just keeps staring. Keeps breathing. Barely.

Jason closes his eyes. Tries to swallow the lump in his throat. But it stays. Lodged in his chest like a fragment of a bomb that never went off.

He stays kneeling on the floor, just watching Dick like he could memorize him. Like maybe if he stares long enough, the years between them will melt away.

But Dick doesn’t move.

Doesn’t speak again.

Just sits there, quiet as death, clutching the past like it’s all that’s left.

And Jason — Jason sits too.

Because what else is there to do when your brother is right in front of you, but the person you loved is already gone?

They’ve cleared Dick of the memories. Of the pain. Of him.

And maybe that’s mercy.

Jason doesn't know how long they sit there.

The room has gone still. Time slips sideways. The air is heavy with dust and memory, and Jason breathes in ghosts with every inhale.

He can feel it now — the edge of something sharp and trembling just beneath Dick’s calm. Like a storm crouched behind glass eyes. He’s always been able to read Dick better than anyone. Even now, even after everything, the flicker is still there. A shudder in his hands. A tightening of his jaw. Like something inside him knows this isn’t right.

Jason latches onto it.

“You do remember,” he says, low and hoarse. “You’re trying not to, but you do. Somewhere in there — I know it. You can't erase what we were. I’m in you like blood, Dick. You can't scrub that out.”

Dick exhales slowly, like he’s been holding it for days.

“I…” His fingers twitch. “It’s been… four weeks. Since the last time I saw Leslie. Since the last time I screamed in my sleep. Leslie says it’s working. She says the memories will settle, that they’ll come back.”

He speaks like he’s reading someone else’s journal.

“She says… she says the disorientation is normal. That I’ll stop seeing things that aren’t real. That my mind just needs time to put itself back together.”

Jason flinches. “You saw me.”

“I see a lot of things I don’t understand.” Dick looks up at him, almost apologetic. “You’re not the only one.”

Jason swallows the bitter taste in his mouth. “So that’s it? I’m just another symptom? Some hallucination your brain threw at you while it was short-circuiting?”

Dick doesn't answer.

Jason surges to his feet, pacing now, heat curling under his skin. “They managed to get rid of me. I died and that wasn’t enough, they had to make sure you didn’t remember me as well.”

He turns on Dick, voice shaking.

“I’m right here Dick! Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel what’s missing?”

Dick stares at the floor.

“My past is like… weather,” he mumbles. “It comes and it goes. Sometimes it rains so hard I can’t breathe. Other days, it’s like sunlight — I almost believe it was never broken.”

He looks up. Eyes wide, glassy.

“And then there are days like this. When I can feel the shape of something I used to love, but I don’t know what it is. Or who.”

Jason breathes in like he’s been punched.

“I don’t know what I’ve lost,” Dick continues. “Only that something’s missing. That I’m missing.”

Jason presses a palm to his chest, like he can stop it from caving in. “I was your brother. You held me when I was scared. You taught me how to fight. You told me I didn’t have to be like Bruce. That I could be better.”

His voice cracks again. “You told me I mattered.”

Dick’s hands tremble where they clutch the photo. He doesn’t look at Jason. Doesn’t look away either.

Jason crouches in front of him again, softer this time.

“I’m not a dream,” he whispers. “I’m not a ghost. I’m not a glitch in your meds or a shadow on your scan. I exist.”

He touches his own chest, then gestures to Dick’s heart.

“I’m right here. You knew me. You loved me.”

“I’m not supposed to,” Dick says, quiet. “Not anymore. That’s what they said. That it’s better this way. That I can move on.”

Jason laughs — not from humor, but disbelief. Rage. Grief. “Move on from what? You don’t even know what you’re leaving behind.”

“I know I’m supposed to feel better,” Dick says, more to himself than Jason. “They say it’s working. That the treatment is working.”

“Is it?” Jason whispers. “Because you look like you’re dying from the inside out.”

That lands.

Dick’s breath hitches.

He closes his eyes. “Sometimes I hear laughter. Yours, I think. And it feels… warm. Like firelight. Like a memory that won’t stay. And then it’s gone.”

Jason leans in.

“You held me the night I broke my arm. Remember that? You were the only one who stayed. You read to me until I fell asleep.”

Dick shakes his head slowly. “I don’t remember.”

Jason’s voice is barely there. “You whispered that I was safe.”

Dick’s fingers clench around the photo, crumpling it.

“I’m scared,” he admits.

Jason’s eyes go wide.

“I don’t know what I’ve lost,” Dick says again, barely audible. “But every time I almost remember, it feels like I’m being torn in half. Like my heart is trying to drag something back from a fire, and all that’s left is ash.”

Jason touches his arm. Light. Careful.

“I’m not asking you to remember everything,” he says, his voice softer now. “Just don’t push me away when your heart already knows I belong there.”

Dick doesn’t pull away.

For a long moment, they just sit there — the broken shadow of a boy trying to become whole again, and the brother he doesn’t know he’s mourning.

