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It was a shitty coincidence on a shitty night to have one.
No matter what sort of uneasy truce he might have made with Batman and his many, many batlings, Jason usually made himself scarce in the few months leading up to the anniversary of his death.
It was just too easy to remember something and lash out at the wrong person at the wrong time and ruin everything again. Dick and Alfred seemed to get it, giving him a buffer. Even if Dick wouldn’t stop with the puppy eyes. Jason had learned to mostly ignore those a few years in.
Jason had come to dinner in late February, one of the last times he usually could without getting antsy. Alfred had sent him away with triple the treats he usually did. From Damian’s whining about fairness it seemed he wasn’t simply getting soft in his old age. That he knew it would be a few months. Jason’s heart clenched when he thought about it—he’d gone long enough without seeing Alfred before—but he just. Couldn’t.
“Take care, Master Jason,” he’d said, and looked at Jason just the same as he always did, as he always had. Jason had put the cookies in the freezer, not sure if he was saving them for a worse day or a better one. And he’d prepared to have a bad March, a shitty April, and a godawful April 27th before everything started re-calibrating to “tolerable.”
Just because it’s April doesn’t mean he’s not patrolling, though. Just meant the bats were strictly to leave him alone barring a death or an apocalypse. And even then, Jason expected them to make sure it was a really dire apocalypse before bothering him.
Tonight is quiet so far, which makes Jason itchy. It always means it’ll either be a pretty good night or a really bad one, with not a lot of in-between. And if it’s a pretty good one, no one to punch, no adrenaline singing through his veins.
He kneels on the edge of a rooftop and absently hopes for the kind of night to match his mood. Only manages to feel a little guilty about it.
His mask’s night vision is excellent. He’s got the latest tech all around: Bruce had insisted, and he knows that little nerd has been tinkering with it when he thinks Jason isn’t looking. Tonight, he’s begrudgingly grateful, not for the first time, because it’s what lets him catch a grainy figure slip into the warehouse two streets over. And what lets him see the edges of a looming shadow disappear behind it.
That motherfucker—not even Red Robin or Nightwing—
“This is not a fucking apocalypse,” the Red Hood says to himself, and taps the side of his helmet twice.
“O,” he says.
“Hood,” she says, tone only faintly apologetic. “Emergency. Crane’s in the building.”
“Is that one of the contingencies I laid out?” Hood swings down to the street with a grapple and starts running.
Oracle pauses. Probably switching lines to let Batman know Hood’s coming and is pissed.
“He doesn’t want you taking him on alone.”
“Dear old dad,” Hood says. He can almost see the face Oracle makes when she says, “Hood—”
“Save it,” he says, because he’s caught up to the Batman.
Hood sneers up at him, taking full advantage of his mask to make whatever face he wants without a Look. Batman is almost certainly aware, but Hood is very well versed in the use of plausible deniability.
“Where’s your little bird?”
“Not here.”
“Benched?”
“Just for a few nights. There’s a flu going around.”
Despite himself, Jason feels a touch of sympathy for the brat. Then, a larger amount of sympathy for Alfred, who was almost certainly playing nursemaid, to the extent anyone was.
Then Batman, apparently deciding the small talk is over, tries to muscle his way past Hood.
“You’re not going in there,” Hood says, drawing himself up to his full height. Extremely annoyingly, Batman is still a few inches taller than him.
“Crane is in there,” Batman growls.
“Obviously,” Hood says. “In my territory. That was one of the ground rules of all of this.” He waves his hand around, the one not holding a gun. “You love rules. Did you forget?”
“He started in Gotham,” Batman says, already frustrated.
“Yeah, and he’s here now. So.” He drags out the vowel and glares up at him. “Mine.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Batman says, and tries to push past him.
When Jason gets angry, it’s like a match into gasoline. The Red Hood is instantly furious. He gets in front of Batman and presses a knife to the front of his costume. Not the gun. The knife will get his point across without ruining the tenuous truce they have.