Outside, Blüdhaven flickers in neon and fog. Inside, it’s just the echo of a thousand fractured memories, and two boys who don’t know how to say I miss you without bleeding.

Chapter Text

The silence lingers like fog after rain.

Jason doesn’t move. Not when Dick leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, head in his hands. Not when the minutes stretch thin, tighter and tighter, until they start to hum with tension. Not even when the first tear falls — silent, trailing down Dick’s cheek like it’s been waiting years to escape.

Jason just waits.

He knows what this looks like — what this feels like. He’s lived in it for months. That creeping terror when you realize something’s wrong inside your own mind. That nauseating pressure behind your eyes as pieces start to realign.

So he waits. Silent. Still. Like if he moves too fast, he might shatter the moment, and lose him again.

Dick’s fingers twitch.

“I remember…” he whispers, like the words are afraid to exist.

Jason leans forward slightly. “Yeah?”

Dick swallows. “You used to… steal the Batmobile. Just to piss Bruce off.”

Jason huffs out a quiet laugh. “You bet your ass I did. God, his face—”

“He’d call Alfred and rant for hours.”

“Alfred never told me that.”

“He wouldn’t. Said it would only encourage you.”

Jason can’t stop the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “He wasn’t wrong.”

Dick’s smile is fragile. Like thin glass in sunlight. But it’s there.

“And there was that time,” he says slowly, “you jumped off the roof. No plan. No rope. Just—fell. Said you were testing gravity.”

Jason snorts. “Gravity works. Shocker.”

“I was so scared,” Dick admits, voice thin. “You landed wrong. Dislocated your shoulder. But you laughed the whole time.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I always worried,” Dick murmurs. “I think I still do.”

Jason’s breath catches.

Dick looks up, eyes clear and full of something new — recognition, maybe. Or its first cousin.

“You wore that stupid leather jacket. The red one. I told you it was ugly.”

Jason smirks. “You loved that jacket.”

“You fell asleep in it on the couch once. And I covered you with a blanket.” He pauses. “Bruce yelled at me. Said you needed discipline.”

Jason shifts, his throat tight. “I didn’t hear him. I only felt the blanket.”

Dick blinks fast. “You… you called me ‘big bird.’”

Jason grins. “Still do.”

“And you’d hum under your breath sometimes. Pop songs. Madonna. That stupid Nightwing remix Roy made.”

“Hey,” Jason says, mock affronted. “That song slaps.”

“I remember,” Dick whispers. His hand moves slowly — reaching, hesitating — before finally brushing Jason’s sleeve. “God, Jason… I remember.”

Jason lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

It’s not everything. Not yet. The pieces are jagged, out of order, some still missing entirely. But it’s enough. It’s something.

Dick shakes his head like he’s trying to shake the fog loose.

“It’s like—there’s this hole. Still bleeding at the edges. But now I can see what used to be there.”

“Me,” Jason says quietly.

“Yeah.” Dick looks at him, eyes full of guilt and something rawer beneath. “You. My brother.”

Jason swallows hard. “It’s okay if you don’t have it all yet. I’ll remind you. Every day if I have to.”

Dick closes his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t forget me on purpose,” Jason says, firm. “You were hurt. I know what that’s like. I get it.”

Dick’s voice breaks. “You shouldn’t have had to.”

Jason smiles, soft and a little sad. “Neither should you.”

For a long time, they just sit there — two broken things mending at the seams.

Outside, the city pulses. Inside, something begins to heal.

Dick leans back, tears drying on his cheeks. “Tell me everything. All of it. The good, the bad… the parts I don’t deserve.”

“You deserve all of it,” Jason says. “Even the messy parts. Especially the messy parts.”

“Then start there,” Dick says. “Start with you.”

Jason nods.

And he begins.

Again.

Jason speaks in low tones at first, as if afraid too much noise will fracture what little they've managed to piece together.

“The day I died…” he starts, watching Dick closely. “It wasn’t fast.”

Dick flinches.

“I remember the warehouse. The smell of gas and rust. The Joker’s laugh echoing off the walls. And I remember thinking... I wasn’t scared of dying. I was scared of never seeing you again.”

Dick's breath stutters.

“I kept thinking, ‘If Dick were here, this wouldn’t be happening. He’d come for me.’ But you didn’t know. None of you did. And then… boom.”

He doesn’t flinch at the word, just lets it hang.

Jason rubs the heel of his palm into his eye. “I woke up in a coffin. Crawled my way out like a goddamn horror movie. No Lazarus Pit yet. No vengeance. Just dirt in my lungs and silence in my head.”

Dick’s eyes are wide, glistening. His fingers twitch where they rest against the old photo album on the coffee table, like touching the past might somehow anchor him in this new present.

“I wandered for months, Dick. Broken. Half-mad. I think part of me still is. I didn’t know who I was, only that something was wrong. That something had been taken from me.”

“Your life,” Dick murmurs.

Jason shakes his head. “You.”

That cracks something deep behind Dick’s ribs. He leans forward like he’s been punched, knuckles white as they grip the edge of the couch. He’s breathing too fast, and Jason is immediately gentler.

“I didn’t come back right,” he admits. “Not at first. Talia found me. Trained me. Pushed me. Said if I couldn’t have peace, I might as well have purpose.”

Dick’s voice is hoarse. “Is that when…?”

“Red Hood? Yeah. I had to become someone else. Someone who could survive.”

The silence stretches, taut and thin. Jason doesn’t break it yet. He lets the truth settle between them like dust.

Then Dick whispers, “Why didn’t you come home?”

Jason looks at him, eyes dark and weary. “Would you have believed me?”

Dick doesn’t answer. He can’t.

Jason sighs. “I tried, you know. That night, after the pit. I stood outside the manor. I looked up at the windows. But I couldn’t knock. I didn’t know if you were home. Didn’t know if I could face you if you were, I knew I couldn’t see Bruce.”

“I would’ve…” Dick stops, swallows. “I don’t know. I wish I could say I’d have known it was you.”

“You didn’t,” Jason says, without bitterness. “But it’s okay. I get it now. You weren’t whole either.”

Dick stares at him. “I’m still not.”

“You’re remembering,” Jason says gently. “That’s a start.”

Dick nods slowly, like every movement hurts. “There’s flashes. You, perched on the edge of a rooftop. Laughing like you couldn’t fall. Me yelling at you to stop before you got hurt.”

“I usually did it anyway.”

“You always did it anyway.”

Jason smiles. “Yeah, well. I wanted to impress you.”

Dick laughs—sharp and sudden, like it caught him off guard—and then his eyes shine with something deeper. “You did.”

Jason’s breath stutters. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I mean it,” Dick says. “You were… are brave. Reckless, sure. But you had a fire in you. I envied it sometimes.”

“You were always the better Robin.”

“Maybe,” Dick says quietly. “But you were mine.”

The silence that follows isn’t heavy. It’s warm. Soft around the edges. Familiar in a way neither of them thought they’d feel again.

Dick rubs at his temple, and Jason watches him like a hawk. “More memories?” he asks.

“Maybe. It’s like chasing shadows. But when I stop thinking, when I just feel, you’re there.”

Jason sits back slowly. “I can work with that.”

Dick’s eyes meet his. “Stay.”

Jason nods.

And he does.

The soft click of the front door breaking the hush makes both Jason and Dick turn.

Tim slips into the apartment without fanfare, a takeaway bag in one hand, exhaustion slouched across his shoulders. His hoodie’s too big, and his eyes are rimmed with sleep-deprivation. But when he sees Jason still there — not a dream, not a ghost — and Dick not curled up on the floor but sitting upright, he smiles.

"Hey," he says, a little breathless. “I brought food.”

Jason raises an eyebrow. “You just assume I like egg rolls?”

Tim shrugs and toes off his shoes. “I figured you still eat like a garbage disposal.”

Jason snorts. “You’re not wrong.”

Tim drops the bag on the kitchen counter and drifts toward them. Dick is half-sitting, half-leaning back against the couch, surrounded by old photo albums Jason had pulled down earlier. His eyes are clearer than before. Still tired, still haunted, but... present.

Tim sinks to the floor beside the couch, leans against it, and lets his head tip back to rest on Dick’s thigh. It’s instinctual — the kind of closeness they’d never dared before because the cracks were too wide. But now, for once, there’s no hesitation.

Dick lets his hand rest lightly in Tim’s hair, and when Tim blinks up at him, Dick murmurs, “You look like him, you know. A little.”

“Me?” Tim asks.

Jason hums, tossing a fortune cookie wrapper at him. “It’s the broody eyes. And the need to take responsibility for shit that’s not your fault.”

Dick chuckles, the sound low and rough. “He really does.”

“I’m nothing like either of you,” Tim says, but there’s no heat in it. Just affection.

“You’re the best of us,” Jason says, and Tim goes quiet.

Jason shifts in the armchair, one leg slung over the side, posture loose for the first time in... maybe years. “Hey, remember that time I locked myself in the Batmobile because I didn’t want to train?”

Dick’s eyes light up, a laugh bubbling up. “You got stuck and Bruce had to use a welder to get you out.”

“And Alfred grounded me for a week.”

“For months, you mean. But then he made you your favorite cake on day three.”

“Yeah.” Jason smiles faintly. “Chocolate with the raspberry swirl.”

“I remember you crying on the rooftop after that one case with the kids,” Dick adds gently. “You thought you’d failed because one of them ran away.”

Jason’s smile fades, but his eyes soften. “You were the only one who said I didn’t.”

“You didn’t.”

Jason nods, quiet.

They fall into easy conversation — filling the space with anecdotes and patchwork stories. Jason tells Tim about the first time he drove the Batmobile (without permission), how he nearly crashed it into the river. Dick talks about the time Tim hacked the Watchtower’s security because he was bored and wanted to see if he could. Jason cackles when he hears that, and Tim glows under the attention.