He sees Batman’s eyes flick to the knife and back up again, as if to say, “Really?”
“If you come cleaning up my messes, I lose all of my cred. We’ve been over this. Don’t make me fight you and then Crane.”
Batman visibly struggles with this for a minute, and then his shoulders slump, just a little.
“Stay on comms. If you drop comms or I hear anything go wrong I’m coming in. And don’t you ever draw a knife on me again.”
Hood rolls his eyes, under the mask.
“Yeah, yeah. Like it would cut through your new suit anyway, you paranoid freak.”
And then he strolls into the warehouse, easy as anything.
Crane has left a trail of incapacitated people behind him. Not many people work here at night, but there are a few: security guards, stockers, truck loaders. Hood has waved to a few on patrol before. Ordinary citizens know he’s not here to hurt them. He’s proud of that. Vicious protecting his turf—and the people in it.
Right now no one is waving back. They’re all in various corners, babbling to themselves. Hood sighs. He’s going to have to rely on the fucking Batman after all, because he doesn’t have a million-dollar chemistry lab in which to make antidotes to fear toxin.
He looks around for more people. He looks up, for vents to push fear toxin through. Nothing.
Then he looks straight up. Fuck.
“Crane in the rafters, lots of people high on fear toxin. They’re gonna need the antidote. I’ll take Crane.”
There’s a second of pause before Batman says, “I’m coming in. How many?”
Hood counts, quickly. “Eight.”
“I heard a little story,” Crane calls down to him from the walkway in the rafters. “About a little bird.”
Jason’s blood runs cold.
“Yeah? Why don’t you come down here so we can talk about it?”
Crane shakes his head, smiling. Jason sighs. Of course tonight wasn’t going to be easy. He aims his grapple gun at the railing and leaps.
Crane grins at him and sings, “Who killed Cock Robin?” and Jason almost falls. He grabs at the railing, fumbling with his gun, and manages to swing himself up. The Joker’s alive, obviously, that’s the whole issue. And he could connect the Red Hood and Robin, and he loved to talk. Beyond that, the Red Hood had a strange symbiotic relationship with the bats, if you looked even a little past the surface. But Jason didn’t like it being public knowledge. It made his stomach crawl, losing that little, tenuous anonymity.
“It’s true,” Crane crows.
Jason levels the gun at him. Rubber bullets tonight, but Crane didn’t know that. “Like I would ever be that close to Batman,” he says. “He hates guns.”
“Don’t lie to your doctor,” Crane sniffs, and lashes out at him with a pitchfork.
At least it’s not a crowbar, Jason thinks hysterically, and leaps backwards. Crane lunges forwards, trying to spear him, but Jason has always been fast. He ducks under the long weapon and gets a solid hit in. Crane slams against the side of the railing. The walkway shakes.
“Hood?”
“Focus on the civilians!” He goes for Crane’s right hand, the one holding the pitchfork, but he’s faster than Jason remembered. Asshole. Crane spins away and hits him with the blunt end of the pitchfork as he goes. Jason slams into the railing. It shakes again. He doesn’t look to see how it’s holding up.
“Scared of heights?” Crane asks, gleeful, and comes at him again.
Jason ducks. The hardest part will not be incapacitating Crane, but doing so in a way that doesn’t splatter him on the floor. Jason couldn’t give less of a fuck whether or not Crane died but Batman would, and everything with them was always on a razor’s edge anyway.
He sees the opening, and he takes it: just enough time to shoot Crane’s ankle. Even rubber bullets do a lot of damage. He crouches, aims, and shoots, one fluid movement. Crane lands hard on his knee, using his pitchfork to keep himself upright. He’s still smiling.
“‘I,’ said the Sparrow, ‘with my little bow and arrow—’”
Jason leans in to take it, kicking out at Crane’s better leg to unbalance him and grabbing the pitchfork. But Crane swings it wildly to the right as he falls into Jason. The combined force slams his head into the railing, hard enough it knocks the breath out of him. He keeps it together enough to wrench the pitchfork from Crane’s grip and throw it over the side of the railing, and then he feels at his hood.