Somewhere between one memory and the next, Tim drifts off, head still resting against Dick’s leg, breath evening out.

Jason lowers his voice and gestures at him. “You did good with him.”

Dick brushes a hand through Tim’s hair absently. “He did good with me. I was falling apart.”

Jason exhales. “We all were.”

Dick glances over, tired eyes shining. “Do you hate me?”

Jason blinks. “What?”

“For not remembering. For not saving you.”

Jason shakes his head. “Never. I was angry. Still am, sometimes. But I never hated you. I just… missed you.”

Dick swallows hard. “I missed you too. Even when I didn’t know I was missing anything.”

Silence again — not cold, not broken. Just full of everything they’ve lost and everything they’re trying to rebuild.

Jason leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “This—” he nods to the room, to the stillness and the warm hum of being together “—this is what I wanted. Just… a moment where we’re not bleeding or yelling or pretending not to care.”

Dick nods. “Yeah.”

Jason shifts where he’s sitting, discomfort flickering across his face as he wrestles with whether or not to speak. Eventually, his voice comes low, almost hesitant.

“Earlier… you said you killed him. The Joker. Did you mean that?”

Dick doesn’t answer right away. His eyes lower, distant.

“I think so,” he says slowly. “I remember Tim was missing. And the Joker just—he wouldn’t stop talking. About Tim, about you. I thought he’d killed Tim, too, and I just… snapped. I beat him until Bruce pulled me off. I thought he was dead. Bruce said he brought him back, said I didn’t have to live with that weight.”

Dick’s voice falters. “But it didn’t feel like justice. Or vengeance. And it didn’t undo any of the pain.”

Jason’s jaw clenches, working tight. He takes a breath in through his nose, steadying himself.

“It could’ve been over already,” he mutters. “You know I’m never going to forgive him, right? Things’ll never go back to the way they were. If I do come back, we’re not gonna be some happy family. I’m not going to change. Neither is Bruce. I don’t see a future there.”

Dick nods, not quickly. Thoughtfully.

“I know,” he says. “I won’t pretend I like it—I hate how fucking stubborn you both are—but I get it. And if you can’t come back to him, I’ll still be here. With you.”

Jason doesn’t reply at first. His gaze shifts to Tim, still asleep, curled loosely on the floor beside them.

“You killed the Joker for him,” he says, soft but firm. No venom. No heat. Just truth. “Do you regret it?”

Dick meets his eyes. “Do you regret the lives you’ve taken?”

Jason doesn’t blink. “No. Not if it kept someone safe. Not if it stopped more hurt.”

“Then no. I don’t regret it,” Dick says. “Even if Bruce hadn’t revived him. The Joker’s not like the others. He has no family. No one to mourn him. His death didn’t leave a hole in the world—it plugged one.”

He hesitates, then adds, quieter, “I felt like I’d failed for a while, let him win. But then I thought, he kills innocents, people who have something to give to the world, something to live for. He has nobody for him, he wasn’t taken from anyone, so I couldn’t possibly be the same as him. Someone like Penguin, maybe. Someone horrible, who would deserve it, but… I’d always wonder what could’ve been. If I could’ve helped them change. Not the Joker. There’s nothing to fix.”

Jason’s eyes lower again.

“Nobody would’ve mourned me,” he says. “Everyone who cared already did. And anyone else wouldn’t be surprised. That’s why I came back. Why I told anyone at all. Because when I die again—and I will—I wanted someone to care. If no one knew I lived… then none of this would’ve mattered.”

Dick nods slowly.

“If a tree falls and no one’s around to hear it…”

“Don’t be fucking stupid, it still makes a sound,” Jason huffs, rolling his eyes.

Dick smirks. “No, Jason, it—” He cuts himself off with a quiet sigh. “I don’t want to be around the next time you die. Maybe that’s selfish, but I can’t do it again. I can’t bury you twice.”

He looks down at his hands, then back at Jason.

“But if I am around, of course I’ll care. And if not me, then Tim. Or someone else, I promise. The world’s going to know Jason Todd came back from the dead and raised hell.”

Jason lets out a dry snort.

“I never liked your unwavering optimism, you know. You were way more tolerable when you were all brooding and angsty.”

Dick grins, leaning back, his shoulder brushing Jason’s.

“Yeah, well. I got tired of being miserable. Someone had to stay soft around here.”

There’s a long pause, filled only with the soft rhythm of Tim’s breathing.

Then Jason, barely above a whisper: “Thanks.”

And Dick, just as quiet: “Always.”

Chapter Text

The sun cuts through the half-drawn blinds, dust floating gold in the morning light. It’s too quiet. Peaceful in a way that feels borrowed, like a dream that doesn’t belong to any of them. Tim is still asleep, curled up with a blanket and a hand curled near his face, looking too young, too small to have gone through what he has.

Dick stares at him for a moment, then turns to where Jason’s leaning against the window, arms crossed, watching the world.

Jason doesn’t look like the Red Hood right now. No helmet, no armor. Just a black T-shirt, scarred knuckles, shadows under his eyes. He’s still, watching the street below with that same sharp-eyed restlessness that never really left him. Even in rest, Jason vibrates like a coiled wire.

“Come back with us,” Dick says quietly.

Jason doesn’t turn around. “No.”

Dick steps closer. “Jay—”

“I said no.” The words are ice-edged, too fast, too sharp.

Dick stills.

Jason exhales slowly through his nose and rubs a hand down his face. “Don’t ask me that.”

“You could stay at the manor,” Dick tries again, gentler. “Just for a while. You’d have your old room. You wouldn’t have to do anything. Just… be there. With us.”

Jason turns then, and his eyes are different — colder. Something shifts in his face. The soft edges go rigid. The brother fades and the soldier reappears.

“Be there with you?” he repeats, tone hollow. “You mean be under the same roof as Bruce.”

Tim is awake now. Barely, but enough to feel the air drop ten degrees.

Dick hesitates. “I know it’s complicated—”

“Complicated?” Jason’s laugh is jagged. “It’s not complicated. He let me die. He didn’t kill the Joker. He replaced me before my body was even cold. That’s not complicated. That’s betrayal.”

Silence.

Jason shakes his head, voice thick now. “I can’t just reconcile everything that happened to me like it meant nothing. I just— I want him to do the work for once, to take the steps, I can’t come back and pretend everything is fine. I already dug myself out of the ground once, I won’t do it again, he can pick up a shovel and he can make things right because I’m through with doing things his way and bending to his rules.”

Dick’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“And you—” Jason’s voice cracks, just slightly. “You don’t remember it, maybe. But I do. The way you looked at me when I came back. Like I was wrong. Like I shouldn’t exist.”

Dick flinches.

“I watched over you. I watched over him,” Jason says, gesturing to Tim. “I saved your lives more times than I can count, and I never asked for anything back. Not forgiveness. Not even to be acknowledged. But I’m not walking back into that house and pretending we’re okay. We’re not.”

Jason’s fists clench.

“I drove Tim to the edge. I almost got him killed. And you—” He turns to Dick, softer now, but more raw. “I saw what losing me did to you. I did that. I’m not going back to sit at the table like nothing happened. I can’t.”

“But you’re not the Red Hood anymore,” Dick says, weakly.

Jason meets his eyes. “I’m always the Red Hood. That’s who I had to become to survive. And I’m still not done.”

Dick’s breath catches. “The Joker.”

Jason nods. “I don’t care how long it takes. I will finish it. And when it’s done… maybe I’ll think about the manor. About facing Bruce. About something close to peace.”

Tim sits up, pulling the blanket around his shoulders. His eyes are shining, but he says nothing.

Jason’s gaze flicks to him. “Don’t look at me like that. I did what I had to.”

“You saved me,” Tim says quietly.

Jason huffs. “So I did one thing right.”

“You did more than that,” Dick says, but his voice is barely a whisper.

Jason crosses his arms again and leans against the wall, staring out the window once more. “I can’t come back. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

The quiet stretches again.

Dick steps forward. “Then I’ll wait,” he says. “We’ll wait. For when you can.”

Jason doesn’t look at him, but something in his shoulders relaxes. Just barely.

“Okay,” Jason says, after a long moment.

The light has shifted again. Soft shadows stretch across the apartment floor. The air hums with everything unspoken, and Dick hasn't taken his eyes off Jason since the silence settled like dust around them.

Tim's still on the couch, legs curled underneath him, silent but attentive. Watching. Waiting.

Jason hasn’t moved from his place by the window. He hasn’t uncrossed his arms. He hasn't looked back.

"Okay," Dick says again, as if trying the word out. He crosses the room slowly, kneeling in front of Jason, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. "If you can’t come back to the manor… will you stay here? With me?"

Jason doesn’t answer.

“I mean it,” Dick presses. “Just… stay. In Blüdhaven. With me. You don’t have to come home to Gotham. Just… stay.”

Jason’s jaw clenches. “I’m a criminal, Dick.”

Dick flinches but doesn’t back off. “You’re Jason.”

“I’m the Red Hood,” Jason snaps. “While you’re out in blue spandex pulling civilians from burning buildings and stopping muggings, I’m the guy breaking arms to get answers. I’m the guy they fear. I hurt people. That doesn’t go away just because I crash on your couch.”

Dick doesn’t blink. “You think I care?”

Jason looks away. “You should.”

“I don’t.”

Jason finally turns to him, face twisting in disbelief. “You should. Bruce does.”

“I’m not Bruce,” Dick says. “And Bruce is wrong.”

Tim stands now, blanket still around his shoulders like a cape. “You are helping people, Jason. You saved me. You saved Dick. You’ve been saving people this entire time — just not the way Bruce would’ve done it.”

Jason scoffs, bitter and low. “Bruce would rather see me locked up.”

“Well we don’t,” Tim says firmly. “I want you here. I want to be able to visit you. I want to come to this apartment and hang out with both of you and not have to lie about it or sneak around. I’m so tired of pretending you're a ghost.”