It’s cracked at the bottom edge.
Fuck. Fuck.
It’s not a huge crack, but it’s enough to compromise the seal for the air filters. He leaves it on so Crane can’t see his face, but it was enough of a tell to simply check it at all. Crane grins.
“‘It was I, oh it was I.’”
Jason points the gun at him.
“Stay where you are.”
“Or what?” He says. “You’ll kill me with rubber bullets?” Crane shakes his head. Clucks his tongue. “I thought a Robin would be smarter than that.”
Jason shoots again, at his good leg. Crane falls to his stomach but his hand is already at his belt, stupid, stupid—
There’s the whirr of canisters releasing gas. Jason’s blood runs cold. He slowly looks up, to the giant fans slowly circulating air. The building sprinklers have been modified to spew a thick, green gas.
“Rebreather on!” Jason screams over the railing, hoping he’s fast enough.
“What do dead men fear?” Crane says, softly. “I bet it will be fascinating.”
Jason has had enough. He slams the side of his gun into Crane’s head and Crane passes out.
“Batman,” he calls. “We have a problem.”
By the time he gets Crane trussed and drags him down the stairs, Crane is conscious again and Jason is starting to lose it.
He thinks he’s hiding it well, but Batman takes one look at him and says, “We need to go. Red Robin can handle the handoff.”
“Wait,” Crane says, and it’s the first time he’s sounded distressed the entire night. “My research!”
Jason blinks, and the Joker is there, tied up in the chair. Jason takes a step forward, stomach churning with rage and fear.
“Hood,” Batman says, and it’s just Crane again.
“Alright,” he says. “Alright.” And he follows Batman into the smoggy air of Gotham.
As soon as they’re out, they duck into a dark alleyway.
“The Batmobile is on its way.” Batman looms over him. His mouth is a tighter line than usual, but Jason can’t tell if that’s worry, annoyance, or both.
“You need to restrain me, right now,” Jason says, voice strained. “And give me the antidote, but I got hit full in my face, so I’m going to be totally out of it for, what? An hour?”
Batman hesitates.
“Maybe less.”
“Restrain me,” Jason says, louder. “I haven’t been hit, since-since everything—but I know I’ll try to hurt you.”
The mask is impassive. Usually it pisses Jason off, Batman watching and judging him without having to even control what his eyes do. Tonight it’s a relief.
“Hold out your hands,” Batman says, and that is the end of it.
By the time the Batmobile gets there, Jason is handcuffed and has had the antidote. He’s swaying on his feet. Batman had tried to put a hand between his shoulders to steady him, but Jason’d snapped at him like a rabid dog and focused on remaining upright.
He took a few hits in the warehouse, and it’s hard to stand when the world around you is constantly shifting—one minute an alley, another the fighting pits, another the Lazarus Pit itself, burning, burning all of his wounds shut, reforging bone. He might be screaming. He hopes the Gothamites chalk it up to a mugging and stay inside.
The car drifts into the alleyway so fast that it kicks up rocks that go pinging off Batman’s armor. Jason ducks, looking wildly for shooters before he realizes what happened, and stays hunched on the ground, anyway.
There’s a hand in front of his face, and he knows he’s supposed to take it, but it blurs and turns into a crowbar. He falls backwards, tries to catch himself with the hands handcuffed behind his back, and jars his wrist.
“Jason,” someone says. He looks up, and sees Batman, but he hears the Joker, and how does he know his name, did Jason tell him everything, did he tell him Bruce’s name, Bruce, where is Bruce, where is he I need him Bruce—
Strong hands lift him up and he kicks viciously. He makes contact at least once, but soon he’s dropped in the car. The familiar scent of leather jars him back to reality for a moment and he looks down at Bruce strapping him in. He pulls Jason’s helmet off. His mask is off already. He looks tired, and for a second there’s a vicious hurt in Jason, that taking care of him is so tiring—.