Jason looks between them, face unreadable.

“You can still go after the Joker,” Dick says. “You can still be Red Hood. But… let us be in your life. Let us be your brothers again.”

Jason closes his eyes like it physically hurts to hear that.

No one speaks.

Jason breathes in, slow. Out, slower.

Then he nods.

Once. Almost imperceptible.

“Okay,” he mutters. “I’ll stay.”

Tim exhales like he’s been holding his breath for days.

Dick smiles, something cracked and aching and real. “Thank you.”

Jason shrugs, trying not to meet either of their eyes. “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Too late.

Tim throws the blanket off and practically tackles him in a hug before Jason can flinch away, arms tight around Jason’s middle.

Jason groans. “Kid—c’mon—”

“Too late,” Tim mumbles into his shirt.

***

The Cave was silent, but not still. Keys clacked. Screens flickered. The hum of machines filled the vacuum that had grown around Bruce Wayne in recent days — maybe weeks. He didn’t know anymore.

Time had bled into static.

He hadn’t changed out of the suit. His cowl hung loosely around his neck, sweat-damp hair flattened beneath it. His jaw was tight, unshaven, unmoving.

The Red Hood.

Every movement on screen was catalogued, dissected. Every kick, every parry, every throw. Frame by frame. Overlapping combat footage — years apart — of an eleven-year-old Robin and a grown man in crimson armor. The angle of a left hook. The way he favored his right foot. The rise of the shoulder before a strike. How he used Batman’s own weight against him in a grapple.

Identical.

The computer chirped as it compared scans. Over and over.

Match.

Match.

Match.

He should’ve seen it.

He had seen it. A hundred times. A thousand. But he never let the thought bloom because it was impossible. Jason was dead. He had buried him. Identified the body. Held the ruined shell of his son in his arms.

He couldn’t be alive.

Except… he was.

Bruce’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. He pulled up another clip — surveillance from weeks ago. Red Hood diving from a rooftop. And then another — body cam footage from a shaken arms dealer. Another from traffic cams.

Every voice obscured. Every shot muddied. But the patterns—God, the patterns.

Red Hood knew everything.

Everything Bruce taught him.

The terminal flickered. Another piece of footage loaded — this one from months back. A rooftop confrontation. Bruce’s own chest cam, from the fight that left his shoulder dislocated.

He watched it again.

The screen showed Batman landing on the roof. Red Hood turned, ready. Their first real fight. It played out fast — too fast — brutal, efficient. But Bruce paused, reversed, enhanced. Again.

Red Hood on the tracks, the sound of an oncoming train.

He’d said something.

The audio was faint. Nearly lost in the city’s noise.

Bruce enhanced it.

Filtered the static.

Increased vocal isolation.

And there it was.

Through the tinny playback, distorted by modulator and wind:

"You haven’t lost your touch, Bruce."

Bruce froze.

Not Batman.

Bruce.

His breath caught in his throat.

It echoed in the cave like a ghost.

“You haven’t lost your touch, Bruce.”

Chapter Text

The cave was silent.

Silent, except for the sound of Bruce’s breathing — ragged, uneven, caught somewhere between a sob and a gasp. The monitors still glowed, replaying the same ten seconds of footage over and over. That voice.

You haven’t lost your touch, Bruce.

His hands were trembling.

He stepped back from the terminal, the edges of his cape dragging on the concrete. The chill of the cave seeped into his bones, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel much anymore.

He hadn’t, for years.

Not since him.

He turned, slowly, almost cautiously — as though if he moved too quickly, he’d shatter what remained of the illusion. But it was already there.

At the edge of the platform, just past the Batmobile, standing in the pool of blue light cast by the overhead screens—

Jason.

Fifteen.

Still in the Robin suit.

Still with scuffed knuckles and a chipped tooth and eyes that burned with something fierce and bright and impossibly alive.

Bruce's chest caved in.

"No," he whispered, already choking on the word. "Not now."

Jason tilted his head. Smiled crookedly. The same way he had the first time Alfred had scolded him for tracking mud through the Manor. The same way he had after a long patrol, bruised and grinning, like he'd gotten away with something.

"Why not now?" the boy asked, stepping forward with no sound. "You’ve been waiting, haven’t you? For me?"

Bruce didn’t answer.

Jason shrugged. “I mean, I would’ve waited. If it were you. But I guess we’re not all like that, are we?”

“Stop,” Bruce said hoarsely. “You’re not—”

“Not real?” Jason echoed, stopping just short of the Batcomputer. “Maybe. But you made me real, didn’t you? You’ve been seeing me for months, Bruce. Years, if we’re being honest.”

Bruce backed away.

He’d never spoken to them. The visions. He never let himself. He’d see glimpses — shadows, echoes. A flash of a yellow cape in a mirror. A laugh in the dark that was too young to be the Joker’s. A voice in the back of his head saying you should have been faster.

But he’d never talked to them.

He didn’t want to believe it.

He couldn’t.

Jason stepped closer. The green of his domino mask shimmered like it had all those years ago, the light catching the edges of those too-young eyes.

"You locked Dick away when he told you," Jason said softly. "You just looked him in the eye and said it wasn’t possible. You made him question himself. Made him feel crazy. That’s what you do, isn’t it?"

Bruce turned away. His fists clenched.

“You make everyone feel insane just for loving you.”

“Stop.”

Jason kept going. “You knew. You knew, Bruce. You saw the way he fought. You saw the rage, the pain, the patterns. He calls you Bruce. How many people know who you are that you don't know about?”

“I couldn’t—” Bruce’s voice broke. “I couldn’t let myself believe. Because if it was you… then I left you there. I failed you.”

Jason laughed — cruel and raw and far too real.

“And if it wasn’t me, then you just had another son you couldn’t save. Funny how that works. Either way, you lose.”

Bruce turned back to him, face hollow. “Why are you doing this?”

Jason spread his arms wide. “I’m not doing anything. You are. You’re the one who sees me. Hears me. You’re the one who never stopped punishing yourself for what happened in that warehouse.”

The screens flickered.

The explosion again.

Bruce flinched.

Jason didn’t.

“You were late. That’s all it took. Seconds. And I was gone.”

Bruce swallowed. His hands shook.

“You were so proud of me,” Jason said, quieter now. “You told me once I had your heart — that I reminded you of yourself. I lived for that. You don’t know how hard I tried to make you proud.”

Bruce sank to his knees. The ground felt too far away. He was drowning in it.

“I did everything you asked,” Jason continued, stepping closer. “I fought every night. I bled for your war. I died for it. And when I came back—” His voice cracked. “You weren’t there. You weren’t even looking.”

Bruce curled in on himself, eyes squeezed shut.

“I was alone in the dark, Bruce. And when I needed you most… all I had was this.”

He gestured to the screens, to the footage, to the suit still hanging behind glass — Jason’s suit, scorched and faded, a tomb more than a memorial.

Bruce looked up at him. Tears finally falling.

“I didn’t know how,” he whispered. “I didn’t know how to bring you home.”

Jason crouched in front of him.

“You never had to. I came back on my own.”

Silence.

The cave buzzed with the quiet hum of tech and ghosts.

Bruce stared at his son — this vision, this fragment, this memory he couldn’t escape. Fifteen forever. Unaging. Unyielding.

A scar that never healed.

A wound he kept opening, over and over.

He whispered, broken: “Why would you ever want to come back to me?”

Jason smiled. It was soft, sad. “I don’t.”

Jason leaned in closer.

"You think I came back for revenge?" he asked, voice low. "You think I came back for blood, for justice, for Gotham? I came back for you."

Bruce didn’t move. Couldn’t.

"Do you know what it's like to crawl your way out of the grave and not recognize your own face? To scream so loud you don’t even hear it anymore? To remember dying perfectly — the moment the pain stopped — and wake up anyway?"

Jason’s voice shook. “I thought it was hell. That I was in hell.”

He reached out — fingers ghosting over Bruce’s cape, stopping just before they touched.

“And even then,” Jason whispered, “I still thought you’d come for me. That you’d find me, somehow. Because you were Batman. And I was Robin. And you told me we’d never be alone.”

Bruce looked up, breathless. His mouth opened like he might say something, but the words were buried too deep.

"You left me," Jason said, voice rising now, trembling with fury and heartbreak. “You didn’t come for me. You buried me and kept going like I never existed. Not even a whisper. Not even a grave with my real name on it. Just a display case. Just a goddamn case.”

He turned, gesturing violently toward the suit, the cavernous monument to a child lost.

“That’s all I became, Bruce! A warning. A failure. A footnote. You couldn’t even say my name without flinching. And now you pretend like you didn’t know?”

“I didn’t want to forget you,” Bruce choked. “I just… didn’t know how to remember you without breaking.”

Jason whirled on him. “Then break. You should have broken a thousand times for me. Because I broke for you.”

He stepped closer. Eyes gleaming. A hollow echo behind them that wasn’t entirely human.

“I am everything you couldn’t face. I’m the war you lost. The love you buried. The part of you that never got to grow up.”

Bruce bowed his head.

“I see you,” he murmured. “I see you now.”

Jason stared at him. Long and silent.

Then, softly: “Say it.”

Bruce blinked. “What?”

“My name,” Jason said. “Say my name.”

The silence dragged.

Bruce’s throat worked, thick with emotion. Then: “Jason.”

Jason inhaled sharply — like he hadn’t breathed until that moment. His eyes fluttered shut, lashes damp.

“That’s all I ever wanted,” he said, softer than before. “To be real to you. Not a ghost. Not a mistake. Just your son.”

Bruce’s face crumpled.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Jason looked at him for a long time. Then, gently, he smiled. It was the smallest thing — fragile and bright. Too bright.

“Too late for that,” he said, and began to fade.

“No,” Bruce reached for him, frantic. “Please—Jason—”

But there was only air.