But then he feels it coming on again and the hurt sharpens to fear.
“Fuck,” Jason says, and then instead of a seatbelt pressing him down, it’s dirt, and he chokes, and he’s begging, “please, don’t send me back, please, I’ll be good—”
It makes no sense: death isn’t about whether you were good or not. Whether you’re a killer or not. Jason learned that long before he ever met Bruce. But maybe one day Bruce would finally realize Jason would never change. Would never regret some of the things he’d done. And he’d put him down himself.
He registers getting to the Manor, vaguely. When Bruce picks him up he curls into his chest, because if he closes his eyes tightly and breathes in the leather scent it keeps him from hallucinating the Joker.
“There you go,” Bruce is saying to him. “You’re strong. Fight it.”
A good soldier. Fuck that. Jason isn’t strong. He’s nothing like Bruce. Jason has never won a fight that mattered in his life. Not against the Joker: he couldn’t even hold on long enough for Batman to save him. Not against Dick, to be Bruce’s favorite son; not against Tim, to be Robin—
He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his cheek against the suit and lets the sense-memory of being Robin, being rescued, ground him.
Jason kind of—drifts. Dick would probably call it something like disassociation but Jason is fucking fine with not being in his head right now. He curls against Bruce and doesn’t have to even be embarrassed about it, because he isn’t there.
He comes back to his body some time later, horribly thirsty. He’s not being held anymore; he’s tucked into Bruce’s side. Bruce is in the suit, his mask off, and he had some sort of expression on his face that disappeared too fast to catch when Jason blinked at him. Typical.
“Water?” Jason croaks.
He throws back the entire bottle. The terror and emptiness and everything are receding enough that he’s starting to feel the edges of absolute mortification for being pressed up into Bruce like this. But his limbs are stiff and sore from being clenched in a little ball for the last hour and change, so he lets himself uncurl slowly.
“You left patrol,” he realizes. They’re not in the Batcave. They’re in one of the seemingly dozens of spare rooms in the house, on a large couch. But there’s a window, and it’s dark outside.
“You weren’t in a state to be left alone.”
Jason bristles. “And whose fault is that?”
“Jonathan Crane’s,” Bruce says, evenly, though his face falls, only enough that someone who’s been Robin would notice.
“I’ll fucking mail him the therapy bills, then,” Jason mutters.
“Do you—" Bruce starts, and pauses. "You know I’m happy to—”
“It was a joke,” Jason says, running his hands over his face. “Christ.”
“Have you ever thought about it?” Bruce’s voice was very quiet. “Dick’s gone.”
“Helped him so much.”
Bruce makes a warning noise, and Jason closes his eyes.
“No. I’m fine.”
He can just feel Bruce is opening his mouth again, and Jason snaps, “I absolutely do not want to have this conversation on fear toxin. Or ever. But you’d think the greatest detective in the world would have a better sense of timing.”
Bruce is silent, and Jason takes a deep breath before launching himself upright into a sitting position.
“Well, this was fun, let’s never talk about it again.” He cracks his back. “Luckily, you’re great at that,” he says, and heads for the door.
“Jason,” Bruce says. “You can’t leave yet, not with—”
“Sure I can,” Jason says, warning. “I can do whatever I fucking want.”
“Not while you’re still hallucinating,” Bruce says, evenly.
“You have no way to prove I am, and better yet, no way to stop me.”
Jason’s hand touches the doorknob, but he wheels around to glare at Bruce one last time. That’s when he catches it.
Jason hasn’t been on good terms with Bruce for—years. And even before that, when he was Robin, things had gotten tenser and tenser, and he probably would have left like Dick sooner or later.
But they’d worked together for years, too. And he remembers enough to catch the look on Bruce’s face, a slight grimace that would have been a full body flinch from someone else. He pauses. He raises an eyebrow.