The flicker of light. The hum of the cave. The empty silence he had lived in for so long.

Jason was gone.

But the monitors had stopped looping.

The sound clip was gone.

And in its place: stillness.

Bruce stayed kneeling for a long time. Until the cold began to bite. Until the ache settled in every joint. Until his lungs could no longer choke on grief.

He rose slowly.

Walked to the suit in the case.

Looked at it — really looked.

Then, quietly, Bruce removed his glove and pressed his bare hand to the glass.

“Jason,” he said again, like a promise.

***

The cave was quiet again.

Empty.

But Bruce could still hear his voice.

He sat at the Batcomputer for a long time after the hallucination had faded—if it even was a hallucination. If he could still call it that, after everything. After the footage. The voice. The patterns. The rage.

No.

It wasn’t the Red Hood anymore. Not to Bruce. It hadn’t been for a while, not really.

It was Jason.

Jason—who had once laughed under his cape, riding the wind with uncontainable joy. Jason—who'd broken Bruce’s nose during training and apologized with a mouthful of blood and the widest grin Bruce had ever seen. Jason—who died screaming in a bombed-out warehouse because Bruce had been too slow, because he’d followed the Joker alone.

Because Bruce had trained him to.

He clenched his jaw.

He knew Jason’s touch. The precision of it. The relentlessness. He didn’t need to see footage to understand.

Jason wasn’t hunting him anymore.

He was holding him. Caging him.

Waiting.

Because this wasn’t about revenge anymore. It never had been. Not really.

It was about a promise broken.

A boy who had died believing his father would come.

And who returned to find his killer still breathing.

Bruce stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. The Joker’s file. Still marked “Active.” Still marked “At Large.”

He hadn’t changed the status.

Hadn’t dared.

Because if he declared Joker missing, if he made it real, then he had to admit what that meant. What came next.

And now…

Now he had no choice.

Jason was going to kill the Joker.

Not just try. Do it.

And Bruce understood now—he wanted Bruce to kill him.

It was the only way Jason could live with it. With himself.

The showdown had been written from the moment Jason crawled out of the earth.

Bruce had felt it coming in every shattered breath. Every distant report of Red Hood carnage. Every intercepted shipment that had been blown sky-high before Batman ever got close.

But now the final act was drawing near.

And Bruce didn’t know if he was meant to save the Joker—

Or save his son from the moment that would break him for good.

He leaned back, shadows falling over his face. The memory of Jason's voice still lingered in the air.

You didn’t even try.

No. He hadn't.

Because he'd been afraid.

Because deep down, he’d known. The moment he admitted Jason was alive, he’d have to answer for all the ways he'd failed him.

And now—

Now he had to answer anyway.

He turned back to the computer. Pulled up every recent tip, every whisper of movement in the underworld. A van seen near the old amusement park. A stolen truck traced to Blüdhaven. Two dead dealers found strung up with their mouths carved into smiles.

Jason was leaving breadcrumbs.

Leading him to the inevitable.

Bruce set his jaw.

I will stop him. I have to.

Not because the Joker deserved to live.

But because Jason deserved the chance to.

And if Bruce let him cross that line, let him carry that weight alone—it would be another grave Bruce dug with his own hands.

***

Bruce didn’t even make it to the Batmobile.

He’d barely turned from the terminal when he heard the elevator whir and the soft hiss of the cave doors sliding open. He turned slowly—knowing who it was, knowing this had been a long time coming.

Dick was already halfway down the stairs, boots echoing against the steel. Tim was a step behind him, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, jaw tight.

Bruce straightened. He didn’t speak.

Dick didn’t let him.

“You knew,” he said. His voice wasn’t raised—not yet. That almost made it worse. “You knew it was Jason. You knew and you still locked me up.”

Bruce exhaled, heavy. “I—”

“No,” Dick snapped, sudden and sharp. “You do not get to talk first.”

Tim didn’t speak either. He stood silent at the edge of the platform, but the way he held himself—rigid, coiled—spoke volumes. He looked like he’d been waiting for this too.

Dick took a step closer. “You had evidence. You had the footage. You had the voice. And you still sent me away. You looked me in the eyes and told me I was delusional. That my grief had made me dangerous.”

“I didn’t know—”

“Yes you did! You just didn’t want to believe it. You couldn’t handle the fact that Jason came back and didn’t want to see you. So you made it about me. You made me the problem.”

Bruce’s hands curled into fists.

Dick’s voice dropped, cracked. “Do you know what that did to me, Bruce? Being locked in that ward? Having doctors tell me my memories were false, that I was sick, that everything I felt was a symptom?” He stepped closer. “Jason was my brother. And you told me he was a hallucination.”

Tim shifted behind him, jaw twitching.

“And I believed you,” Dick whispered. “I stopped trusting my own mind because of you. I doubted myself. And that? That’s on you.”

Bruce’s eyes closed.

“I was grieving,” Dick said, barely audible. “I was grieving the only way I knew how. And instead of standing beside me, you institutionalized me.”

Silence.