“You got hit with the fear toxin.”
Bruce doesn’t confirm or deny, just lets his hands ball into fists, which is as good as confirmation, anyway.
“You know I’m still hallucinating,” Jason says, slowly, “because you are, too.”
“I would prefer it,” he says, voice tight, “if you would stay where I can see you.”
Jason whirls around.
“Are you scared of me now, Bruce?” His voice is vicious. The fear toxin is abating, little by little, but his skin is still crawling, and Jason never learned how to take a hit without giving one back. “Afraid I’m going to snap again and kill your precious baby birds?”
“No,” Bruce says, voice, if anything, even tighter. He looks like he’s clenching every muscle in his body so hard he’s going to explode.
“Then—”
“Goddammit, Jason,” Bruce yells. “Is it so unbelievable I might be scared of losing my son again?”
Jason freezes for a full second. He thinks his voice will come out cold when he speaks, but it’s just dull.
“I’m not your son.”
“You are,” Bruce says, voice thick.
“I tried to kill Tim.”
“You did,” Bruce says.
“So?” Jason says, quiet and sharp. “See?”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“I wanted to.”
“I know.” They stare at each other for a second. Jason throws his arms out.
“So what, that doesn’t matter? Going to be one big happy family?”
“It matters,” Bruce says, and he looks up at the ceiling. “But you’re still my son, Jaybird.”
Jason has the sudden feeling that if he doesn’t flee the room right now, he’s going to cry in front of Bruce. In front of the Batman. He feels a tiny, horrible pang of guilt for it, but he runs out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
He stumbles down the hallway, making it halfway before he has to fall into a crouch. Alone, the hallucinations are harder to ignore. His birth mother bangs on the walls, screaming for help. Jason closes his eyes.
Someone shakes him, and Jason springs to his feet, throwing a punch. It doesn’t connect, and when he opens his eyes he sees Tim four feet away from him, tensed to respond to sudden movements.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jason growls.
Tim looks at him, and says, slowly, “I live here?” as if Jason is very stupid. Jason doesn't miss the way his voice still quavers a little bit, saying it.
Jason steps forward, and Tim takes a defensive step back. “Why were you having a meltdown in the hallway?” Why are you here, is the real question.
“Oh, you know,” Jason says. “Meltdowns at home got too boring. Needed a change of scenery.” He looks at Tim. “Why did you—what are you doing?”
Tim shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “You were crying.”
“No I wasn’t,” Jason spits. It’s too late, the kid is already looking at him with a little bit of sympathy.
“Fear toxin?”
“Did Alfred tell you?”
“No,” Tim says, and rolls his eyes. “House full of detectives. And this one, full offense, was pretty obvious.”
Jason’s hackles are up, but only some fraction of the normal amount. He’s too exhausted for the full threat display. His mother is sobbing behind Tim, waiting for help that will never come. The hallway is starting to glow green. Jason wants nothing more than to go running back into the room and curl back up into Bruce like he did on the way in here, even though everything he’s seeing right now is Bruce’s fault. He squeezes his eyes shut, hard. When he opens them Tim is still staring at him like he’s a mildly difficult crossword puzzle clue, but his mother is gone and the hallway is a non-threatening beige.
“What did you say to him?” Tim asks.
Fuck not having energy for it, Jason puffs all the way up like an angry cat.
“Why do you assume I’m the one who fucked up?”
Tim just looks at him, and for the first time in a long time Jason wants to hurt him. He swallows. He does the deep breathing Alfred tried to teach him, when he was little and having a meltdown.
“You know Bruce can be just as much of an asshole as I can,” he says, finally. “Cut me some slack.”
“Why hasn’t he come to find you yet?”
Jason snorts. “He never does. He lets me go sulk. What kind of detective are you?”
“Not on fear toxin,” Tim says. “There’s a protocol. Strict observation periods. No way he would let—let anyone go off on their own.” Let you, Jason hears, let you specifically go off on your own because you’re a traumatized, easily spooked horse and you might kill someone by accident.
“Fuck you,” Jason says, even though Tim didn’t actually say it.
Tim’s not paying attention. “He got dosed too, didn’t he?”
Jason sighs. “I’m sure he had the antidote. Don’t wind yourself up about it.”
Tim’s fidgeting already, though. “He should have had a third party in there with you two,” he mutters. “And if Alfred knew, why didn’t he call someone to stay with you?”
“I don’t know,” Jason says. He might know, deep down. But Jason didn’t let himself think about Bruce like that anymore, not after that second night with the Joker. Like someone who cared about him. So he didn’t.
Tim pales further. “You left him alone on fear toxin?”
Jason feels that stab of guilt again. “I’m also on fear toxin,” he growls. “If you’re so worried about him, go in there.”
Tim stills and gives him a funny look.
“What?”
“Tonight? It’s gotta be you,” Tim says, and sounds distinctly unhappy about it.
“Why?”
Tim looks at him as if he’s very stupid again, and then shakes his head. “I’m not doing this. Just go in there before I march you in myself and sit there with you two.”
That sounds worse than dealing with just Bruce, watching him and the pretender hug it out while Jason shivers in a corner. He forces himself to his feet. He’s definitely taller than his mother was now, but the hallucination looks just like she did when he was 16. He looks away from her and stumbles to the door.
Once he’s there it’s only Tim standing at his back that makes him actually open it. He turns the knob slowly and hears Tim walk away behind him. No doubt to monitor the hallway and the windows on the cameras. Jason hopes he at least has the decency not to spy on them inside the room.
Bruce is sitting exactly where he’d left him, breathing very deeply in the way Alfred taught them both.
“Jason,” Bruce says, very calmly.
“So it got you. I wasn’t fast enough.”
Bruce’s face does something complicated, then he simply says, “You did fine.”
Jason shifts his weight. “It was a dick move to leave the room. With everything.” He’s looking down, and even as a civilian Bruce moves silently unless he’s focusing on doing otherwise, so it takes Jason by surprise when suddenly Bruce is right in front of him.
Nowadays, Bruce is pretty good about telegraphing when he might touch Jason, to avoid a punch in the face and a month with no contact. If he touches him at all. So he must be pretty out of it, since he puts his hands on Jason’s shoulders without warning. Jason allows it, too startled to do anything but let him.
“Every time I see you, you’re so little,” Bruce says, and Jason has no idea what he means. “But you’re actually—you got so big, Jay.”
His hands clench on Jason’s shoulders like he’s going to pull Jason to him, but instead he just bows his head and breathes, a little shakily.
Jason is mortified and alarmed in equal measure.
“Hey—hey,” he says. “Bruce?”
Bruce shakes his head.
Suddenly Jason is exhausted again. No one in this family is fucking normal. Why is it always his problem? Why does he always have to be the one to make the first move, when he’s the one they all hurt and left and forgot?
But he reaches out and pulls Bruce into a hug anyway. Bruce shudders and then hugs him back, tightly. It’s nice. Jason tries not to think about it too hard, because soon it’ll be over and he won’t get another one. He feels like crying again, but somehow he can’t manage it now. He just makes these horrible gasping sounds. And then Bruce is in charge, stroking his hair and hushing him. Jason lets him, too tired to fight it. Just like Bruce, to take over a nice thing he started.
Jason starts breathing normally again eventually, and Bruce releases him.
“What time is it,” Jason asks, gruff. Bruce keeps a hold on his wrist and leads them both to the couch again.
“2:12 am. Should be wearing off soon.”
“I’ll stay until 5.”
“Twelve hours is standard,” Bruce says, sounding more like the Batman than he has in hours.
Jason snorts. “Your protocol?”
“Yes,” he says, questioning.
“I ran into Tim,” Jason mumbles.
“Hmm,” Bruce says, and nothing more.
“He’s fine,” Jason snaps.
“I wasn’t implying otherwise,” he says, placating. “Just will have to thank him later.” They sit there for a moment. Bruce isn’t releasing his wrist, but Jason doesn’t mind. It helps to be touching something real.
“There are empty rooms in the East wing. If you want a few hours of sleep before you go.” This is the closest Bruce will get to acquiescing to Jason leaving at 5.
“I’ll stay here,” Jason says, voice gruff. He doesn’t look at Bruce. “Tim was worried. Probably’ll drag me back in here anyway.”
Bruce has the intelligence not to respond to that, but he pats his lap.
“If you want to lie down.”
Jason just looks at him. Bruce looks like he immediately regretted the offer.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and it’s a genuine question. “None of this—none of this fixes anything.” He swallows. “You’re not my dad.”
Bruce looks at him, suddenly intense. When Bruce focused on you, it felt like you were the only thing that mattered. Even if you knew it wasn’t true.
“I am. Whether you think of me that way or not.” He pats his lap again, a hilariously intense look of conviction on his face, and Jason has been so goddamn tired all night. He lies down, head in the Batman’s lap.
Now that he’s lucid, it’s different. He feels—angry. Ridiculous, embarrassed. Safe.
Bruce touches his hair gently, once. He closes his eyes.
The way Tim looked at him is rankling him. There’s something Jason doesn’t see here. He’s trying to solve a puzzle while standing on one of the pieces.
Maybe it’s that his eyes are closed, that he feels enough like the dead kid to ask. That he feels small and young for the first time in…a long time.
“B,” he says, and catches the flinch. “What do you see?”
It’s rude to ask. Prying. He’s noticed Bruce watching him, carefully not asking what he’s seeing. But kids got to be rude, and Jason felt like one now, head cradled in Bruce’s lap. Jason was a rude kid. Bruce’d never really minded that.
“You, Jason,” he says, voice absolutely wrecked. “I thought you knew that.”
Jason goes perfectly still. He opens his eyes. For all his voice is affected, Bruce’s face looks impassive.
“Oh,” he says, quietly. “So, this—”
He clears his throat. “It helps to have you here.”
“Tim knows,” Jason says, voice small. “He got me to come back.”
“I figured as much,” Bruce says. He breathes out, shaky.
There’s an ugly part of Jason that thinks Bruce deserves this. Good. Watch your son bleed out on the floor. Watch him die when you could have saved him. That kid is gone, no matter how much either of them want him back.
Jason swallows and pushes it down, the loathing. This is nice. For once he wants to not fuck this up. He can luxuriate in hatred tomorrow, alone in his shitty apartment.
Bruce must see it on his face anyway, because he sighs.
“I told you once, Jay,” Bruce says. “Losing you was my greatest mistake. I try everyday not to make it again.”
There’s nothing he can say to that. He’s rapidly reaching the amount of emotional talks he can have in a calendar year, and it’s only April. Jason closes his eyes again. He’s drifting off to sleep when he finds himself mumbling, “It’s not you.”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t see you. I’m not—that’s not what I’m afraid of.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Bruce says quietly, and pushes Jason’s bangs out of his face, and then he really does fall asleep.
He wakes up to an alarm. He startles badly, almost falling off the couch. Bruce is across the room, typing on a computer. He looks up.
“It’s just us. You’re at the Manor.”
Jason breathes. The combination of two hours of sleep and fear toxin hangover is a bitch, but he registers that Bruce had indeed woken him up at 5 am.
“Thanks,” Jason grunts.
“You going, then?” Bruce is usually a much better actor than this. The attempt at casual isn’t even passable.
“Yeah,” Jason says. For all the night before was nice, in a fun house mirror sort of way, he won’t feel safe long-term until he’s back in one of his own places, windows and doors checked and armed.
“I’ll see you in May?” He had noticed, then. Jason swallows.
“May-be,” he says, absently, and then blanches. Bruce’s mouth twitches, absurdly, given they’re discussing how many months it’ll be before they see each other again. “Fuck. I’m not Dick—that bastard is rubbing off on me—”
“I know,” Bruce says, suddenly dead serious. “I know you’re not Dick.”
“Good,” Jason says, breath caught in his throat. “I—that’s good.”
They stare at each other another moment, and then Jason turns to leave.
“Take care, old man.” It’s a concession.
“You too, son,” Bruce says. Jason can’t look at him. This time, he lets the door close silently behind him.
Jason borrows one of the dozen motorcycles in the Batcave that are carefully scrubbed of anything but a fake, non-Bat cover ID. He’s pretty sure this one is keyed to Jason Starling, which was probably Tim’s idea of a joke. He catches Tim himself lurking near the stairs, like Jason isn’t also a trained vigilante who can run on no sleep and supervillain drugs, and is still capable of noticing shit.
He isn’t going to do anything but nod at him, but Tim calls out.
“Don’t crash. I’ll be the one doctoring your identity for the cops if you do.”
It’s about as good as can be hoped for as far as a “get home safe.” Not that Jason hopes for much at all with the replacement. Jason gives him a two fingered wave and a big, sarcastic grin before peeling out of the cave as fast as he possibly can.
He checks the perimeter of the safe house once on auto pilot, then again, carefully, the toxin making his usual paranoia worse. He even thinks briefly about calling into the hallway and telling Oracle she could use her creepy spy shit to watch his place today, but he gets hit with a wave of exhaustion before he can, which is probably for the best.
It’s a mild Gotham spring, but he piles his comforters and blankets on the bed and curls up underneath a big heavy mass of them. Despite everything, it doesn’t take long to fall asleep.
He wakes up at 2 pm to a few texts on his personal phone.
dick [7:14 am] you okay
b said you ran into crane last night?
dick [10:34 am] i know you’re probably asleep but text me back when you wake up or i’ll come over and feed you and i know you hate that
dick [1:34 pm] are you still asleep or are you doing the recluse thing again. proof of life is all i ask
Jason types “sorry,” then deletes it. He sighs. Nightwing isn’t actually at his window, and that deserves some positive reinforcement, probably.
j: whens the last time u got hit with fear toxin
j: i needed the sleep mom
j: also you cant cook for shit
dick: i am an expert at ordering pizza. it’s one of my many talents
dick: you okay?
j: alive so been worse
dick: Ha Ha Ha Extremely Funny Joke
[dick is typing…]
dick: anyway. b seems happy today
[j is typing…]
[j is typing...]
[j is typing…]
j: fear toxin is probably his favorite
j: it reinforces all of his paranoid delusions
dick: christ
dick: i think he was happy to see you
dick: not like because of the fear toxin. just. you know. you
j: did he say that
dick: he said that you stayed to ride out the fear toxin
dick: and he smiled
j: theres no fucking way he smiled
dick: well he doesn’t smile really. he makes that one face
dick: like he’s constipated but less than usual
j: reading bruces microexpressions is not a hobby
dick: i don't know what to tell you jason
dick: he was happy to see you. but
dick: you know how he is
j: and he fucking knows how i am. he can tell me himself
[dick is typing…]
dick: hey i know the nightmares get bad
[dick is typing…]
dick: for me and stuff, after fear toxin
dick: call me okay. anytime
[j is typing…]
[j is typing…]
j: k.
[j is typing…]
j: thanks dickie
dick: love you, jay.
Jason has nothing to say to that, not yet, not in April. He lets the phone fall on his chest and rubs his eyes. He should really get out of bed and do something with his day. Working with Batman and then disappearing the following night? A bad fucking look. But there was time to suit up, and despite what Dick had told him he’d had fine dreams. Didn’t wake up tasting the unbearable salty-chemical of the pit. Woke up instead smelling leather.
He drifts off back to sleep.